AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE CONTACT WITH SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND CAUSES THE LANGUAGE CHANGES OVER TIME

Abstract

This research aims to study 1) To study background of language contact with sociolinguistics and the causes of language change over time. 2) To investigate the development of language contact with sociolinguistics and causes of language change over time. Multilingualism and language contact have likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. In tribal hunter-gatherer societies, multilingualism was common, as tribes must communicate with neighboring peoples and there was often intermarriage. In present-day areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where there was much variation in language over short distances, it was usual for anyone who had dealings outside their own town or village to know two or more languages. When speakers of different languages interacted closely. It is typical for their languages to influence each other. Languages normally developed by gradually accumulating dialectal differences until two dialects ceased to be mutually understandable, somewhat analogous to the species barrier in biology. Language contact could occur at language borders, between ad stratum languages, or as the result of migration, with a “disturbing” language acting as either a superstratum or a sub-stratum. Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence and borrowing. The most common products were code-switching and mixed languages. Other hybrid languages, such as English, did not strictly fit into any of these categories.