Spread of on-going changes in an immigrant language

Abstract

Turkish spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) sounds different in comparison to Turkish spoken in Turkey (TR-Turkish). Analyses of NL-Turkish spoken corpus reveal that NL-Turkish is changing through literally translated Dutch constructions. Combining the cognitive linguistics framework with methods of sociolinguistic analysis, this study investigates to what extent these attested changes are spread within the NL-Turkish speech community. Results of our experimental study show that NL-Turkish speakers recognize the changing constructions and tolerate them more than TR-Turkish speakers (control group). In addition, both NL-Turkish and TR-Turkish speakers exhibit a learning process for the changing constructions during the course of the experiment. However, we did not necessarily find a positive correlation between the frequency of changing constructions and their acceptance rate. We predict that sociolinguistic factors (e.g. group dynamics and continuous contact with TR-Turkish) influence the spread of on-going changes in NL-Turkish at the current stage of contact.