CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series

Isabel Deibel, Penn State

Many languages allow for multiple word orders (that is, different orderings of elements in a sentence), either depending on discourse context or as a result of language contact with a language that displays a different word order. By assuming a multidimensional perspective, Isabel’s dissertation work traces the origin of word order variation in a hybrid language, created in a language contact scenario and still in contact with its input languages, which are fundamentally different in their structure.

Underscoring the importance of studying marginalized communities (such as the current communities in Ecuador) to advance linguistic theories and promote language maintenance, her talk will highlight that stigmatized bilingual speech practices are not “corrupted speech” but follow common cross-linguistic patterns.