'Das built natürlich den Vokabel.' - English-German Language Contact - A Case Study

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Linguistik, Note: 1,0, Universität Hamburg, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Wherever there are two or more languages present in some form at a time, be it within an individual or an area, there is language contact that can be analyzed. Out of the vast possibilities of types of contact, this paper focusses on the contact of German and English within a single Individual. The means by which this contact and it's outcome are analyzed were chosen specifically according to this type of contact. Here, the model and methods of analysis by the Dutch scholar Frans van Coetsem offer the greatest potential for an insightful analysis. The first of the several reasons why I chose to analyze the present data with the model by Van Coetsem is his otherwise rare focus on the individual speaker in the analysis of language contact. Secondly, he also specifically concentrates on the bilingual speaker, unlike other researchers who have chosen a trilingual focus. Moreover, unlike the MLF model by Myers- Scotton [2006] the model applies to the unbalanced bilingual speaker. Finally, the model has the advantage of being very clearly structured and versatilely applicable, offering explanations for a multitude of phenomena.