Sourcing Data from Wikipedia for the Study of Language Contact: the csbwiki

Abstract

Contact-induced language change is pervasive in contexts involving historically minoritized languages, where social contexts are not particularly conducive to equitable intergroup relations. Empirically driven studies involving these language contexts allow us to more thoroughly understand the social and cognitive processes that lead to language change. Paradoxically, empirical data on minoritized languages is relatively scarce and expensive to generate. But in the digital age we have the ability to look beyond the traditional data types used in language studies, like spoken data gathered under fieldwork conditions, literature, etc. In this paper, I will explore the potential utility of user-created wiki data in investigating Polish influence on the Kashubian language.

Keywords

• contact-induced language change
• wiki data
• kashubian
• corpus linguistics
• vowel alternation