Language contact in East African Bantu: (disentangling) internal and external processes of change

There is broad agreement that language change can result from external factors (contact-induced change), or internal factors, but there is no consensus on what constrains these types of changes, nor on the interaction between them. This talk addresses these questions by examining several salient grammatical constructions in Rangi, a Bantu language which has been in sustained contact with non-Bantu languages. Exploring the various pieces of evidence for the sources of these constructions (some of which point to external factors, and others which point to internal factors), is a practical exercise in dealing with the complexity of accounting for processes of change.