Loanword Typology: Verbal Borrowings

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Loanword Typology Verbal Borrowings

• Jan WOHLGEMUTH
• Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
  Anthropology, Leipzig

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Basic goal contribute to improving the
  methodology for testing hypotheses about
  historical relatedness between languages

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Basic goal contribute to improving the
  methodology for testing hypotheses about
  historical relatedness between languages
• Means systematic studies of attested diachronic
  changes in languages worldwide ? typology of
  language change

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Basic goal contribute to improving the
  methodology for testing hypotheses about
  historical relatedness between languages
• Means systematic studies of attested diachronic
  changes in languages worldwide ? typology of
  language change
• Paths of change
• Rates of change
• Degree of stability of grammatical and lexical
  items
• Effects of language contact

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Two projects in Leipzig

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Two projects in Leipzig
• Handbook of Sound Change (Juliette Blevins)

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Two projects in Leipzig
• Handbook of Sound Change (Juliette Blevins)
• Handbook of Lexical Borrowing (Martin Haspelmath
  Uri Tadmor)

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Handbook of Lexical Borrowing (Martin Haspelmath
  Uri Tadmor)
• Basic questions
• What kinds of borrowings are common, what kinds
  are unusual? Under what circumstances?
• What is the direction of borrowing?

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• Which word meanings are likely to be borrowed,
  and which are likely to resist borrowing?

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• Which word meanings are likely to be borrowed,
  and which are likely to resist borrowing?
• Thomason Kaufman (1988 77)
• With a minimum of cultural pressure we expect
  only lexical borrowing, and then only nonbasic
  vocabulary.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• Which word meanings are likely to be borrowed,
  and which are likely to resist borrowing?
• Thomason Kaufman (1988 77)
• With a minimum of cultural pressure we expect
  only lexical borrowing, and then only nonbasic
  vocabulary.
• Borrowing of basic vocabulary starts with (3) on
  the borrowing scale

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• Which word meanings are likely to be borrowed,
  and which are likely to resist borrowing?
• Thomason Kaufman (1988 77)
• With a minimum of cultural pressure we expect
  only lexical borrowing, and then only nonbasic
  vocabulary.
• Borrowing of basic vocabulary starts with (3) on
  the borrowing scale
• (1) Casual contact (2) slightly more intensive
  contact
• (3) more intense contact (4) strong cultural
  pressure
• (5) very strong cultural pressure

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• basic vocabulary intentionally left undefined
  by Thomason Kaufman.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• basic vocabulary intentionally left undefined
  by Thomason Kaufman.
• Often defined as the list of basic words by
  Swadesh.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• basic vocabulary intentionally left undefined
  by Thomason Kaufman.
• Often defined as the list of basic words by
  Swadesh.
• Swadeshs list is based on intuitions, not on any
  systematic research.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Degree of lexical borrowability
• basic vocabulary intentionally left undefined
  by Thomason Kaufman.
• Often defined as the list of basic words by
  Swadesh.
• Swadeshs list is based on intuitions, not on any
  systematic research.
• ? Lexical borrowability needs to be studied
  empirically in a systematic fashion using a
  world-wide sample of languages,

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Implementation
• Study based on a fixed list of lexical meanings.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Implementation
• Study based on a fixed list of lexical meanings.
• An adapted version of the 1300-word list of the
  Intercontinental Dictionaries Series (IDS), based
  on Buck 1949.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Implementation
• Study based on a fixed list of lexical meanings.
• An adapted version of the 1300-word list of the
  Intercontinental Dictionaries Series (IDS), based
  on Buck 1949.
• Comparison across a wide range of languages.
• Over 30 languages from all continents, each
  covered by one contributor, who will create a
  data set and a discussion chapter

20
The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Implementation
• Study based on a fixed list of lexical meanings.
• An adapted version of the 1300-word list of the
  Intercontinental Dictionaries Series (IDS), based
  on Buck 1949.
• Comparison across a wide range of languages.
• Over 30 languages from all continents, each
  covered by one contributor, who will create a
  data set and a discussion chapter e.g.
  Christopher Schmidt Japanese

21
The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Implementation
• Study based on a fixed list of lexical meanings.
• An adapted version of the 1300-word list of the
  Intercontinental Dictionaries Series (IDS), based
  on Buck 1949.
• Comparison across a wide range of languages.
• Over 30 languages from all continents, each
  covered by one contributor, who will create a
  data set and a discussion chapter e.g.
  Christopher Schmidt Japanese
• Each data set will identify each word as borrowed
  or not borrowed, giving the source language if
  applicable.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results
• For each lexical meaning, the cross-linguistic
  percentage of loanwords will be established. The
  ranking yields a list from the most resistant to
  the most borrowable of the ca. 1300 meanings.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results
• For each lexical meaning, the cross-linguistic
  percentage of loanwords will be established. The
  ranking yields a list from the most resistant to
  the most borrowable of the ca. 1300 meanings.
• If the sample is representative, this ranking may
  indicate a structural universal of borrowing.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results
• For each lexical meaning, the cross-linguistic
  percentage of loanwords will be established. The
  ranking yields a list from the most resistant to
  the most borrowable of the ca. 1300 meanings.
• If the sample is representative, this ranking may
  indicate a structural universal of borrowing.
• Influence of degree of contact as well as
  structural properties of the recipient languages
  on the types of word borrowed can be tested for.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results (contd)
• Further generalizations from the literature can
  be tested, e.g.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results (contd)
• Further generalizations from the literature can
  be tested, e.g.
• The most frequent lexical items are more
  resistant to being replaced by a borrowing than
  the rarer items.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results (contd)
• Further generalizations from the literature can
  be tested, e.g.
• The most frequent lexical items are more
  resistant to being replaced by a borrowing than
  the rarer items.
• Content words are more easily borrowed than
  function words.

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results (contd)
• Further generalizations from the literature can
  be tested, e.g.
• The most frequent lexical items are more
  resistant to being replaced by a borrowing than
  the rarer items.
• Content words are more easily borrowed than
  function words.
• Different parts of speech show different
  susceptibility to borrowing (e.g. verbs are more
  resistant to b.)

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The Leipzig Loanword Typology Project

• Planned results (contd)
• Further generalizations from the literature can
  be tested, e.g.
• The most frequent lexical items are more
  resistant to being replaced by a borrowing than
  the rarer items.
• Content words are more easily borrowed than
  function words.
• Different parts of speech show different
  susceptibility to borrowing (e.g. verbs are more
  resistant to b.)
• ... to what extent?

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Verbal borrowings

• Objective

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Verbal borrowings

• Objective
• A typology of verbal borrowing patterns

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Verbal borrowings

• Objective
• A typology of verbal borrowing patterns
• A typology of social, grammatical and lexical
  parameters affecting the borrowability of verbs

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Verbal borrowings

• The database

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Verbal borrowings

• The database
• FilemakerPro 7 database

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Verbal borrowings

• The database
• FilemakerPro 7 database
• Currently gt 120 examples from gt 50 language
  pairs goal at least 200 different language
  pairs from all continents

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Verbal borrowings

• The database
• FilemakerPro 7 database
• Currently gt 120 examples from gt 50 language
  pairs goal at least 200 different language
  pairs from all continents
• Incorporating typological and other
  meta-information for all languages involved

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Verbal borrowings

• The database
• FilemakerPro 7 database
• Currently gt 120 examples from gt 50 language
  pairs goal at least 200 different language
  pairs from all continents
• Incorporating typological and other
  meta-information for all languages involved
• Including information on the productivity of
  borrowing patterns

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Verbal borrowings

• The database
• FilemakerPro 7 database
• Currently gt 120 examples from gt 50 language
  pairs goal at least 200 different language
  pairs from all continents
• Incorporating typological and other
  meta-information for all languages involved
• Including information on the productivity of
  borrowing patterns
• Including information on contact situations

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected
• Contact situation and estimated date of borrowing

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected
• Contact situation and estimated date of borrowing
• Attitude of recipient language speakers towards
  borrowings

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected
• Contact situation and estimated date of borrowing
• Attitude of recipient language speakers towards
  borrowings
• Productivity and frequency of loan verb
  adaptation pattern(s) in the recipient language

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected
• Contact situation and estimated date of borrowing
• Attitude of recipient language speakers towards
  borrowings
• Productivity and frequency of loan verb
  adaptation pattern(s) in the recipient language
• Lexical status of the borrowing (insertion,
  replacement, synonym)

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected
• Contact situation and estimated date of borrowing
• Attitude of recipient language speakers towards
  borrowings
• Productivity and frequency of loan verb
  adaptation pattern(s) in the recipient language
• Lexical status of the borrowing (insertion,
  replacement, synonym)
• Reliability / accuracy of the information

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected (contd)
• Typological information on both languages (data
  from the WALS database)

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Verbal borrowings

• Metadata collected (contd)
• Typological information on both languages (data
  from the WALS database)
• Geographical location of donor and recipient
  language (from the WALS database)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• Direct insertion (no morphological adaptation)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• Direct insertion (no morphological adaptation)
• Indirect insertion (adaptation by affixation etc.)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• Direct insertion (no morphological adaptation)
• Indirect insertion (adaptation by affixation
  etc.)
• Light verb strategy

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• Direct insertion (no morphological adaptation)
• Indirect insertion (adaptation by affixation
  etc.)
• Light verb strategy
• Paradigm insertion (borrowing of verb
  inflection)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• Direct insertion (no morphological adaptation)
• Indirect insertion (adaptation by affixation
  etc.)
• Light verb strategy
• Paradigm insertion (borrowing of verb
  inflection)
• Other (e.g. calques)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 1.1 Direct insertion of root or infinitive-like
  stem
• Ket lt Russian
• dasitaru?av?t
• da-sitat-u-k-a-bet
• 3SG.F.S-read-3.N.O-ABL-DUR-ACT
• she reads it
• lt ?????? to read
• (Vajda Werner)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 1.2 Direct insertion of inflected form
• Tasawaq lt Touareg (Air)
• gháy yílmàq
• I swim.PFT
• I swam
• lt i-lmäq 3m.PFT of ëlmëq to swim
• (Wichmann 2004 a,b)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 1.3 Direct insertion across word-class
• Tasawaq lt Touareg (Air)
• ghá b-tásrìg
• I IPF-sneeze
• I am sneezing
• lt tusrak sneezing
• (Wichmann 2004 a,b)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 2.1 Affixation with a verbalizer
• Yakut lt Russian
• ??????? ??????????? ????, ????? ?????????.
• Armiya-GA suluspa-LA-A die-An, uonna
  kel-BAtA?-(t)A.
• army-DAT/LOC service-VR-CVB say-CVB and
  come-PSTPTCP.NEG-POSS.3SG
• He (went off) to serve in the army and didn't
  return.
• lt ?????? service
• (Brigitte Pakendorf, p.c.)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 2.2 Affixation with a causative/factitive
• English lt Jakarta Indonesian
• downloadin
• download-in
• download-FACT
• to download
• lt download
• (elicited data)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 2.3 Affixation with a special borrowing affix
• Meyah lt Indonesian
• diebebelajar
• di-ebe-belajar
• 1SG-LW-learn
• I'm learning
• lt belajar to learn
• (Gravelle)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 3.1 Light verb do, make
• Modern Greek lt English (USA)
• ???e? retire
• kani retire
• do.3SG retire
• (s)he retires
• lt retire
• (Moravcsik 2003) of migrants in the USA

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 3.x Other light verb
• Carib lt Guianese French Creole
• pentiré poko man
• paint busy.with 3SG.cop
• he is painting
• lt pentiré to paint
• (Renault-Lescure)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 4.1 Borrowing of verb plus inflectional paradigm
• Romani lt Turkish
• and o sxoljo ka siklos te okursun ta te jazarsun
• and o sxoljo ka sikl-os te okur-sun ta te
  jazar-sun
• in ART school FUT learn-2 COMP read-2 and COMP
  write-2
• in the school you will learn how to read and
  write
• lt okurmak to read yazmak to write
• (Bakker)

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Verbal borrowings

• Loan verb embedding patterns
• 5.1 Loan translation
• Ket lt Russian
• díri?ú?av?t
• d-iri?-u-k-a-bet
• 3SG.M.S-sign-3.N.O-ABL-DUR-ACT
• he signs it
• lt Ket iri? pattern, design, writing
• (Vajda Werner)

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far
• Most languages have more than one loan verb
  adaptation pattern

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far
• Most languages have more than one loan verb
  adaptation pattern.
• Different patterns used for the same pair of
  languages can be an indicator for the date of the
  particular borrowings. (e.g. in Finnish lt Swedish
  or Nahuatl lt Spanish).

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far
• Most languages have more than one loan verb
  adaptation pattern.
• Different patterns used for the same pair of
  languages can be an indicator for the date of the
  particular borrowings. (e.g. in Finnish lt Swedish
  or Nahuatl lt Spanish).
• In these language pairs, the adaptation patterns
  seem to become less complex over long times of
  contact.

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far
• Most languages have more than one loan verb
  adaptation pattern.
• Different patterns used for the same pair of
  languages can be an indicator for the date of the
  particular borrowings. (e.g. in Finnish lt Swedish
  or Nahuatl lt Spanish).
• In these language pairs, the adaptation patterns
  seem to become less complex over long times of
  contact.
• ? If this is a general pattern, it can be a
  useful key to a languages contact history.

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far (2)
• Some languages (e.g. Hup) where speakers claim
  they keep their language pure did not borrow
  anything apart from a few verbs that usually get
  heavily affixed with native morphemes.

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Verbal borrowings

• Findings so far (2)
• Some languages (e.g. Hup) where speakers claim
  they keep their language pure did not borrow
  anything apart from a few verbs that usually get
  heavily affixed with native morphemes.
• This contradicts the generalization that verbs
  are less likely to be borrowed than other parts
  of speech it also challenges the explanation
  that verbs are less easily to be borrowed because
  of the morphology involved.

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Verbal borrowings

• Example contribution form
• http//loanverb.linguist.de/loanverb.html
• If you have examples of verbal borrowings in
  whatever pair of languages, please share them
  with me!!

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Acknowledgements

• Examples and findings used here were partly
  contributed by
• Edward Vajda (Western Washington U)
• Brigitte Pakendorf (MPI EVA)
• Patience Epps (U Virginia / MPI EVA)
• Søren Wichmann (MPI EVA)
• Funding
• Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
  Wissenschaften e.V.
• via Max-Planck-Institute für evolutionäre
  Anthropologie, Leipzig

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Keep on verbing

• Further Information
• http//loanverb.linguist.de/
• http//email.eva.mpg.de/wohlgemu/
• Contact
• wohlgemuth_at_eva.mpg.de