Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-kwdml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T14:32:13.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Typology of the Prestige Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Henry Kahane
Henry Kahane*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The recurrent features of a ‘prestige language’ are broadly reviewed. The prevailing socio-political constellation provides motivations for its rise, the ways of acquiring it, the domains it transmits, and the causes of its decline. The process of its nativization can be analysed synchronically in terms of creolization, and diachronically in terms of stratigraphy. The linking of a native language to the dominant culture results in either substratum or superstratum influences. Nativization may be overt—as lexemic, morphosyntactic or phonological borrowing—or it may be covert, expressing itself in style, calques, and metaphors. The lasting impact of the prestige language consists in standardization, the creation of a sprachbund, and a relatively stable culture of bilingualism.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , September 1986, pp. 495 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This paper represents the Presidential Address delivered to the LSA Annual Meeting, Baltimore, December 1984.

References

Baugh, Albert. 1957. A history of the English language. New York.Google Scholar
Betz, Werner. 1949. Deutsch und Lateinisch: Die Lehnbildungen der althochdeutschen Benediktinerregel. Bonn.Google Scholar
Bonfante, Guiliano. 1960. Les rapports linguistiques entre la Grèce et l'Italie. Hommages à Léon Herrmann (Collection Latomus, 44), 171–82. Bruxelles-Berchem.Google Scholar
Cortelazzo, Manlio. 1972. Il linguaggio schiavonesco nel cinquecento veneziano. Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 130. 113–60.Google Scholar
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1971. Das Problem des griechischen Einflusses auf das Vulgärlatein. Sprache und Geschichte: Festschrift für Harri Meier, 135–47. München.Google Scholar
Coutelle, Louis. 1971. Le greghesco: Réexamen des éléments néogrecs des textes comiques vénitiens du XVIe siècle. (Hellēniká, Parártēma 22.) Thessaloníkē.Google Scholar
Dagron, Gilbert. 1969. Aux origines de la civilization byzantine: Langue de culture et langue d'état. Revue Historique 241. 23–56.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Wolf. 1973. Der periphrastische Verbalaspekt in den romanischen Sprachen. (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 140.) Tübingen.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedlander, Paul. 1944. The Greek behind Latin. Classical Journal 39. 270–77.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1978. Introduction. Universals of human language, ed. by Greenberg, J. H. et al., 1. 1–5. Stanford.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert A. Jr. 1966. Pidgin and creole languages. Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. 1927 (ed.) Wert und Ehre deutscher Sprache in Zeugnissen. München.Google Scholar
Janssen, Hendrikus Hubertus. 1941. De kenmerken der Romeinsche dichtertaal. [Cited from the Italian translation, Le caratteristiche della lingua poetica romana. In La lingua poetica latina, by Aldo Lunelli, 67–130. Bologna, 1974.].Google Scholar
Kachru, Braj B. 1983. Normes régionales de l'Anglais. La norme linguistique, ed. by Bédard, E. & Marais, J., 707–30. Paris.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry. 1938. Gli elementi linguistici italiani nel neo-greco. Archivum Romanicum 22. 120–35.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry. 1983. American English: From a colonial substandard to a prestige language. The other tongue, ed. by Kachru, Braj B., 229–36. Oxford.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1976. Lingua Franca: The story of a term. Romance Philology 30. 25–41.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1980a. Humanistic linguistics. Contemporary studies in Romance languages, Proceedings of the 8th Annual Symposium, ed. by Nuessel, Frank H. Jr., 159–82. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. [Reprinted in Journal of Aesthetic Education 17:4.65–89, 1983.]Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1980b. Paideia, a linguistic subcode. Wege zur Universalienforschung: Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler, ed. by Brettschneider, Gunter & Lehmann, Christian, 509–20. Tübingen: Narr. [Reprinted in Language change, ed. by Irmengard Rauch & Gerald F. Carr, 175–91. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.]Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1983a. Le strutture avverbiali di origine italo-veneziana nel dialetto greco di Cefalonia. Linguistica e dialettologia veneta: Studi offerti a Manlio Cortelazzo, 205–13. Tübingen.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1983b. Rev. of Reiner 1980. Romance Philology 37. 188–90.Google Scholar
Kahane, Henry., and Kahane, Renée. 1985. A case of glossism: Greghesco and Lingua Franca in Venetian literature. Mélanges de linguistique dédiés à la mémoire de Petar Skok. Zagreb.Google Scholar
Kalinke, Marianne E. 1983. The foreign language requirement in medieval Icelandic romance. Modern Language Review 78. 850–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, Wilhelm. 1924. Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Leumann, Manu. 1947. Die lateinische Dichtersprache. Museum Helveticum 4. 116–39. [Reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, 131–56. Zürich, 1959.]Google Scholar
Malkiel, Yakov. 1978. Derivational categories. Universals of human language, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H. et al. 3. 125–49. Stanford.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1967. Aperçu d'une histoire de la langue grecque. 7th edn. Paris.Google Scholar
Munske, Horst H. 1982. Die Rolle des Lateins als Superstratum im Deutschen und in anderen germanischen Sprachen. In Ureland, 237–63.Google Scholar
Reiner, Edwin. 1980. Die etymologischen Dubletten des Französischen: Eine Einführung in die historische Wortlehre. Wien.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Christian. 1982. Die Ausbildung der romanischen Sprachen. In Ureland, 39–61.Google Scholar
Shorey, Paul. 1910. A Greek analogue of the Romance adverb. Classical Philology 5. 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Short, Ian. 1980. On bilingualism in Anglo-Norman England. Romance Philology 33. 467–79.Google Scholar
Sperber, Hans. 1966. Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 5th edn., revised by Peter von Polenz. (Sammlung Göschen, 915.) Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Studer, Basilius. 1971. Spätantike lateinische Übertragungen griechischer christlicher Texte und Themen. Hermeneutik als Weg heutiger Wissenschaft (Salzburger Studien zur Philosophie, 9), ed. by Warnach, V., 179–95. Salzburg.Google Scholar
Toynbee, Arnold. 1973. Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his world. London.Google Scholar
Trescases, Pierre. 1978. Les attitudes françaises envers les grands courants d'emprunts: Italianismes et américanismes. Urbana: University of Illinois dissertation.Google Scholar
Ureland, P. Sture. 1982 (ed.) Die Leistung der Strataforschung und der Kreolistik. (Linguistische Arbeiten, 125.) Tübingen.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Hook, Larue. 1905. The metaphorical terminology of Greek rhetoric and literary criticism. University of Chicago dissertation.Google Scholar
Weinrich, Harald. 1976. Sprache in Texten. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1941. The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. Language, culture, and personality: Essays in memory of Edward Sapir, ed. by Spier, Leslie et al., 75–93. [Reprinted in Language, thought and reality, ed. by John B. Carroll, 134–59. Cambridge, MA, 1956.]Google Scholar
Wolf, Heinz Jürgen. 1979. Französische Sprachgeschichte. (Uni-Taschenbücher, 823.) Heidelberg.Google Scholar