Morphological adapting of loanwords in Lithuanian

Abstract

The paper sets out to examine the Lithuanian loanwords whose morphological adaptation so far has not been complete; their inflection still poses quite a few problems, e.g. avokado, ateljė etc. The investigation focuses on new loanwords, e.g. indigas, ekstazis, sušis. It also includes some older loanwords, e.g. alibi, solfedžio; in actual usage they fluctuate between fully inflected and uninflected forms.New loanwords refer to words which came into actual Lithuanian usage after the restoration of Lithuania's independence. The tendencies of inflecting loanwords in contemporary Lithuanian have been investigated on the basis of a survey.The results of the survey suggest that some loanwords with unstressed endings are mostly used in their inflected forms; they have been given preference by ca 89.89 per cent of the respondents. Other loanwords (e.g. gospelas, spagečiai, bikinis) are equally frequent in their inflected and uninflected forms. The third group of loanwords (e.g. alibi, bingo, chaki, ledi, maestro) are mostly used in their uninflected forms; they have been chosen by 86.89 per cent of the respondents.The results of the survey have shown that in actual usage uninflected loanwords with the stressed ending -ė prevail (e.g. atašė, dekoltė, esė, turnė, želė); they have been given preference by 88.82 per cent of the respondents. However, in contemporary Lithuanian all of these loanwords have morphologically adapted variants.