À propos de Schuchardt, du mélange des langues et du contact

What is it about?

Studies on language contact are sufficiently developed to make it possible to ponder about its entailments. This implies that the researcher sets himself aside in order to grasp the dynamics of the various approaches. This paper first (i) goes back on the notion of “viewpoint”, (ii) presents the notion of “persistence of view point”, and (iii) proposes a simplification of the epistemic inputs that structure a “domain α”, that of a project’s conditions of existence of an epistemic construct, to a “domain β”, which is dependent on the ‘viewpoint’ involved in the process of the epistemic construct. Second, the paper investigates the four spaces that are sensitive to contact : (i) the structural space, (ii) the social space, (iii) the “rationalization” space, and (iv) the psychophysiological space. The third part deals with the logical inferences of language contact, and more specifically of its margins, i.e. language mixing, using as a basis of discussion the little read book by Schuchardt Slawo-deutsches und Slawo-italienisches (1883). The book, which shows the importance and the ordinariness of language mixing [Mischsprache], induces to question the obliteration of this issue in academic research, while studies on language contact are booming. The answer involves a reflection on the possibilities to keep in our research the compatibility between classical and new viewpoints.

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