Borrowing & Contact-Induced Change Flashcards
(30 cards)
Transmission and diffusion relating to differences in language contact
Exogenous change
linguistic shifts originating externally; they are influenced by factors outside the language itself, such as contact with other languages or social and cultural changes
Endogenous change
language changes originating within a language system, driven by internal factors like speaker behaviour, grammatical pressures, or unconscious motivations
What can be borrowed?
Everything about language can be borrowed
- words
- morphology
- phonology
- semantics
- …
What is borrowing?
a type of copying from one language (source/donor) to another (borrowing/target language)
How does borrowing relate to other linguistic changes?
heavy lexical borrowing can lead to borrowing of structural properties (phonology and/or syntax)
How does borrowing relate to Semantic shifts
borrowed words may carry meanings from their original language or evolve to fit the new linguistic context
how does borrowing relate to Morphological effects
extensive morphological borrowing can spawn new (borrowed) morphology
-> example: -able
Phonological effects
Patterns of phonological alternation among (large) set of loanwords; may become an aspect of the target language’s phonology
Nativisation
Borrowings get adapted to
phonology of target language
(“nativized”)
- native phonemes (or sequences)
substituted for non-native sounds
- modifications to fit syllable
structure and phonotactics
(deletion, epenthesis…)
Foreignisation
If a particular phoneme is primarily found in (recognizable) borrowed vocabulary, it may be introduced it into other loanwords where it does not belong!
Types of borrowing
Loanwords
Loan shift
Loan translation
Loanwords
language users “importing” elements from another language’s lexical resources
Loan shift
Change in meaning in a native word based on the meaning of the corresponding source language word.
Loan translation
Complex foreign expression “translated” item by item
aka Calque
Language Shift
Changing from one language to another language
What are the properties that are expected for language shift
Some but not all: social and economic factors, prestige and language ideologies, power differentials, and historical trauma
Different social relationships (substratum vs superstratum vs adstratum)
- substratum effects: implies that shifting group has LOWER social
status (‘prestige’) than target-language group - superstratum effects: implies that shifting group has HIGHER social
status (‘prestige’) than target-language group - adstratum effects: no demonstrable social-status asymmetry involved
Language Maintenance
languages are retained within the community
What are the properties that are expected for language maintenance?
lots of borrowing/loanwords and potential changes to phonology/syntax due to borrowing
Structural convergence
languages in context can become more similar in their structure due to borrowing of structural features; leads to the concept of areal linguistics
Areal Linguistics
a geographic area where languages share structural features due to borrowing and language contact; not just words, but also phonological, morphological, or syntactic elements
How are linguistic areas different from other situations and why are they important from linguistic perspective
- they involve the spread of structural features across languages in contact, leading to convergence beyond what would be expected from chance or shared inheritance
- demonstrates the powerful influence of language contact on shaping language structure
- challenges purely family-tree models of language evolution
- existence of linguistic areas often depends on genetically unrelated or distantly related languages
Diglossia
languages used in different contexts
