10.6092/issn.2785-0943/18309
This paper introduces the monographic issue of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads entitled “Language contact and non-convergent change: cases from Africa”, edited by Pierpaolo Di Carlo and Pius W. Akumbu. After briefly outlining non-convergent change under contact with a special attention to African settings, it deals with the fact that the languages discussed in the monographic issue have been spoken for generations in contexts of small-scale multilingualism. This is a key aspect to consider since small-scale multilingualism is a type of multilingualism that is overall little known as to its possible effects at the level of language change. The paper then addresses methodological aspects related to the study of non-convergent change in contact situations and introduces the novel concept of “correlated dissimilarity”.  A call for the collection of new and more comprehensive data in the field as the only possible way to test the hypotheses raised in this volume concludes this introduction.
application/pdf
2785-0943
18309
1
en
Pierpaolo Di Carlo
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads
Africa
Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
https://typologyatcrossroads.unibo.it/
3
Editorial
2023-11-30
2023-10-23
2023-11-30
2023-11-30
1-18
LTC
Pierpaolo Di Carlo
2023/11/30
10.6092/issn.2785-0943/18309
1
University at Buffalo
2785-0943
1
Africa
en
18
<p>Weinreich, Uriel. 1953.&nbsp;<em>Languages in Contact. Findings and Problems</em>. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.</p>
Introduction
https://typologyatcrossroads.unibo.it/article/download/18309/16969
3
         Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18                           ISSN 2785-0943



                                             Introduction

                                         PIERPAOLO DI CARLO
                                           UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO


                  Submitted: 23/10/2023                 Revised version: 02/11/2023
                   Accepted: 08/11/2023                       Published: 30/11/2023

                   Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (The authors
                   remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article).




                                                    Abstract
This paper introduces the monographic issue of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads entitled
“Language contact and non-convergent change: cases from Africa”, edited by Pierpaolo Di
Carlo and Pius W. Akumbu. After briefly outlining non-convergent change under contact with
a special attention to African settings, it deals with the fact that the languages discussed in
the monographic issue have been spoken for generations in contexts of small-scale
multilingualism. This is a key aspect to consider since small-scale multilingualism is a type of
multilingualism that is overall little known as to its possible effects at the level of language
change. The paper then addresses methodological aspects related to the study of non-
convergent change in contact situations and introduces the novel concept of correlated
dissimilarity. A call for the collection of new and more comprehensive data in the field as the
only possible way to test the hypotheses raised in this volume concludes this introduction.


Keywords: language contact; small-scale multilingualism; convergent and non-convergent
change; Africa.
                                                                     “Sociolinguistics is not like chemistry, and
                                                                      when you put two languages together the
                                                                            same thing does not always happen.”
                                                                                        (Appel & Muysken 2005: 5)




1. Non-convergent change in contact settings


Languages in contact normally undergo processes of convergent change, which is a
cover term for both bilateral (i.e. convergence) and unilateral (i.e. advergence)



https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2785-0943/18309                                                                              1
Di Carlo                                                                                     Introduction


patterns of increased similarity between languages. However, a growing number of
studies highlight contact phenomena that cannot be straightforwardly accounted for
in terms of diffusion or of language-internal change or of broader typological
tendencies. These contact phenomena include cases of language stability (i.e. non-
change) and language divergence (see, e.g., Kühl & Braunmüller 2014: 14) which are
referred to here as types of non-convergent change (cf. Kaufmann 2010). The purpose
of this volume is to contribute to this developing tradition of studies, with a specific
focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
     Since the literature on language contact and non-convergent change is still quite
limited, it might be useful to recall here some of the main existing works - with no
intention to provide a comprehensive literature review, which is beyond the scope of
this short introduction. Language stability refers to situations in which two or more
languages in contact do not undergo convergent change as it would be expected.
Examples include the maintenance of clearly distinctive lexicons in the otherwise
structurally convergent languages of the Vaupès and other regions in the Amazon
(e.g. Aikhenvald 2001, Epps 2020), the very minimal instances of French lexical and
structural borrowing in English as a minority language of Quebec (Poplack et al.
2006), and the maintenance of grammatical gender in varieties of Norwegian in
contact with Finno-Ugric languages in northern Norway (Sollid et al. 2014). Language
divergence in contact settings is exemplified by cases such as relexification 1 in
Oceanic languages of northern Vanuatu (François 2011), language esoterogeny2 (e.g.
Thurston 1989, Ross 1997), and restructuring at the level of suprasegmental
phonology in East-Tukanoan languages (Gomez-Imbert 1999) and of noun
morphology in Iwaidjan languages (Evans 2019). In spite of clear differences, what
these cases have in common is that they foreground the importance of extralinguistic
factors, such as speakers’ language ideologies,3 as the main factors that can possibly
account for such “unnatural” outcomes of contact.




1
    Relexification is a mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its
lexicon with the lexicon of another language, while its grammar remains largely intact.
2
    Esoterogeny is a term referring to a sociolinguistic development in which speakers add linguistic
innovations to their language that increase its complexity and, therefore, make it harder to learn for
outsiders.
3
    “[I]deas, or sets of beliefs, shared by the members of a community concerning language, its uses, and
its role in their social world” (Pakendorf et al. 2021: 837).


                                                                                                       2
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


   In this overall limited literature, cases from Africa feature rarely. Except for
relatively isolated remarks found in works such as Schadeberg (1981), Connell
(2001), Mous (2001), Storch (2011), Mve et al. (2019), and Dimmendaal (2015: 64–
81) the possibility to focus on non-convergent change phenomena in African contact
settings has, to a large extent, remained outside of the linguists’ agenda, although
there appear to be no objective reasons why such phenomena should be so rare in
this part of the world. This latter stance finds support in inspiring, general statements
such as the following:


      Bantu speakers have long lived in a multilingual continuum, where many speakers
      master not just their own variety of speech but also those of their neighbors.
      Linguistic differentiation and convergence are actively pursued, one serving to
      establish distinct group identities, the other one to forge alliances and to foster
      good neighborship. (Schadeberg 2003: 158)


The papers contained in this volume are in some way related to Schedeberg’s words
as they (i) focus on settings where being multilingual in neighboring languages has
most likely been the norm for speakers since precolonial times and (ii) explore ways
to test the significance of possible connections between social, sociolinguistic, and
linguistic patterns in influencing the direction of language change. I deal with these
two topics in the next two sections, following which I will summarize the papers
contained in this volume (section 4) and add some final comments.


2. Linguistic diversity and small-scale multilingualism


The papers contained in this volume target languages spoken in areas of relatively
high linguistic diversity (see Fig. 1) where, due to the absence of lingua francas,
multilingualism in neighboring languages has been the principal means of
intercommunity communication before colonial times. This is established for the
Cameroonian Grassfields (e.g. Warnier 1980; Di Carlo et al. 2019; Chenemo & Neba
2020), where the languages targeted in this volume by both Akumbu & Kießling and
Di Carlo & Good are located (see Fig. 1). As for Usaghade (usk; Niger-Congo, Lower
Cross), Connell (this volume) has collected some basic sociolinguistic information
suggesting that, unsurprisingly, its speakers are also proficient in neighboring
languages and there appear to be no objective reasons not to extend this state of



                                                                                            3
Di Carlo                                                                              Introduction


things back in time. The case of Bade (bde; Afro-Asiatic, Chadic), discussed by
Ziegelmeyer in this volume, is less clear due to the apparent scarcity of sociolinguistic
and ethnographic data.




Figure 1: Map showing the approximate locations of the languages discussed in the papers in this
volume. The so-called sub-Saharan fragmentation belt accommodates about 80% of Africa’s linguistic
diversity (Dalby 1970).


   Bade is located in a region in which the influence of Kanuri (knc; Nilo-Saharan,
Western Saharan) began no less than five centuries ago, and where Hausa (hau; Afro-
Asiatic, Chadic) has gained speakers over the past century. This means that, unlike
the previous cases, Bade has been long spoken in a diglossic environment (i.e. one
where there is a power imbalance between communities which is ideologically
extended to their languages) where being competent in Kanuri would have
theoretically enabled intercommunity communication for centuries. At the same time,
however, variation between Bade varieties is so high that it is debatable whether they
should not be considered as distinct languages instead, thus adding to the historical
scenario of diversity of the area. In such a situation, and based on evidence collected
in overall similar environments of liminality between traditional communities and
centralized states (e.g. the contact between Mandara montagnards and Wandala, in




                                                                                                4
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


Moore 2004), it seems reasonable to infer the existence of widespread multilingualism
in neighboring languages / lects over the past centuries.
      Why is it so important to establish a baseline for the kind of multilingualism that
was (and is) practiced in these areas? Since the loci of language contact are the minds
of the multilingual speakers, identifying the kind of multilingualism that these
communities have practiced is key to understanding what kind of contact phenomena
would be more or less expected between the languages that they speak. This is well-
known (e.g. Weinreich 1953: 71–110, Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 65–100). What is
lesser known is that, in its discourse about how the social factors influence language
change, contact linguistics has enormously relied on a model of societal
multilingualism, i.e. diglossia, which was only recently recognized to be one out of a
number of possible such models, rather than the only one (see, e.g., Lüpke 2016, Di
Carlo 2018, Vaughan & Singer 2018).4 As a matter of fact, the forms of small-scale
multilingualism that have characterized the communities discussed in this volume
have surely included significant non-diglossic components. The most evident
differences between diglossic multilingualism and small-scale multilingualism include
the following:


      ● the conceptual systems supporting forms of diglossic multilingualism hinge on
           a socially widespread perception of power and prestige asymmetries between
           communities        associated      with      different     codes,     whereas       small-scale
           multilingualism typically arises where there are no significant inter-group
           differences in terms of socio-economic dominance—which is why it was first
           labeled egalitarian multilingualism (Haudricourt 1961);
      ● diglossic forms of multilingualism normally co-occur with models of
           construction of identity qua membership in social categories—which is the
           norm in industrialized and urbanized societies (e.g. Ma & Schoeneman 2007,
           Henrich et al. 2010)—whereas small-scale multilingualism co-occurs with
           relational-positional models of identity, where language choice in interaction
           has the effect of representing oneself as occupying a specific position within a



4
    For the sake of convenience, in this introduction I generalize the use of the term diglossia to encompass
both diglossia and polyglossia—i.e. situations in which the languages participating in the system of
social evaluation and domain-specialization are more than two—and of multilingualism as a cover
term including bilingualism and forms of multi-code competence labeled as bi- / multi-lectalism.


                                                                                                           5
Di Carlo                                                                         Introduction


       concrete network of people rather than as an instance of an abstract social
       stereotype (e.g. Di Carlo et al. 2020, Lüpke 2021).


Both points have consequences for research focused on contact between languages
spoken in contexts of small-scale multilingualism. The first point stresses that
arguments so pervasive in the literature such as those based on the notion of (overt
or covert) prestige imbalance between communities, might in fact be to a large extent
irrelevant, if not misguided, in accounting for the social facts influencing patterns of
change in these contexts (see references above and the contributions in Vaughan &
Singer 2018 and Di Carlo & Good 2020).
   The second point highlights a complex node which I can only briefly sketch here.
In multilingual societies where language choice indexes one’s membership in a
concrete network of people vis à vis those of one’s co-interactants, linguistic diversity
is not only a fact of social life but also enables one’s social relations and the activation
of associated sets of rights and obligations in daily life. From this perspective one can
see how, in contexts where multiple groups of roughly equal power exploit an
environment that offers limited (economic and political) resources, individuals may
have an interest in maintaining this multiplicity since membership in more groups
means having potential access to more sources of rights and support, which can be
strategically leveraged according to needs (some cases from Africa can be found in,
e.g., Lüpke & Storch 2013: 22–45, Di Carlo 2018, Cobbinah 2020). In some societies,
this interest surfaces in ideologically-loaded constraints on code-switching between
local languages (e.g. Ojong Diba 2020). This attitude towards diversity, the relatively
small size of the communities involved, and the widespread presence of individuals
who, thanks to their multilingual competence, would be aware of the items and
structures that make any two local languages similar or different from each other,
make it likely (if not predictable) that contexts of small-scale multilingualism may be
especially conducive to stability and divergence of the languages involved.
   A sociolinguistically-informed study of contact that can do without prestige and
without social stereotypes is yet to come, and this makes it difficult to actually put to
test the claims summarized above. My view is that, until sociolinguistics is globalized,
it is wise to acknowledge that we are not in a position to state with certainty what
can and cannot happen to languages spoken for generations in a context of small-
scale multilingualism, because existing knowledge of contact phenomena has been
elaborated for the most part on the basis of crucially different sociolinguistic contexts.


                                                                                           6
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


From this perspective, paraphrasing Haspelmath (2004), one might say that the main
goal of this volume is to contribute to raising the study of non-convergent change in
African contact settings from near non-existence to a hunting and gathering stage—
i.e. a stage of research in which data is provided but analyses still lack systematicity.
Where contents of this volume may appear to be making “bold and not fully
substantiated claims”, it might be useful to recall that sometimes this serves “the
useful purpose of instigating others to look for counterexamples or confirmation”
(Haspelmath 2004: 220).


3. Assumptions, claims, and challenges


There are indeed some basic yet unarticulated claims that underpin the papers in this
volume to a greater or lesser extent, which I briefly address in this section.


3.1 Language boundaries


The first claim has to do with where one should draw language boundaries—a
practical necessity of doing work on language contact (cf. Nicolaï 2019). In this
regard, “there seems to be no need to assume fundamental structural differences
between dialects and languages that would make a comparison between dialect
contact and language contact impossible when investigating structural changes or
stability in language contact” (Kühl & Braunmüller 2014: 13–14). More specifically,
what actually counts in determining if a named language is eligible to comparison is
whether it is learned and used independently of any other that is reported in the
speakers’ multilingual repertoires, and its use (regardless of the quality and quantity
of its distinctive items, cf. Watson 2019) has at least some desired social indexical
effects that no other named language has for its speakers (e.g. Di Carlo et al. 2019:
§3.5).5


5
    There is a term that is often found in research on non-convergent change phenomena but which I
have purportedly avoided in this introduction: namely, hyperdialectism.           Peter Trudgill (1986)
introduced it to refer to those cases in which it was observed that one or more linguistic features that
are typical of a dialect are overgeneralized by its speakers in order to increase its distinctiveness from
the standard language or a neighboring dialect. This concept is of limited use in the perspective taken
in this volume because of its implicit claim that such changes are specific to dialects, but there are




                                                                                                        7
Di Carlo                                                                                 Introduction


3.2 Correlated dissimilarities


A second claim concerns the phenomena under analysis. The fact that contact leads
to borrowing and interference—i.e. to instances of convergent change—is a truism
and therefore needs not be demonstrated. In actual practice, this means that
comparatists can build on a shared expectation without the burden of proving it—
they mainly answer the question of how the change came about, rather than why it
did. By contrast, the studies in this volume focus on differential rather than similar
features between languages and wonder whether these differences are due to contact.
That contact may be the source of maintenance or enhancement of dissimilarities
between languages is the marked scenario and requires an explanation (e.g. Labov
2010: 5), so the very act of taking that stance must be justified in the first place. This
means taking up the challenge of testing whether some cross-linguistic dissimilarities
in contact settings are somehow connected to each other. I introduce here the term
correlated dissimilarities to refer to this special class of cross-linguistic differences, until
a better term is found.
   Providing an exhaustive compendium of the types of correlated dissimilarities that
have been proposed in the literature is not among the goals of this short introduction,
but recalling some of them might be helpful. One type of cross-linguistic difference
that is often discussed as a potential index that the difference is a correlated
dissimilarity is the so-called flipping: two items, most commonly two paradigmatic
sets, from two (or more) named languages appear to be in a relationship of inversion.
Consider, for instance, the case of Barasana and Taiwano (bsn), two closely related
East Tukanoan languages, where there is a recurring correspondence between
inverted tonal melodies of segmentally identical noun roots: Bar. cudíró (LHH), Tai.
cúdiro (HLL) ‘piece of clothing’; Bar. ~wibágɨ ́ (LHH), Tai. ~wíbagɨ (HLL) ‘child’; Bar.
~jokó (LH) Tai. ~jóko (HL) ‘star’ (see Gomez-Imbert 1999). An example involving
three languages comes from the distribution of nouns across genders in neighboring
Iwaidjan languages of northern Australia (Evans 2019: 575–579). Mawng (mph;
Iwaidjan, Iwaidjic), the most conservative of the three languages, has five genders
(masculine, feminine, vegetable, land & liquids, and miscellaneous) with most nouns
occurring in masculine and feminine, few in vegetable and land & liquids, and very



well-known difficulties in drawing a principled distinction between languages and dialects in several
parts of Africa (e.g. Nurse & Philippson 2003: 2-3).


                                                                                                   8
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


few in the miscellaneous gender. Two neighboring Iwaidjan languages, i.e. Ilgar and
Iwaidja (ilg and ibd; Iwaidjan, Iwaidjic), have simplified this system but, where Ilgar
has done so in the expected way (i.e. generalizing the most frequent genders), Iwaidja
has enigmatically done the opposite by generalizing the miscellaneous gender. Other
instances of inversion in noun class systems are also documented in Africa (e.g. the
case of Laru (lro; Niger-Congo, West-Central Heibanic), see Schadeberg 1981 and
Dimmendaal 2020, and one such case has also been proposed for some Ring languages
by Akumbu & Kießling (this volume, see also below).
   There appear to be no linguistic-only arguments that make it possible to establish
that a given cross-linguistic difference can be legitimately viewed as a correlated
dissimilarity. The first step that linguists working on data of this kind have taken has
been to look for support in extralinguistic evidence. In this regard, linguists’ efforts
widely differ: those who can rely on a substantial body of knowledge provided by
earlier ethnographic work (such as, e.g., in the case of the Vaupès, see references
above) are facilitated in connecting the linguistic and the extra-linguistic dimension
of analysis since the latter is sufficiently developed and convincing. By contrast,
where such knowledge is scanty or non-existent (which is the norm in many African
settings), linguists approach the problem by raising fundamentally unresolved
questions, though from different starting points. In this volume, authors such as
Akumbu & Kießling and Ziegelmeyer have limited sociolinguistic data to build on and
therefore include the extra-linguistic dimension as a “last resort” by invoking general
tendencies, such as Larsen’s (1917) notion of naboopposition—i.e. a process of
intentional differentiation between neighboring languages—as the main factors at
play. The paper by Di Carlo & Good, on the other hand, stems from a significant body
of ethnographic and sociolinguistic knowledge and devotes a lengthy discussion to
the problem of what kind of characteristics might make a given instance of change a
better or worse candidate to be viewed as a correlated dissimilarity (see also below).
   However, it must be kept in mind that even solid and convincing extra-linguistic
data can hardly answer the twofold problem of the actuation and of the propagation
of non-convergent change phenomena under contact. As Campbell & Poser (2008:
352) write about the concept of language esoterogeny (which is a form of non-
convergent change): “...it is not clear how this hypothesized cultural motive for these
changes – conscious exclusion of outsiders (Ross 1997: 239) – could be tested or how
the investigator might distinguish changes motivated for this purpose from changes
that just happen with no such motive”. These are crucial points that are more or less


                                                                                      9
Di Carlo                                                                      Introduction


tightly connected to the problem of deliberate language change (e.g. Thomason 2007,
Storch 2011), a possibility that work on non-convergent change puts under focus.
None of the papers in this volume have managed to resolve these issues, but all of
them can be viewed as the initial pieces of a (timidly) unfolding scholarly debate
within Africanist linguistics.


4. The papers in this volume


Pius W. Akumbu and Roland Kießling focus on a set of phonological and
morphosyntactic features crisscrossing two subgroups of Grassfields Bantu languages,
namely Central Ring (CR) and West Ring (WR). While some of these features might
be interpreted as outcomes of contact-induced convergent change between CR and
WR languages—such as, e.g., Kuk and Kung (kuk and kfl; Niger-Congo, Narrow
Grassfields, Central Ring) gender assignment of various nouns that pattern with WR
rather than with CR, e.g., ‘neck’ (gender 3/4~6a) vs. CR (gender 3/6~5/13)—others
are less straightforwardly interpretable this way. The most glaring example of a
potentially correlated dissimilarity is the merger of two noun classes (10 and 13) in
two CR, just as in WR languages. However, while WR languages have generalized
class 13, the two CR languages have generalized class 10—another possible instance
of crosslinguistic flipping (see previous section). Akumbu & Kießling put forward the
possibility that this phenomenon is an instance of neighbor-opposition, but at the
same time admit that the scanty sociolinguistic data at hand are not sufficient to
substantiate (or dismiss) this claim.
   In his paper, Bruce Connell aims to understand the extent to which the
morphological differences that Usaghade displays if compared to the other Lower
Cross (Bantoid) languages can be explained in terms of prolonged contact with
neighboring Bantu A.10 languages, especially Londo (bdu; Niger-Congo, Narrow
Bantu). There are three domains in which Usaghade morphology differs from the
other Lower Cross languages: (i) it preserves a fully functional noun classification and
agreement system which is found mostly in the form of fossilized prefixes in the other
Lower Cross languages; (ii) it marks some temporal or aspectual distinctions post-
verbally whereas pre-verbal marking is default among Lower Cross languages; (iii) in
a form of verb classification, it uses suffixes that find no parallel among Lower Cross
languages. Thanks to a thorough comparative analysis, Connell argues that Usaghade
noun morphology is in a state of arrested erosion—i.e. all prefixes are inherited, not


                                                                                       10
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


borrowed—which was reasonably maintained as a result of the presence of
structurally similar but formally distinct noun class systems in Londo and other
neighboring languages with which the Usaghade community interacted closely for
long time. Limited knowledge of verb morphology in these languages does not allow
to make equally grounded claims in this regard. However, the fact that the changes
in verb morphology appear to be aberrant leads Connell to cautiously hypothesize
that they could be instances of contact-induced divergence. Considering that
Usaghade has borrowed about a third of its lexicon from Londo, this case lends itself
to be viewed as a particularly telling example that contact can lead to different
outcomes in different subsystems of a language: namely, stability in noun
morphology, advergence in lexicon, and divergence in verb morphology.
   Di Carlo & Good discuss two conundrums in the comparative study of the Yemne-
Kimbi referential group of Bantoid languages spoken in Lower Fungom, an area of
high linguistic diversity located at the northern fringes of the Cameroonian
Grassfields—i.e. the puzzling cross-linguistic distribution (i) of the prefixes encoding
singulars of nouns having plurals in *bi- and (ii) of the tense-aspect markers. Existing
accounts of these phenomena had to recur to ad hoc reconstructions of language-
internal processes and left unaddressed the issue of contact. In response to this gap
and based on a degree of knowledge of local societies, language ideologies, and
multilingual behaviors that is relatively unusual for this type of studies, Di Carlo &
Good develop a sociolinguistic model that they call social semiosis layer. Put roughly,
the model aims to predict what features of a language will be more subject to change
when the community of its speakers undergoes ideological pressures for becoming
more similar or more distinct from a neighboring community. In its application, in
fact, the semiosis layer model does not serve the purpose of predicting change but,
rather, of assessing the likelihood that a given change might be attributed to processes
of what the authors label neighbor-bias—a novel concept that includes but is not
limited to Larsen’s (1917) naboopposition. Linguistic items (i.e. any piece of structure
or lexicon that can be learned and transmitted) are assessed in terms of their potential
for encoding neighbor-bias (e.g. usage frequency), for being readily acquirable (e.g.
semantic congruence of forms in the languages involved), and for being minimally
disruptive of the existing systems. The analysis of both Yemne-Kimbi conundrums
reveals that the phenomena under analysis involve items having high potentials in all
these dimensions, which makes them good candidates as exemplary members of a
layer of items that are expected to be leveraged first in situations of increased need


                                                                                     11
Di Carlo                                                                             Introduction


for a community to obtain distinctiveness from its neighbors. The ethnographic and
historical overview provided by Di Carlo & Good suggests that speech community
events compatible with this kind of language change processes can be reconstructed
in the history of the Cameroonian Grassfields as a whole.
   Georg Ziegelmeyer presents data about the distribution of twelve features among
languages of the Bade-Ngizim group of West Chadic B.1. Some, like the loss of a
distinctive opposition between two r-sounds, can be interpreted as the outcome of
convergent change towards one or the other of the main languages of the wider
region—i.e. Hausa or Kanuri. Others can be accounted for by language-internal
factors, like the fact that a prefix a- encoding third person independent pronouns
across all related varieties can take on the value of marking third person direct and
indirect object pronouns in one of them (Gashua Bade). Two features are especially
puzzling as they escape both areal and genetic interpretations. One is the presence of
a verb meaning ‘have’ in two languages within an area where predicative possession
is expressed through comitative constructions, with the roots being different in the
two languages and having no known etymology. Another is nunation—i.e. the
presence of an -n suffix—on nouns to mark indefiniteness, which is a non-inherited
feature observed only in Western Bade and can hardly be the outcome of contact.
Given these difficulties, Ziegelmeyer resorts to naboopposition as the most promising
research hypothesis to test in future studies, but also stresses the lack of sociolinguistic
and historiographical data for the region as the main obstacle to further pursue this
goal.


5. Conclusion


What I tried to summarize so far brings about a reflection about the significance of
this research for linguistic typology. In concluding his review of case studies of
contact-induced divergence, Evans writes that:


        [a]lthough it is likely that contact-induced divergence is commoner in the lexicon,
        phonetics and phonology (Sankoff 2002), probably because these are generally
        the most accessible to conscious monitoring, the examples I have marshaled here
        [i.e. lexicon (Banks Islands of Vanuatu), phonetics and phonology (Temiar,
        Barasano, twelfth-century Vietnamese), morphology (Iwaidja), syntax (Portuguese
        DOM), and the semantics of grammar (Kuninjku)] show that the range of




                                                                                              12
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 1-18


      divergence effects goes much further than has generally been realized by historical
      linguists. (Evans 2019: 587)


If patterns of non-convergent change may materialize beyond the lexicons of
languages in contact, then advances in this field might call for some future
adjustments in typological language sampling. Typologists need to avoid both areal
and genetic biases in constructing samples, so that languages from the same part of
the world (i.e. that may bear signs of mutual resemblance because of contact) and
from the same family (i.e. that may bear signs of mutual resemblance because of
parallel evolution from a common source) are not overrepresented (e.g. Dryer 1989,
Miestamo et al. 2016). Should future research identify the existence of areas where
contact materializes also in structural non-convergent change, this should be
considered as a third variable for a balanced (or just informed) sampling, as languages
contained in such areas might be dissimilar from each other due to small-scale
reactions among neighbors’ structures. We are not any close to this and such a
possibility would come out of the blue for most of today’s typologists. At the same
time, it cannot be ignored that the current scarcity of data about non-convergent
change under contact is also due to discipline-internal dynamics. Our limited
knowledge enables us to raise legitimate and, I believe, relevant questions that only
future work can aspire to answer.
   This work will have to be based on new field-based research. I have already
mentioned that the availability of more and better sociolinguistic and ethnographic
data is paramount for the study of language contact to be able to capture phenomena
of non-convergent change. In addition, the virtual absence of psycholinguistic studies
focusing on African languages (let alone on those spoken in contexts of small-scale
multilingualism) represents another formidable obstacle to the advancement of
knowledge in this domain, and this should change, too. The studies in this volume
call for more scholarly efforts towards the collection of these types of data in African
settings, with the hope that this is done through the active inclusion of both local
scholars and communities of speakers.



Acknowledgments


I would like to thank the editors of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads for their
willingness to see this volume published in record time in spite of the several changes
it underwent along the way. I thank Pius Akumbu for providing comments on an


                                                                                            13
Di Carlo                                                                          Introduction


earlier version of this paper. All the papers in this volume except for Connell’s have
been developed on the basis of presentations given at the workshop entitled
“Language contact and non-convergent change in West African languages”, held
within the 4th Symposium on West African Languages (University of Naples
“L’Orientale”, 21-23 September 2022). My gratitude goes to the conference organizers
and participants for their stimulating feedback and discussions, in particular Zygmunt
Frajzyngier, Tom Güldemann, and Valentina Schiattarella.


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CONTACT
pierpaol@buffalo.edu




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