Contact Linguistics. Chap

An Introduction to Contact Linguistics: Donald Winford.


Chapter Two: Language Maintenance and Lexical Borrowing.


1. Introduction.

Most English speakers would be surprised to learn that 75% of the words in their language were “borrowed” from other languages during the course of its history. Few speakers are aware that many commonplace words derive from foreign sources, for instance people, nation and clergy from French, cheese and table from Latin, zero from Arabic and so on. Some words originally borrowed from a language may be re-borrowed by it in such altered form that they appear totally foreign. For instance, English speakers think of pokémon as a Japanese word, when in fact it originally derives from pocket monster. Lexical borrowing is an extremely common form of cross-linguistic influence, and few, if any, languages are impervious to it. Such borrowing can occur under a variety of conditions, ranging from casual familiarity with the source language (even without real contact with its speakers) to close interaction between recipient and source language speakers in bilingual communities.

It has been claimed that there is a continuum ranging from relatively slight lexical borrowing under casual contact to extreme structural borrowing under very intense contact. An example of this is Thomason & Kaufman’s borrowing scale, a modified version of which is presented in Table 1. The scale consists of 5 stages or levels representing increasing intensity of contact, and increasing typological distance. (Readers should consult the original scale for full details of the lexical and structural features included under each stage.) Features at the top of the scale are borrowed first. The presence of borrowed features lower on the scale implies the presence of features placed higher.


Table 1: Borrowing scale (Summarized from Thomason & Kaufman 1988:74-76)

(1) Casual contact: Lexical borrowing only.

(2) Slightly more intense contact: Slight structural borrowing.

Conjunctions and adverbial particles.

(3) More intense contact: Slightly more structural borrowing.

Adpositions, derivational affixes.

(4) Strong cultural pressure: Moderate structural borrowing.

(Major structural features that cause
relatively little typological change)

(5) Very strong cultural pressure: Heavy structural borrowing.

(Major structural features that cause
significant typological disruption).

Two broad issues arise here. First, we need to clarify notions such as “intensity of contact” and “cultural pressure” if we are to understand the social influences on various types and degrees of borrowing. Is it true that there is a clear correspondence between degrees of contact and cultural pressure on the one hand, and degrees of structural borrowing on the other? Answers to this can be found only in a thorough examination of the social contexts of borrowing. Secondly, we might question whether the kind of extreme structural changes claimed for stages 4 and especially 5 of Th. & K’s borrowing scale are really cases of borrowing at all, in the strict sense of that term, that is, as changes initiated by recipient language speakers.

It seems uncontroversial that (heavy) lexical borrowing can result in the transfer of structural features as well. This kind of indirect structural borrowing is well attested, as we will see. However, it seems somewhat unusual for structural features to be directly borrowed. Why would native speakers of a language ever adopt purely structural features from an external language, if equivalent features in their own language are already quite adequate to their needs? Still, there are many contact situations in which there is a significant degree of structural diffusion from one system to another. We will examine such situations in more detail in the following chapter, and ask whether borrowing is the only mechanism of change involved in these cases of structural convergence. For the moment, let us restrict our attention to the clear cases of lexical borrowing and its structural consequences.


2. “Casual” contact and lexical borrowing.

A great deal, perhaps the majority, of lexical borrowing results from only marginal contact with other languages. Such contact may be due to travel, exploration or conquest, or it may be due to exposure to the donor language in the mass media, foreign language instruction and the like. Loveday (1996) refers to these as settings involving “distant” contact with the external language. Typically, in these situations, the recipient language community does not achieve bilingualism in the donor language, though some of its members may.

Situations in which contact is initiated by exploration and/or conquest were extremely common in the period of European colonial expansion from the 15^th to 20^th centuries. This led to varying degrees of lexical borrowing into European languages from the languages of the indigenous peoples whom they conquered. For instance, English colonization of North America introduced borrowings such as skunk, mocassin, teepee, wigwam and others from Algonquian languages into American English. The names of states like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. are derived from Native American languages. This kind of borrowing is typical of colonial Englishes generally. For instance, Australian English adopted words like kangaroo, billabong etc. from Aboriginal languages.
Lexical borrowing in the other direction, from the languages of the colonizers to those of the colonized, is even more common. Spanish, for example, has been the source of numerous lexical borrowings and innovations in the Amerindian languages of Central and South America. Similarly, English has supplied numerous loans to languages like Navajo and others in the United States.