Contact induced language change in the Portuguese of the Estado da Índia, the Indian influence

• Applicant: Dr. Uta Tabea Salzmann
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397642495

The proposed project is situated within colonial linguistics of the Portuguese language. The aim is to investigate the influence wielded by Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil) on colonial Portuguese of the Estado da Índia, as initiated in the main areas of the Portuguese colonies on the west coast of India (especially in Daman, Diu, Goa and along the Malabar coast) during the colonial era.To this end an ample socio-historic analysis of contacts between Portugal and India during the main period of colonisation, including aspects of language policy, will initially be necessary. In particular the influence exercised on Portuguese language and culture by the long heyday of colonial relations, after all a period of over 200 years, have not yet been investigated. Language policy in colonial India, but above all the repercussions in Portuguese during this period has not interested the research community to date; this will be fundamental for understanding the data to be collected.This context analysis will form the basis for classifying the corpus of written language phenomena to be compiled from colonial documents in archival research in India and Portugal. The main focus will lie on personal correspondence (as far as possible from figures assumed to be key in the propagation of influences) and official communications to be found in public archives in Lisbon and Goa. However, dictionaries will also be considered for possible influence on the lexis. The resulting corpus will also be made adequately accessible to fellow researchers by integrating it into the Bremer Archive of colonial linguistics.The contact situation and resulting multilingual space will exemplarily be demonstrated by analysing the multilingual lexicon of the Estado da Índia, loanwords into Portuguese and the paths of loaning. Since these contact situations so characteristic for the South and South East Asian region are to date virtually unexplored the project will for one thing close an important gap in Portuguese colonial linguistics. In general linguistic research in India and South East Asia has concentrated on the investigation of contact languages and on the influence exercised by colonial languages on native languages, leaving aside the development of the colonial language itself through such contact. Therefore the project will make an essential contribution to the investigation of such colonial languages of prestige.The project will focus on basic research, thereby laying the foundation for further investigations into linguistic contact(induced) phenomena in the colonial space of the Estado da Índia with a special focus on interrelations with India and its languages. It will thus serve to better understand Europe and its historical and cultural connections to India and South East Asia, making it possible to gain a deeper understanding of multiculturality in a globalised world.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Carolin Patzelt