Issues in Borrowing Process of Word Formation

 

Issues in the Borrowing Process of Word Formation

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Borrowing is the process of importing linguistic items from one linguistic system to another. Or a process that occurs any time two cultures or languages come in contact over a period of time. Haugen’s 1950 article on borrowing marks the beginning of current interest in the topic. The early study of the process of borrowing and its results emphasized items from linguistic systems such as vocabulary, phonology, and grammar. In the last four decades, added emphasis has been given to the study of the borrowing of other elements in communication systems. The topic overlaps with a number of disciplines also concerned with humans and their communication, such as the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

2. Definition

In linguistics, borrowing (also known as lexical borrowing) is the process by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another. The word that is borrowed is called a borrowed word, or a loan word. 

Borrowing is actually taking from another language like in English borrowed a lot of words from Latin and French and also Arabic borrowed a lot of words from the English language. These words are broadly known as borrowings.

3. Subdivision Of Borrowings

1) Loan Words 

2) Loan translations

1) Loan Words

A loanword is a term taken from another language and used without translation; it has a specific meaning that (typically) does not otherwise exist in a single English word. Sometimes the word’s spelling or pronunciation (or both) is slightly altered to accommodate English orthography, but, in most cases, it is preserved in its original language.

Loan words	Language of Origin	Note on Spelling and Meaning
Aficionado	Spanish	Literally “fond of”, in English it refers to an ardent fan, supporter or devotee of some subject or activity.
Amateur	French	In French refers to someone who is a lover of some activity. In English, it is used to describe someone who engages in study, sport or other activity.
Pyjamas	Indian	The Hindi term pyjama originated from Persian pyjama which perhaps influenced the standard British English spelling, pyjama
Piano	Italian	In both languages, it refers to the musical instrument. But it is shot for the Italian word pianoforte.
Cookie	Dutch	Adopted from Dutch Keokje, means small cake, to refer to small, dry, usually crisp cakes made from sweetened dough.

2) Loan Translations

A loan translation (also known as a calque), on the other hand, is a word or phrase taken from another language but translated (either in part or in whole) to corresponding English words while still retaining the original meaning. While loanwords are used with little or no change to the spelling (or phonetic spelling) of the original word, loan translations are instead idiomatic word or phrase that is translated literally into English, but used with the same or similar meaning as the original.

Loan Translation	Language of Origin	Original Word Or Phrase
Angel hair	Italian	Capelli D’Angelo is literally the hair of an angel.
Brainwashing	Chinese	Xi Nao literally means “wash brain”.
Commonplace	Latin	Locus Communis.
Devil’s Advocate	Latin	Advocatus Diaboli

4. Lexical Borrowing: Concepts and Issues

Lexical Borrowing as a Topic For General Linguistics:

There is a large amount of previous research on loanwords in individual languages, but the loanword typology project is the first research project that attempts to shed light on lexical borrowing in general by adopting a typological approach. There are some issues that raises.

1)  If we want to go beyond the descriptive goal of identifying particular loanwords and their histories, towards the goal of explaining why certain words but not other words have been borrowed from one language into another language. To be sure, there are many simple cases of culturally motivated borrowing where a cultural importation is accompanied by a lexical importation in a straightforward way.

Example

Quechua borrowing plata ‘money’ from Spanish

 English borrowing kosher from Yiddish

But even in such seemingly unproblematic cases, there is always the question that

Why a borrowing had to take place at all?

Because all languages have the means to create novel expressions out of their own resources.

But instead of borrowing a word, they could simply make up a new word.

2)  And of course there are many other cases where it is not at all clear why a language borrowed a word from another language because a fully equivalent word existed beforehand. 

i)  Thus, the French had no need to borrow blanc ‘white’ from Franconian (because Latin had Albus ‘white’). English had no need to borrow windows from Old Norse (because Old English had an equivalent word eagþyrel).

5. Factors Responsible

Thus, explaining observed loanwords and assessing the likelihood of borrowing particular words is not straightforward. Two main types of factors have been made responsible:

1) Social and attitudinal factors

 (prestige of the donor language, puristic attitudes)

2) Grammatical factors

(For example, the claim that verbs are more difficult to borrow than nouns because they need more grammatical adaptation than nouns).

The best-known generalization about lexical borrowing is the constraint that “core vocabulary” is very rarely (or never) borrowed. This has found its way into many textbooks. 

For Example  

Hock & Joseph 1996: 257, Thomason 2001: 71–72)

Defining  “Loan Words”.

Loanword (or lexical borrowing) is here defined as a word that at some point in the history of a language entered its lexicon as a result of borrowing (or transfer, or copying). Fortunately, this definition is uncontroversial, but there are a number of things to note.

3) The term borrowing has been used in two different senses:

As a general term for all kinds of transfer or copying processes, whether they are due to native speakers adopting elements from other languages into the recipient language, or whether they result from non-native speakers imposing properties of their native language onto a recipient language. This general sense seems to be by far the most prevalent use of the term borrowing.

4) (i) "But borrowing has also been used in a more restricted sense", 

(ii) “to refer to the incorporation of foreign elements into the speakers’ native language”.

(Thomason & Kaufman 1988:21), i.e. as a synonym of adoption (Thomason & Kaufman use the term substratum interference for ‘imposi - tion’, and interference as a cover term for ‘borrowing/adoption’ and ‘substratum interference/ imposition’

6. Loan Words and Code Switching:

Bilingual speakers often alternate between the two languages in the same discourse, sometimes even within the same sentence or the same word. This phenomenon is called code-switching.

Although there are some grammatical restrictions on code-switching (Myers-Scotton 1993, Muysken 2000), the alternation between the two languages is not conventionalized in code-switching.

Code-switching does not mean that there is a mixed code, but speakers produce mixed utterances including elements from both codes. Thus, code-switching is not a kind of contact-induced language change, but rather a kind of contact-induced speech behaviour. 

In this way, code-switching differs sharply from borrowing. However, when an utterance consists of just a single word from one language and all other words are from the other language, it may be difficult to decide whether this word is a loanword or a single-word switch.

Single-word switches or loanwords?

1) A loanword is a word that can conventionally be used as part of the language. In particular, it can be used in situations where no code-switching occurs. 

For Example 

in the speech of monolinguals. This is the simplest and most reliable criterion for distinguishing loanwords from single-word switches.

2) But it is often the case that the whole speech community is bilingual, so code-switching may always occur. In such circumstances, the frequency criterion is useful:

(i). If particular concepts are very frequently or regularly expressed by a word originating in another language. So that can be considered loan words.

(ii). While other concepts show a lot of variabilities, these are switches (cf. Myers-Scotton 1993: 191–204).

3) loanwords typically show various kinds of phonological and morphological adaptation whereas code-switching by definition does not show any kind of adaptation.

7. Why Does Language Borrow Words?

This section will thus limit itself to raising and discussing a number of issues. A simple dichotomy divides loanwords into cultural and core borrowing.

1) Cultural borrowings:

Which designates a new concept coming from outside. 

For example, Imbabura Quechua borrowed arrusa ‘rice’, riluju ‘clock’, and simana ‘week’ from Spanish, all referring to cultural items that did not exist in the Ameri- cas before the European invasions.

At first, glance, explaining cultural loans is straightforward, and such loans have also been called “loanwords by necessity”. However, there is nothing necessary about a borrowing process. All languages have sufficient creative resources to make up new words for new concepts. As Brown (1999) documented in great detail, many North American languages do not use loanwords for introduced concepts like ‘rice’, ‘clock’, and ‘week’, but instead make use of their own resources.

2) Core borrowings:

Which duplicate meanings for which a native word already exists.

The Austroasiatic language Ceq Wong borrowed bayaŋ ‘shadow’, batok ‘to cough’, and dalam ‘deep’ from Malay (Kruspe, subdatabase of the World Loanword Database), all referring to concepts that must have existed before the Ceq Wong came into contact with Malays.

Explaining core borrowings (loanwords that duplicate or replace existing native words) is more difficult. Why should speakers use a word from another language if they have a perfectly good word for the same concept in their own language?

Here it seems that all we can say is that speakers adopt such new words in order to be associated with the prestige of the donor language. Like “puristic attitude”, “prestige” is a factor that is very difficult to measure independently, and a danger of circularity exists. However, it seems to me undeniable that prestige is a factor of paramount importance for language change. 

The way we talk (or write) is not only determined by the ideas we want to get across, but also by the impression we want to convey to others, and by the kind of social identity that we want to be associated with. Other terms such as “cul- tural pressure” (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 77) or “loss of vitality (of the recipient language)” (Myers-Scotton 2006: 215) are often found, but these are even more vague and intangible than “prestige”. It is perhaps easiest to understand the adoption of words for already existing concepts in a situation of widespread bilingualism.

When (almost) everyone also understands the other language, it does not really matter which words one uses – one will be understood anyway. More surprising is the borrowing of basic words like ‘star’ and ‘turn around’ by Ceq Wong (from Malay).

8. Imposition versus Adoptation

Finally, we should consider the distinction between adoption and imposition. For borrowed structural patterns, this distinction is very important: 

1) Some borrowed phonological and syntactic patterns are due to native speakers borrowing (= adopt- ing) features from another (dominant) language into their own language.

2) And Others are due to non-native speakers unintentionally retaining (= imposing) features of their native language on a language to which they are shifting (thus, imposition is called “interference through shift” by Thomason & Kaufman 1988). 

3) Imposed patterns survive only if a large number of speakers acquire a new language and shift to it. Thus, features of Indian languages survive in Indian English, but not in British English, where the number of speakers from India is not large enough to have an impact on the general language.

4) Borrowing by imposition has also been called substrate or superstrate influence. It is well-known that in imposition (or substrate/superstrate) situations, the borrowing primarily concerns the phonology and the syntax, whereas in adoption (or adstrate) situations, the borrowing affects the lexicon first before it extends to other domains of language structure. This is understandable because second-language speakers cannot avoid phonological and syntactic interference from their native language, but it is quite easy to avoid using words from one’s native language.

9. Conclusion

In last it is concluded that borrowing has a separate place in different other language contact phenomena. Although it erased many issues the tough effort of researchers tried to solve the issues by developing a kind of scale or constraint on borrowing in order to make a difference in what actually borrowing is.

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