Lexical Loans Research Articles

Najnowsze metodologie badawcze w lingwistyce kontaktu i automatyczna ekscerpcja anglicyzmów

The paper presents the newest research methodologies used in the analysis and description of foreign lexical loans, such as the usage-based approach, experimental set-ups, as well as corpus-assisted research that includes automatic identification and excerption of unassimilated loanwords. The usage-based approach and experimental design spring from the revised perception of linguistic borrowing in contact linguistics, seen now as a social act, in which the recipient language speakers play the main role by fulfilling their nominal and expressive needs through conscious lexical choices. This type of research is also possible due to large electronic corpora equipped with the latest data processing tools that enable the analysis of borrowed material in authentic contexts. Rooted in the onomasiological-cognitive theoretical background and assuming a socio-pragmatic perspective, the presented methodologies allow for the analysis of those areas within linguistic borrowing that in structural and systemic research were neglected or unanalysable

Spanish contact influence in a Finnish heritage community in Misiones, Argentina

AbstractThis study examines contact outcomes in Finnish spoken in a heritage community in Misiones province, Argentina, in the 1970s. The data show limited morphosyntactic differences from dialectal varieties of Finnish, and most of the Spanish influence is lexical loans or sporadic codeswitches that have an emphatic function. The results show that beyond established lexical loans, both fluent and less fluent speakers avoid mixing and comment on it when it occurs. Translation and word search strategies show evidence of the speakers’ awareness about language mixing in the interview setting in which data were collected.

Numeral Systems in Various Fula Lects

The paper presents the analysis of Fula numeral system. Fula is an Atlantic language, dispersed throughout a vast territory in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has over 20 differently-sized lects subdivided into three zones - Western, Central and Eastern. The research included collecting the language data on six major lects, two from each zone. Then this data was analyzed from the point of view of internal and external syntax of ordinal, cardinal, distributive and fraction numerals. The comparative analysis of Fula numeral system on inter-lect scale has never been reflected in earlier Fula studies. Apart from a unique collection of numeral data from all language zones of Fula, the paper presents comparative analysis of such data, including, but not limited to, phonetic and contact-induced variabilities. The sources of structural and lexical loans in the system are listed wherever possible, because the disperse nature of Fula lects means that the contact languages and the ensuing changes can be different for each lect. Special attention is paid to the numeral bases, which can be somatic, commercial of a combination of the two. The Fula numeral system has never been analyzed from this point of view, and the contact changes to it are of great linguistic interest. Also cardinal numerals in Fula can change their form depending on the personality parameter of head noun. This system is unique for Fula and, more specifically, to its numeral system, and is properly described for the first time. Some parts of the Fula numeral system, like distributive and fraction numerals for some lects, have been found underrepresented and poorly described, which leaves room for further research, both field one and typological.

On the History of the Vocabulary of the Thematic Group «Christian Virtues and Sins»: Based on the Translated Church Slavonic Hymnography

This study examines the formation and further evolution of the Church Slavonic and Russian vocabulary describing Christian virtues and sins. Our research was conducted on the available Church Slavonic translations of four Byzantine hymns (the Akathistos Hymn, the Great Canon of Repentance by St. Andrew of Crete, the Alphabetical Stichera from the Great Canon service, and the Great and Holy Friday Antiphons) found in Southern and Eastern Slavonic manuscripts of the 11th‑16th century, as well as Russian editions dating back to the 17th – early 20th century. The textological study revealed five main stages in the evolution of these texts caused by systematic corrections in accordance with the Greek text. Based on these results, the linguistic textological method was applied in order to reveal the main differences between said stages in regard to conveying terms relevant to Christian virtues and sins. We examined a total of 110 Greek words and idiomatic expressions in this thematic field and classified them following the method suggested by E. M. Vereshchagin who focused on ways of terms creation. There were revealed main ways these terms were formed in the target language and the general tendencies in their translation during different stages in the history of Church Slavonic. The results of our research showcased the leading role of transposition in the formation of the terms, the negligible amount of lexical loans, as well as the growing role of calquing in the history of Church Slavonic. We also showed the ways in which the Church Slavonic and Russian languages adopted new linguistic and cultural realities and reinterpreted the system of Greek ethical terms, which helps us understand the mechanisms of intercultural transfer, as well as the linguistic factors that contribute to the identification of Russian culture in the general Orthodox context

„Fuck Oida!“

This article deals with lexical loans in the domain of pejoratives among Viennese secondary school pupils from the lexical-semantic and the pragmalinguistic points of view. The data come from written surveys among Viennese schoolchildren (11-17 years old) from 2007-2008, 2013-2016 and 2018-2019. Special features of the age group that encourage the borrowing of foreign-language pejoratives are highlighted, and intercultural aspects of the expression and perception of aggressive verbal expressions and the reactions to them are explored. Keywords: youth languages, pejoratives, lexical loans, Viennese secondary school students, verbal aggression

Denotazione, metafora e connotazione tra ekphrasis e mélophrasis

In classical rhetoric, the name ekphrasis designates the detailed verbal description of a concrete object or subject, i.e. the transposition into words of something that is intended to be seen by placing it under the eyes of the reader. The privileged field of application of this device are the visual arts, in which critics are expected to render both real and fantastic images through words, translating the fixedness of visual data into the temporal sequence of a verbal discourse. In the case of musical art, ekphrasis aims to render in words sequences of sounds that are in turn temporally oriented, and in this respect diverges from a verbal representation of the visual arts, which exist in a spatial dimension. In music, however, meanings exist but are generally not denoted according to a specific semantic system, and therefore require transcoding processes and lexical loans. Even in the poetic description of a work of visual art (e.g. the sonnets in which Marino describes the image of Daphne's metamorphosis into laurel in Bernini's marble group, animating and dramatizing it), ekphrasis can generate a flowering of poetic tropes that clearly enhance the semantic content. This enhancement of meaning is even more necessary in musical ekphrasis, which tends to shift the object of representation from physical-acoustic data, or from the specific semiographic system, to the sensations it produces in the listener. In fact, rather than insisting on the musical text, the melophrasis - as it has recently been renamed - is ultimately directed at the effect it causes, and therefore at viewers and their internalization processes. The result is a substantial shift from denotation to connotation, through extensive (but not uncontrolled) recourse to metaphorical procedures, applied to the sound images of the composition, to the proxemics and environmental components of performance, and finally to the specific sound symbolism contained in certain scores.

TRADUCIR LA IDENTIDAD COMO MANTEQUILLA: EL FRANCÉS BEUR

RESUMEN La palabra francesa arabe («árabe») está en el origen del término francés beur que se creó en verlan para designar a las personas nacidas en Francia cuyos padres o abuelos fueron inmigrantes provenientes del Magreb. Tras una breve descripción sobre cómo se formó dicho término en francés durante la década de los ochenta del siglo pasado, este artículo, primero, se plantea por qué el femenino del mismo es beurette y no beure para luego exponer cómo se han realizado unos muy determinados tipos de traducción de la identidad del Otro en otro tiempo colonizado. Que beur sea el perfecto homófono de beurre (mantequilla) en francés conlleva una serie de consecuencias simbólicas que se resumen en la nula voluntad política del Estado francés de traducir, adecuada y correctamente, todas las pertenencias de la identidad mestiza de las personas nacidas en Francia con orígenes magrebíes, en aras de una supuesta «integración» republicana francesa. Se han creado, en verlan, en el uso popular de la lengua francesa, dos neologismos (beur y beurette) que, dada su dificultad de traducción, han sido exportados a otras lenguas como préstamos léxicos pero su correcta interpretación en las mismas deja mucho que desear. Hacia el final del artículo se presenta una reflexión crítica, a modo de conclusión, sobre los términos beur y beurette como «intraducibles» en el sentido apuntado por Barbara Cassin y se propone cómo poder resolver la aparente contradicción de traducir «lo intraducible» cuando quien traduce e interpreta sabe situarse «entre» lenguas y culturas, gracias a la noción de paratraducción.

Prosody: A feature of languages or a feature of speakers?

Abstract Social situations of language coexistence have resulted in linguistic manifestations of bilingualism and diglossia, including linguistic interference, lexical loans and code switching. What role does prosody play in social bilingualism? In other words, when contact between different languages is not restricted to the individual but affects an entire speech community, does a dominant prosody exist? Does prosody vary among different linguistic varieties? In order to find an answer to these questions, we hereby show the results of a research project on the prosodic features of Asturian and Castilian spoken in the centre of Asturias. This experimental study is based on the speech of four informants from Oviedo – two men and two women – two of which speak Castilian, while the other two speak Asturian.

The causality of borrowing: Lexical loans in Eurasian languages.

All languages borrow words from other languages. Some languages are more prone to borrowing, while others borrow less, and different domains of the vocabulary are unequally susceptible to borrowing. Languages typically borrow words when a new concept is introduced, but languages may also borrow a new word for an already existing concept. Linguists describe two causalities for borrowing: need, i.e., the internal pressure of borrowing a new term for a concept in the language, and prestige, i.e., the external pressure of borrowing a term from a more prestigious language. We investigate lexical loans in a dataset of 104 concepts in 115 Eurasian languages from 7 families occupying a coherent contact area of the Eurasian landmass, of which Indo-European languages from various periods constitute a majority. We use a cognacy-coded dataset, which identifies loan events including a source and a target language. To avoid loans for newly introduced concepts in languages, we use a list of lexical concepts that have been in use at least since the Chalcolithic (4000–3000 BCE). We observe that the rates of borrowing are highly variable among concepts, lexical domains, languages, language families, and time periods. We compare our results to those of a global sample and observe that our rates are generally lower, but that the rates between the samples are significantly correlated. To test the causality of borrowing, we use two different ranks. Firstly, to test need, we use a cultural ranking of concepts by their mobility (of nature items) or their labour intensity and “distance-from-hearth” (of culture items). Secondly, to test prestige, we use a power ranking of languages by their socio-cultural status. We conclude that the borrowability of concepts increases with increasing mobility (nature), and with increased labour intensity and “distance-from-hearth” (culture). We also conclude that language prestige is not correlated with borrowability in general (all languages borrow, independently of prestige), but prestige predicts the directionality of borrowing, from a more prestigious language to a less prestigious one. The process is not constant over time, with a larger inequality during the ancient and modern periods, but this result may depend on the status of the data (non-prestigious languages often remain unattested). In conclusion, we observe that need and prestige compete as causes of lexical borrowing.

Zapożyczenia leksykalne w cyklolekcie

There is an abundance of loanwords (especially English) in Polish cycling sociolect. After a presentation of basic facts on the different types of borrowings (lexical loans, semantic loans and loan translations), about 600 English lexical loans divided into semantic classes (e.g. cycling disciplines, riders, equipment) are analyzed in the article. This is accompanied by a discussion of the most striking characteristics of their graphic, phonological, morphological and semantic adaptation into the Polish language.

Psycholinguistic Peculierities of the Assimilation of Angloamericanisms by the Speakers of Ukrainian-English Bilingualism

The article deals with the problem of psycholinguistic peculiarities of the use of the American-English loans. The main task of the research is to educe the features of their assimilation by the students in the conditions of educational bilingualism. The knowledge of a foreign language can affect the perception of the loans and can distort their understanding.
 Speaking about the angloamericanisms, we mean, first of all, the lexical loans, transferring of words from one language into other with adaptation in the system of the language-recipient. An angloamericanism – an absolute language universal, presented by the class of the adopted lexical units that is fixed in the dictionaries of the Ukrainian language, and assimilated in its system.
 As an examinee the students of foreign languages and flight operations faculties were involved, as the example of the carriers of artificial bilingualism. The psycholinguistic and associative experiments are used. It contains such procedures: preselection of the newest loans, and also producing to the participants of the experiment of the list of the tasks, including the description of associations.
 Initial position of our experimental research is a hypothesis that the mastered enough word in an individual lexicon, firstly, is perceived as acquainted, secondly, easily enters into associative connections with other words, thirdly, does not cause large difficulties in description of its semantics.
 An experimental list consists of twenty-three words related to the most frequent thematic subsystems in the adopting language: business, economy, entertainments, sport and fashion.
 Free associative experiment provides the material for building associative fields of certain concepts, reconstruction of fragments of language and conceptual pictures of the world.
 The students had to define if the words acquainted or unknown; to write down an associative reaction; to explain the value of the word; to write down a sentence with the loan.
 The comparable analysis of results of questioning of the informants showed that the assimilation of the loans is high enough. However, the students showed large creativity in determination of semantics and in presentation of associative reactions on the loans, which testify to aspiration to show their linguistic abilities.

Componentes lingüísticos de la chilenidad: lexicología

Las diferentes variedades diatópicas del español se caracterizan no sólo por diferentes fenómenos de variación fonética y morfo-sintáctica, sino, sobre todo, por una rica variación léxica. En el caso de la variedad chilena, sus rasgos característicos son, por lo general, de índole léxica y se deben a contactos lingüísticos específicos de dicha área geográfica, ausentes o menos frecuentes en otras áreas: el contacto con el quechua, aimara, mapuche (o mapudungún), alemán, gitano o con la variedad argentina del español. La existencia de tales préstamos en la variedad chilena del español se explica por la evolución histórico-cultural de la República de Chile.

Lexical contact in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: French

AbstractIn the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, French was variously involved in the dynamics of lexical contact in the Mediterranean. The study of lexical loans may display the stratification of influences and linguistic exchanges that is peculiar to the “French case”.

Effects of English L2 on Norwegian L1

English outweighs other languages as a source for linguistic borrowing in present-day Norwegian. Most of the research on this topic has considered direct lexical loans, yet observations indicate that English is increasingly burrowing its way below the lexical surface of Norwegian – evident in the rising number of calques. This study investigates how a selection of recently observed multiword calques from English are evaluated by native Norwegian speakers. This is examined through acceptability judgements among young bilingual Norwegians (n= 83, mean age 18), and among two control groups comprising 10 bilingual adults (mean age 55) and 16 minimally bilingual seniors (mean age 75), respectively. A translation test was included to compare the judgements against production data. Based on our overall findings, we suggest that increased calquing is a sign of heightened proficiency in and exposure to the English language.

Lexical contact in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: French

Abstract In the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, French was variously involved in the dynamics of lexical contact in the Mediterranean. The study of lexical loans may display the stratification of influences and linguistic exchanges that is peculiar to the “French case”.

Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

AbstractMost of the Norse legal and administrative terms attested in Old English were replaced by equivalents from the French superstrate soon after the Norman Conquest, whereas a remarkable number of more basic terms are known to have become part of the very basic vocabulary of modern Standard English. This paper focuses on Norse lexical loans that survived during and beyond the period of French rule and became part of this basic vocabulary. It explores (1) the regional and textual conditions for the survival of such loans and (2) their expansion into late medieval London English and into the emerging standard language. Based on selective textual evidence it is argued that they were not quite as basic originally, that they typically survived and developed in regional centres far away from the French-dominated court, and eventually infiltrated the area in and around late medieval London owing to its growing attraction as an economic and intellectual centre. Both the survival of Norse loans and their later usage expansion are shown to be in harmony with the principles of comparative contact linguistics.

Lexical Loans and Their Diffusion in Old English: of ‘gospels’, ‘martyrs’, and ‘teachers’

ABSTRACTThe study of borrowed vocabulary and language contact in the Old English period is technically problematic in many ways. Surviving texts give us few clues as to how loans functioned outside the clerical communities, what their regional and register distributions were, and to what extent written sources reflect the circulation of loans in spoken language. This may suggest that a descriptive catalogue of lexical loans is the only approach applicable to the Old English material. This paper, however, aims at an inferential analysis of several loans from Latin and Greek in the religious and educational domain based on contemporary approaches to linguistic innovation, diffusion and change, and the wider cultural context that would have ensured their currency and dissemination – social networks provided by medieval schools and monasteries, and the ecclesiastical community at large. Using a select body of educated loans, it argues that strong ties within monastic communities would generally have prevented contact-induced lexical change from spreading outside the monasteries. Yet the role of individual innovators with both clerical and non-clerical ties and early adopters with elementary Latin proficiency (parish priests) in diffusion of change should not be underestimated.

‘Time is money’ metaphor in British and Romanian business press

1 IntroductionIn contrast with General English, Business English features some peculiar traits which lend its peculiarity (Popescu 2007, 2011, 2015a): 1. a certain fixedness of lexical associations, i.e. less free lexical combinations; 2. a certain degree of courtesy and formality which are to be found in the forms and frameworks of conventionalised transactions; 3. sociolinguistic and pragmatic orientation, by which we mean that the used by business people display sensitivity to subject matter, the occasion, shared knowledge and social relations holding between companies and communicators (Pickett 1986:2, as cited in Nelson 2000); 4. metaphoric load: the used in business materials may be characterised by what we could call metaphoric load, i.e. the business borrows words, phrases, similes, idioms, metaphors, metonimies from the general usage and applies them to the specific contexts of the place of work: abort a product, rat race, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks, golden parachutes, etc.; 5. marked idiomaticity: e.g. Instead, rather than undercutting television networks and producers, Joost might .. .give them new juice. (= give vitality). It is particularly the two latter traits that the present project will focus on. The starting point for our endeavours is represented by the seminal works Metaphors We Live By, published by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980, whose Theory of Metaphor (TCM) has opened endless vistas for subsequent research and debate and Zoltan Kovecses's book on universality and variation of metaphor, which has contributed to our further delving into business metaphors, from this perspective of universals and variants.2Literature reviewThe basic assumption of Lakoff and Johnson's theory is that metaphor is not only a stylistic feature of language, but thought itself is metaphorical in nature. Conceptual metaphor is a natural part of human thought, and linguistic metaphor is a natural part of human language (Lakoff, & Johnson 1980:247). Thus, the conceptual structure of metaphors rests on correspondences or mappings between conceptual domains. These mappings function in a natural way, as some of them are already existent in the human mind emerging from background cultural knowledge, as different kinds of similarities between concepts. Further on, Kovecses (2005:64) argues that the cognitive view of metaphor can simultaneously account for both universality and diversity in metaphorical thought. He has proved that certain conceptual metaphors (for anger, time, event structure, and the self) are potentially universal or can be nearuniversal. He identified these as being simple or primary metaphors and/or complex metaphors based on universal human experiences. He then explores embedded manifestations of generic level metaphors in order to prove that they are not candidates for near universal metaphors. Besides variations in conceptual metaphors at specific level there are others, such as when a culture uses a set of different source domains for a particular target domain, or when a culture uses a particular source domain for the conceptualization of a set of different target domains (Kovecses 2005:67).Our theory further draws on Coseriu's (1997) view on as a means of conveying knowledge and thoughts, being closely related to society, civilisation, thinking, community, politics, etc. A linguistic community would mould and influence the future evolution of a by accepting, rejecting or adjusting innovation occurring in language.Furthermore, we also resort to Rodica Zafiu's (2001) research on Romanian journalese, especially the one published after 1989, and her insights into the passage from a wooden language used by communist propaganda. In her writings, there is a general critical and deprecating view on the use of metaphors in Romanian journalese, especially after 1989. Zafiu (2001:53) states that one could notice a correspondence between the pretence of thematic ennobling (which is denied to a certain extent by the very democratising of phonemic transcription of lexical loans) and the adorning and extravagant metaphor. …

L’alternance codique : jeu de mot et/ou effet de sens Dans le discours journalistique ?

Code-Switching: Pun and/or meaning effect in journalistic discourse ?
 Our research in Sciences of the Language suggests studying the linguistic practices of the used languages in the journalistic speech, and more particularly that of the journalistic columns (chronicles) "Tranche de Vie" of the Daily paper of Oran. From a set of neologisms, of lexical loans and of code alternations, we operate an analysis of the lexical creativity of used French in the journalistic speech. The processing of the linguistic specificities is going to allow us to study the realities of the use of the French language beside the other languages in a media context and to describe their mode of operation in this type of speech. Our objective is to report the discursive and linguistic dynamics of the use of French and the other languages in Algeria, and it is true through the study of the functioning of a specific lexicon appropriate to a journalistic, appearing writing.

Loan Words in Bahasa Indonesia

Abstract The Indonesian has absorbed many loan words from other languages, including Sanskrit, Arabic, Dutch, Chinese, French, and English. Loan words in Bahasa Indonesia are in fact taken both from local language and foreign languages which then spelling, speech, and writing tailored to the narrative of the people of Indonesia to enrich vocabulary. Based on the level of integration, loan words in bahasa Indonesia is divided into three parts. First, loan words which are not necessarily undergo spelling change because they have been loan words for a long time, such as “ radio” and “ stereo ’. Second, loan words whose spelling or pronunciation are adapted into Bahasa Indonesia spelling pattern. For examples, elektron, system and proton. These loan words are used in Bahasa Indonesia context, but the pronunciation is still the same as the source. Third, the loan words whose pronunciation and spelling are already changed and adapted Indonesian spelling pattern. In this case the adaptation is minor that they are still recognized. For examples, “ persentase”, “ekonomi” and “politik”. Furthermore, lexical loans in Bahasa Indonesia can be in the form of pungutan dialect (dialect loans), pungutan mesra (well-absorbed loans), and pungutan kultural (cultural loans). Pungutan dialect is a borrowing which is taken from one of the Indonesian dialects such as “brisik” or “bising” (noisy), “jejaka” or “bujangan ” (bachelor) are adopted from Jakarta dialect. Pungutan mesra is a lexical borrowing which is adopted from another languages which exist in Indonesia such as “ganteng” (handsome), and “gawat” (dangerous) are adopted from Java. While, Pungutan kultural is any borrowing taken from any other languages which are not found in Indonesian. The words such as “ fakir ” (poor), and “ saham ” (share) are taken from Arabic. The words such as “ panca-sila ” ( panca means five and sila means principles), and “ tuna karya ” (jobless) are taken from Sanskrit. The words such as “arsip” (archive), “notabene” (notabene), “oli” (oil), and “vonis” (vonis) are adopted from Ducth. Meanwhile, the words such as “approach” (approach), “audit” (audit, “bowling” (bowling), “gentlemen” (gentlemen), and “guest-house” (guest-house) are adapted from English. In addition, structural loan may cover all aspects of sounds and morphemes, or even sentence level. Loan words are adapted to fulfill the need for new words and new terms of Bahasa Indonesia, as the consequence of the intensity of interaction in a modern society. It happens in technology, law, politics, economy and other fields such as religion, culture and social field. These loan words are used in Bahasa Indonesia because they have better connotation, shorter compared to its translation into Bahasa Indonesia, and the loan words had been chosen to make the agreement of meaning become easier since there are many synonym in Bahasa Indonesia Key words: Loan words, adaptation, lexical loans