BORROWING
LINGUISTIC BORROWING: process when one language takes words from another
language and makes them part of its own vocabulary, it requires a certain degree of
bilingualism => LOANWORDS: words from another language which are made part of
vocabulary = originally a part of the vocabulary of the donor language, now become a part of
the recipient language (Borrowing also refers to sounds, phonological rules, morphemes, syntactic patterns,
discourse strategies…which are taken over to become part of the recipient language… not just lexical items)
RECIPIENT LANGUAGE borrows x DONOR LANGUAGE: lends the words
REASONS FOR BORROWING:
1) NEED: when a new item/article/concept is acquired from abroad, a new term is
needed to go along with the new acquisition, and often a foreign name is borrowed
(auto, cola, tobacco).
2) PRESTIGE: the foreign term is highly esteemed: “luxury loans”: French cuisine, etc
(French had higher social status and was considered prestigious during Norman Conquest)
3) (NEGATIVE EVALUATION): the adoption of derogatory foreign words (assassin)
METHODS OF BORROWING:
- borrowed words are usually remodelled to fit the phonological and morphological structure
of the borrowing language (i.e. existing paradigms…)
1) ADAPTATION: a foreign sound is replaced by the nearest phonetic equivalent to it in the
borrowing langue = phonemes are substituted to conform to native sounds!!! (substitution may
spread the features of the one sound across two segments: f -> hv). Substitutions are not uniform because
a) older loans reflect sound substitutions before intimate contact brought new phonemes and
patterns!!! b) loanwords may be based on orthography and not pronunciations!!!
2) ACCOMMODATION: loanword has to be modified to conform to the native
phonological patterns by deletion, addition or recombination of sounds (karuza instead of krz)
3) DIRECT PHONOLOGICAL DIFFUSION: new phonemes CAN be introduced as a
result of extensive, long-term contact -> phoneme is added to the phonemic inventory of the
borrowing language (ž in AJ), or an allophone becomes a phoneme as it appears in a new
environment in the loanwords, and needs to become a separate phoneme.
IDENTIFYING LOAN WORDS + how to tell apart donor and borrower?
1) PHONOLOGICAL CLUES:
a) Phonological patterns of language: words containing untypical sounds are
often loans: words which violate the typical phonological patterns (canonical
forms, morpheme structure, syllable structure…) of a language are likely to be
loans
b) Phonological history: if the history of the languages is known, information
about sound changes, etc, can help determine loans, as well as the direction of
borrowing.
2) MORPHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY: donor languages tend to have a
morphologically complex form/etymology, whereas the borrowing language often
transforms it into a monomorphemic/simple form. Thus the direction of the borrowing
may be determined (language lacking complex morph. analysis is the borrower).
Vin/aigre = vinegar… el lagarto = alligator… (polymorphemic word is now mono).
Morphological complexity is a strong criterion, but may be complicated by folk
etymology (monomorphemic word is reinterpreted as a polymorph)
3) CLUES FROM COGNATES: when a word has legitimate cognates (with regular
sound correspondence within many languages of one family), but appears in only a
few languages of another family, the donor is clear.
4) GEOGRAPHICAL AND ECOLOGICAL CLUES: not such a strong clue as
morphological and phonological criteria, usually based on names of animals and
plants not encountered in the given region (geo and eco associations of words point to
the identity of the donor language).
5) OTHER SEMANTIC CLUES: the semantic domain of a word can reveal a loan: e.g.
squaw, powwow, tomahawk can be paraphrased: Indian woman/celebration/knife.
This criterion is only a rough indication and has to be further analysed.
Evidence from loans can serve to document older stages of a language, i.e. words are borrowed BEFORE a
sound change takes place in the donor language (sometimes the loans bear evidence of things which would be
hardly reconstructable in the current language). Often a comparative method with other branches of the language
family confirms the former state. The loans may demonstrate the phonetic nature of original sounds, and the
overall relative chronology of changes!!!
NON-LEXICAL BORROWINGS:
1) SOUNDS can be:
borrowed either through AREAL DIFFUSION (intense, long-term contact leads to
the occurrence of foreign sounds in native words) or EXPRESSIVE
SYMBOLISM/ONOMATOPOEIA (certain phonetic traits are used to symbolize
affectations, heightened expressive values, or the speaker’s attitude, i.e. speakers
associate the foreign sound with having a special expressive value)
eliminated/lost due to diffusion (language contact) within the area! (e.g. Czech lost
the variant lj because of the influence of German fashionable speech)
retained/kept thanks to the contact with another language: the sound may be lost in
other areas where the language is spoken and which is not in contact with the language
that influences the retention!
Shifted to approximate more closely to phonetic traits of sounds in the neighbouring
languages: đ > d…
2) PHONOLOGICAL RULES: stress rules, palatalisation rules, etc. may also be borrowed! It
is not uncommon to do so.
3) SOUND CHANGES: whole sound changes may spread! (k > č… in neigbouring
langues…)
4) CALQUES (LOAN TRANSLATIONS): only the MEANING of the word is borrowed and
literally taken over (x loanwords: the phonetic form and meaning are transferred). Examples:
black market, railway, skyscraper, air conditioning… and early Latin calques: almighty,
gospel (good spel = evangelium)
5) EMPHATIC FOREIGNISATION: close to hypercorrection: speakers SUBSTITUTE
foreign sounds into borrowed words which seem to them more foreign than the actual original
sound in the donor language. E.g. ž in Beijing/Azerbaijan, French /ku de gra/ (s is omitted)
CULTURAL INFERENCES: loan words have an important historical impact on a culture, many important
words in ModE were actually borrowed: money/dollar/sex/religion/crime… sometimes whole areas function on
loanwords: e.g. cowboy language: lasso/ranch/rodeo/coyote/desperado…