Contact-Induced Changes Through Linguistic Convergence in Basque-Spanish
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19487516 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sara Gómez Seibane (0000-0002-8362-8826, Universidad de La Rioja, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 121 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Languages (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/languages11060121 |
| OpenAlex | W7164508263 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
This study focuses on the Spanish spoken in the Basque Autonomous Community, where Spanish and Basque, two typologically distant languages, have coexisted for centuries. The research explores how specific morphosyntactic features result from pattern replication, i.e., changes in the target language (Spanish) inspired by structures of the source language (Basque) and triggered by the communicative needs of bilingual speakers. The analysis focuses on three key features: object-verb word order, non-standard gender agreement constructions, and the use of le/s for human female direct objects. Data from previous studies support these features as contact-induced changes, as they are either absent in non-contact varieties or follow different constraints. Specifically, in the Basque-Spanish variety, these phenomena exhibit higher frequency, a simplification of a paradigm, and the relaxation of grammatical restrictions, frequently aligning with Basque structures. Beyond internal factors, other empirical evidence supports contact as the primary driver. The paper explains how linguistic convergence leads to a shifting of constraints on these phenomena to reduce the cognitive load of processing two languages. Ultimately, these contact-induced changes went beyond individual bilingual strategies to become established features of the wider community, eventually reaching even monolingual Spanish speakers
Cognition · Convergence (economics) · Key (lock) · Language change · Language contact · Linguistic change · Spoken language · Word (group theory) · Language and cultural evolution · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
El español en América
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The Handbook of Language Contact
Language Contact
Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics
The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact
Grammars in Contact
A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement
Object–verb and verb–object in Basque and Spanish monolinguals and bilinguals
Standard Basque
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Subject-verb order variation with unaccusative verbs of change of location in Mexico and Southern Arizona
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Focus and split-intransitivity
From SOV to SVO
Bilingual Alignments
Gender Agreement in a Language Contact Situation
Salient stages in contact-induced grammatical change
Second language acquisition at the interfaces
| Highly cited | No |
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