Malay(sian) Borrowings in English

Abstract

writing system is involved, transcription is required. The scope of this definition and the fact that borrowing perhaps occurs in all languages in the course of their development suggest that, whenever language contact occurs, borrowing becomes a function of language change. As Deroy (1980) has concluded, L'emprunt est, en effet, un temoin precieux des evenements politiques, des courants economiques, des grandes decouvertes, des progres scientifiques et techniques, des tendances artistiques, etc. (343). Perhaps a hundred books and a few thousand articles on borrowing are listed in the standard bibliographies. For example, Weinreich (1953) lists 658 sources, Haugen (1956) lists 690, and Deroy (1980) lists 1,364 (though some of his appear twice). Deroy wrote the most comprehensive book ever done on borrowing, showing how languages in general react to their environments and illustrating how significant qualities of language contact result in borrowing. The data in most studies have come from large, standard dictionaries, partly for convenience but also to be more assured that an item is not an ephemeral one used for a special purpose. These dictionaries usually omit biographical items like Sukarno 'Indonesian president' and geographical items like Penang'Malaysian island'. Because Western languages contain a vast number of proper nouns, they are technically excluded from the scope of lexicography. Most of these nouns are not a part of the common vocabulary and properly belong in an encyclopedia or an atlas. Some of these nouns, however, have common-noun uses that are generically removed from their original proper-noun sense (Mufwene 1988, 277). Thus they impinge on the common vocabulary by gaining a transferred meaning through a particular association. When the kind of coat that the Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru often wore became known as a Nehru coat and then a Nehru in English, the proper noun had added a new item to the general vocabulary. Because the noun Malay (recorded as early as 1598) had been functionally shifted to provide an adjective as early as