8 - Preaspiration and Language Contact

Summary

The chapter offers an evaluation of previous proposals that tie the development of preaspiration to language contact. Before examining individual contexts, the chapter provides an overview of what is currently known regarding the transfer of preaspiration patterns in bilingual situations, which is indispensable to a proper evaluation of its role in language contact in the past. It then proceeds to an analysis of existing proposals for contact origins of preaspiration: these include interference from unknown substrates, Sámi-Germanic contact, and Germanic-Celtic contact (particularly transfer from North Germanic to Gaelic). It is argued that in most cases the case for contact remains unproven. From a structural perspective, the results of the previous chapters all show preaspiration to have developed along the life cycle, like most other endogenous sound changes. The chapter also offers an analysis of the sociocultural context, which also turns out to be less than favourable to contact-based accounts. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of how an areal approach to preaspiration might be applied in northern Europe and elsewhere, including a possible area in Southern Siberia.