Lexicon immigration service: Prolegomena to a theory of loanword integration

Abstract

Languages have a universal potential to integrate elements from other languages into their structure. Loanword research provides answers to questions which arise whenever language contact leads to borrowing of words or word-like units. The goal of this dissertation is to empower the field of formal loanword research by (a) incorporating insights from sociolinguistic research into formal models and (b) highlighting morphological (and morphosyntactic) integration in the field which is presently dominated by data from phonological borrowing. The emergent loanword model enables defining the interface of source and target languages. It is applicable to data from phonological, morphological and morphosyntactic integration, which are viewed as entangled aspects of a single broad process: lexicalisation, viewed as the creation of a new lexical entry based on a foreign surface form. This aspect of the model implies a certain telicity, not unlike the existing adaptation models (Chapter 2). However, while these latter models see loanword processes as moving towards becoming indistinguishable from native items, the integration model will have as its endpoint the creation of a fully functional RL lexical entry (sometimes very distinguishably non-native). Since loanwords display processes which make reference to various levels (individual and communal, synchronic and diachronic etc.), the model is comprised of two different apparatuses able to capture different aspects of loanword behaviour without losing sight of what they exclude. The more diachronic apparatus of the model will concentrate on the ways in which properties of the initial code switch are preserved in the process of integration into the lexicon (shared by the language community), which involves the creation of paradigms, the assignment of morphosyntactic features, etc. We will present strong evidence that borrowing is to be seen as lexicalisation based on a surface form, guided by a force which militates against the introduction of new versions of the incoming form – Lexical Conservatism. The more synchronic apparatus will be more suitable for viewing the regularities which are part of borrowers’ knowledge: the inter-language mappings, which emerge within the community and which contain instructions for converting SL structures into RL structures. The dissertation chapters are organised as follows. Chapter 1 presents the most important findings of sociolinguistic research into loanwords. Chapter 2 reviews research done by generative phonologists in the field usually termed loanword adaptation. In Chapter 3 research into lexical stratification is reviewed. In Chapter 4 the main ingredients of the model proposed in this dissertation are discussed. Chapter 5 considers the cases of morphosyntactic integration. In Chapter 6 the inter-language mappings are introduced and discussed. Chapter 7 brings an interim summary and announces the four subsequent chapters, which bring four case studies, in which the proposed model is put to use to account for larger data sets. Chapter 8 presents an account of consonant gemination in loanwords. Chapters 9 discusses a-epenthesis in Serbo-Croatian from the contact perspective. Chapter 10 brings an account of verb borrowing and aspect in Serbo-Croatian. In Chapter 11 the Latinate nominalisations in Serbo-Croatian are analysed from the perspective of our model. Chapter 12 concludes this dissertation. This book will be of interest for researchers in the fields of language contact, phonology, morphology and the structure of the lexicon, as well as Serbo- Croatian linguistics.