The design principles of a sociolinguistic typological questionnaire for language contact research

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents the design rationale and pilot demonstration of the GramAdapt Social Contact questionnaire; a research tool developed for collecting global comparative sociolinguistic data on language contact scenarios. The questionnaire is qualitative with quantitative potential, inviting language community experts to provide best-assessment answers to questions about social contact in their communities of expertise. The main purpose is to compare contact scenarios, however the questionnaire can also be a broad survey of any given contact situation as it was designed to target factors associated with language contact and change phenomena at large. Two experts of small-scale multilingual communities answer an abridged version of the questionnaire to qualitatively demonstrate this proof of concept. The experts of Mawng and Kunbarlang (northern Australia), and Tundra Enets and Nganasan (northern Siberia) were chosen as these communities defy nation-based models of multilingualism. The responses are broadly successful, thus demonstrating the theoretical contribution and methodological potential of this questionnaire.

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