Loanwords in basic vocabulary mediate the borrowing profile of a language

Abstract

Basic vocabulary lists are a popular data type in the field of phylogenetic linguistics because of the vertical signal the data carries. Interestingly, basic vocabulary also features borrowings. The horizontal influence can be understood as a proxy for population contacts as well because loanwords into basic vocabulary are most likely acquired in intimate contact situations. This is valuable information for multidisciplinary studies aiming to integrate information on contact events from various sciences to gain a better insight into the prehistory of a population. As basic vocabulary lists are widely available, they can inform of the known contact history for large groups of languages or even whole language families making wide-scale comparison possible. We call the contact history of a language reflected by its loanwords the borrowing profile. In our paper, we compare the borrowing profiles mediated by the basic vocabulary of six well-studied Uralic languages to the borrowing profiles of the whole languages represented by large vocabulary stocks. We show that basic vocabulary provides an informative snapshot of the borrowing profile; however, the trace of prehistoric loanword layers is emphasized in basic vocabulary. Known sociolinguistic circumstances explain the differences in the borrowing profiles of basic and whole vocabulary.