Language Contact and Prestige

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of prestige in the contact of English with its most important donor languages, Celtic, Old Norse, French, and Latin, in this order. It shows that the prestige of a donor language can only partly be correlated with its stratal relation to the recipient language. Moreover, it demonstrates that by focussing on the stratal relation of a donor language with its recipient language under specific historical and social conditions, the likely motivations for borrowing can be ascertained with greater explanatory precision. The arguments presented are based on various kinds of comparative assessments of the evidence for language contact, namely (1) evidence from different donor languages of English, (2) evidence from one and the same donor language in different periods, and (3) evidence from English and other recipient languages in response to the same donor language.