EXPATS IN PRAGUE: CZECH BORROWINGS IN L1 ENGLISH SPEAKERS

Abstract

This paper endeavours to identify instances of possible grammatical borrowing and replication in the speech of the L1 English speaking bilingual community in Prague. Phenomena found within the data are analysed with regard to whether they can be attributed to language-contact induced grammatical borrowing from Czech, or whether they are influenced by language accommodation to L1 Czech L2 English speakers, attrition, internal variation or the effect of Czech parentage. This study builds on the findings of Porte (1999, 2003) in identifying grammatical phenomena occurring within English as the L1 in a bilingual situation, as well as adding to the debate on whether grammatical borrowing occurs at all and in what circumstances. The method for this exploratory study involved conducting seven observation sessions and thirteen interviews. The findings included: article omission andoveruse, word order changes, noun or verb omission, verb tense instability, preposition instability, grammatical number and person mismatch, and use of suffixes and diminutives. This study focuses on unconventionalities (Doğruöz & Backus 2009) in the speech of each individual participant (Clyne 2003: 96), with emphasis on innovations (Matras & Sakel 2007) rather than community-wide propagation. The analysis reveals that some of the phenomena are potentially the result of contact-induced language transfer, accommodation to L1 Czech L2 English speakers, non-contact related attrition processes, the influence of Czech parentage, colloquialisms and speech performance errors. Some phenomena are attributed to a combination of several of these factors.