ИСТИНА

Language Vitality as the Outcome of Language Contact: A Case of Cigogo (Central Tanzania) The study aims at evaluating the adaptive potential of the Gogo language spoken in Dodoma, the capital region of Tanzania, amid drastic urbanisation of the last decade. Historical review of the language ecology in the region helps to identify disturbing language contacts and the way the language responded to them thus moving through the four phases of the adaptive cycle postulated by the theory of resilience linguistics: growth, conservation, release, and reorganisation. The Bantu-Cushitic contact (14th-17th centuries) led to the emergence and growth of Gogo koine. The Bantu-Nilotic contact (18th-19th centuries) resulted in the growth (vocabulary expansion) and the conservation of the koine (retention of the achieved complexity). The Bantu-Bantu (Hehe) contact (19th century) had, as its effects, both release and reorganisation of the achieved complexity in the southern part of Gogo areal (amalgamation with Hehe and formation of the mixed language variety Citiliko) and growth and conservation of the language on the rest of its territory. The Gogo-Swahili/English vertical contact (20th century) was the key to the release of the koine and the creation of the tribal and linguistic (that is ethnolinguistic) identity which serves as the backbone of the language’s vitality nowadays. The historical perspective is supplemented by the linguistic evidence – the analyses of the borrowings in Cigogo. The only identifiable linguistic evidence of the horizontal language contact between Cigogo and Cushitic languages is the Cigogo word mhene [N-pene] ‘goat’, which is similar with the Iraqw word bee/i ‘sheep (female)’. However, since this contact took place at the very early stage of Cigogo development, the Cushitic borrowings might have been completely nativized in it. The evidence of the vertical Nilotic-Cigogo contact is attested in three semantic domains ‘Clothing and jewellery’: loido ‘easily transportable pipe’, gibise/gasene ‘seat leather’, garanda ‘hat’, ngodi ‘plait, Maasai style’, lemeta ‘older, wide blade shape’, dabazi ‘narrow, long blades common among the Maasai’, mage ‘the short sword’; ‘House’: dobogo ‘wooden hooks’, sito ‘horizontal whip’; ‘Food’: saso ‘funnel made of bark’. The Bantu-Bantu contact is attested by existence of at least four Cigogo varieties: Cinyaugogo (standardized variety of koine), Citumba (influenced by Kikagulu), Cinyambwa (influenced by Kinyaturu), Citiliko (influenced by Kihehe). Linguistic evidence of the horizontal interaction between Cigogo and languages of caravans (Arabic, Swahili, Nyamwezi) is attested in the semantic domains ‘Agriculture’, ‘Food’ and ‘Domestic animals’ (Nyamwezi): isili ‘heart-shaped hoe’, matama ‘maize’, mapambwa ‘vessels made from the bark of the Miombo tree’, lindolo / limpogo ‘sweet potato’, mohogo ‘cassava’, itumbako ‘tobacco’, nkunda ‘domestic pigeon’; and ‘Clothing and jewellery’ (Arabic/Swahili): salwa / joliba ‘calfskin, which is worn as a festive dress by the male youth’. The linguistic evidence of the adstrat situation Swahili-Cigogo is depicted in a number of borrowings in the domains open to innovations.