Direct and indirect affix borrowing

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2963695
AutoresFrank Seifart (0000-0001-9909-2088, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen91
Número3
Páginas511-532
Fecha de publicación2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguage (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lan.2015.0044
OpenAlexW2116647389
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas23
Referencias citadas12

A widespread assumption in the language contact literature is that affixes are never borrowed directly, but only indirectly, that is, as part of complex loanwords. From such complex loanwords, affixes may eventually spread to native stems, creating hybrid formations, in a process of language-internal analogical extension. Direct borrowing is the extraction of an affix based on knowledge of the donor language, without the mediation of complex loanwords within the recipient language. This article suggests that direct borrowing can also be the only or primary process leading to productive loan affixes. Criteria are provided to assess instances of direct and indirect borrowing on the basis of the distribution of borrowed affixes across complex loanwords and hybrid formations. These are applied to corpora of various languages. A scale of directness of affix borrowing is proposed, based on the extent to which speakers of the recipient language rely (i) on their knowledge of the donor language (direct borrowing) and (ii) on complex loanwords within their native language (indirect borrowing

Affix · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Process (computing · Computer Science · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy