Language Contact, "Reverse Interference", and the Critical Age Hypothesis

Brian D. Joseph, The Ohio State University

The investigation of second-language acquisition has provided numerous results that challenge long-held views about the stability of adult grammars, i.e. those formed after the so-called "critical age". This is especially true in situations of language contact, when the type of second- language acquisition involved is naturalistic, i.e., untutored and taking place in a non-classroom setting. In such cases, processes and acquisition strategies that emerge in the contact between speakers of different languages reveal important ways in which one grammar affects another in the minds of the speakers acquiring a second language.

The effects of a native (first-learned) language on the second language are well known and are not at all surprising: the learner comes to the acquisition process with a full language already in place and the fact that that first language should have an effect on the second language merely reflects the language "filter" through which the learning of the second language occurs. Such "interference" is well-recognized, even if called by different names by different scholars and in different venues (e.g. traditionally: substratum influence; Johanson 1992: imposition (German: Unterschiebung); van Coetsem 1988: source language agentivity; Thomason & Kaufman 1988: interference through shift; second-language-acquisition literature, e.g. Odlin 1989: transfer). In such instances of interference, a speaker filters the use of the other language through his/her own already-existing system, and thereby effects change in that other language, producing an altered form of it.

Importantly, though, in a certain sense, such contact-induced changes have no bearing on the critical age hypothesis as there is no effect on the grammars of native speakers; rather, the target language is changed only in the mouths (and minds) of those acquiring it secondarily.

Thus it is of particular interest that in contact situations, interference, can, as Flege 1998 puts it, be "bi-directional", and the secondarily acquired language can also affect a speaker's first language. This type of effect can be called "reverse interference", and it has been documented by Flege in work over two decades, and by others (e.g. Major 1992, Hussein 1994, Yeni- Komshian, Flege, & Liu 1997, 2000, and Bond, Markus, & Stockmal 2004.inter alios).

Most of the work on "reverse interference" has focused on experimental demonstrations of the subtle but real effects that the learning and use of a second language can have on the production of native-language sounds. However, reverse interference effects can be observed as well in naturalistic second-language acquisition situations.

Accordingly, in this paper, we present a number of cases of reverse interference from naturalistic second-language influence via contact in the Balkans, looking in particular at Aromanian speakers affected by Greek, Macedonian speakers affected by Greek and Albanian, Arvanitika speakers affected by Greek, Romanian speakers affected by Bulgarian, Albanian speakers affected by Macedonian, and Romani speakers affected by Albanian. These cases, taken together, show not only the pervasiveness in intense contact situations of "reverse interference" but also the range of effects that can be attributed to it that produce alterations in the native language grammars of adult, i.e. post-critical-age, speakers.