Borrowing: Languages in Contact

Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo

Morphology Lecture Series XV

Borrowing is a common morphological process that involves taking words from one language to another.

Any language in contact will definitely have borrowed words.

These words are refered to as loanwords.

The essence of borrowing is to cope with new ideas and concepts that are unfamiliar to the receiving language.

Once languages come in contact, there will definitely be borrowed words as vestiges of the contact.

Words are also borrowed to replace expressions which have disappeared from the lexicon of the host language.

Borrowing enhances communicative competence of some speakers and also enriches the receiving language.

The words that are borrowed are however, made to conform to the phonological and morphological specification of the host language.

English has so many loan words in its lexicon among which are: anchor, cheese, kitchen, church, pepper, sickle, paper, martyr, tailor, piano, wine, etc. (Latin); advertise, calendar, rent, science, war, attorney, beef, pendant, person, garage, duke, etc. (French); atmosphere, parasite, skeleton, tragedy, climax, comedy, etc. (Greek); cockroach, adobe, mosquito, ranch, guitar, embargo, vigilante, etc. (Spanish); alcohol, algebra, almanac, algorithm, etc. (Arabic); tycoon judo, hara kiri, karaoke, tsunami, etc. (Japanese); zebra (Bantu); egg, sky, (Danish); etc.

Add your own.

Borrowing is broadly classified into direct borrowing and indirect borrowing.

 

1. Direct Borrowing

Direct borrowing, also called assimilator borrowing, is the type of borrowing where words are not subjected to major phonological or morphological modifications.

The borrowed words retain their original form and meaning; some however have little variation. English has many borrowed words from Latin, Greek and French.

For example bonus, alumnus, quorum, exit scientific, etc are borrowed from Latin; drama, comedy, scene, botany, physics, etc. are borrowed from Greek, while crown, jury, royal, charity, lechery, attorney, parliament, nation, etc. are words that came into English from French.

The data below show borrowed words into Yoruba from English and Hausa.

 1.

SourceWordYoruba

English

table tébù ‘table’

peter pita ‘Peter’

motor mọ́tò ‘motor’

barber bábà ‘barber’

Hausa

súya súyà ‘barbeque’

aluabarka    àlùbàríká ‘blessing’

The following data taken from Iloene (2010, p. 199-200) illustrate borrowed English, Hausa, Yoruba and Efik words in Igbo.

2.

Source Word Igbo Gloss

English

atom atom ‘atom’

limbo limbo ‘limbo’

Hausa

súyà súyà ‘roast meat’

wàyó wàyó ‘cheat, trick’

Yoruba

àkàrà àkàrà ‘bean nuggets’

ibà íbà ‘fever’

Efik

ekpo ekpo ‘child mask’

isam ịsam ‘periwinkle’

These loanwords exemplified above follow the phonology of the languages and so there is no need for any structural mofifications.

2. Indirect Borrowing  

Indirect borrowing involves both phonological and morphological adaptation of the borrowed word to suit the target language.

The sounds could be modified, the tone could be modified and even the meaning could also be modified. For example:

3. Source Word Yoruba

English chair síà

doctor dọ́kítọ̀

yardley yádílè

class kílásì

slate síléètì

bread búrẹ́dì

break búrékì

frame férémù

crane kérénì

Hausa albasa   àlùbàsà

laafia àlàáfíà

These words are borrowed into Yoruba from English and Hausa and they have been made to conform to the phonological rules of the language.

The data show the insertion of either vowel i or u breaking the consonant clusters and at the end of the word preventing a closed syllable from occurring in the language.

The examples in (4) below are instances of borrowing from English into Urhobo and Japanese.

4. Source Word Urhobo

English radio ìrédío

television ìtẹ̀nẹ̀víshònì

school ìsùkúrù

brother ìbrọ̀dá

5.

Source Word Japanese

English beer beeru

necktie nekutai

ice cream aisukurimu

baseball baisuboru

elevator elebeta

cocktail kakuteru

mansion manshon

In Urhobo, an extraneous vowel i is introduced at the beginning of the word because in the language, nouns always begin with a vowel.

This process is called prothesis. In the two languages, Urhobo and Japanese, the borrowed words conform to the phonology of the languages.

Exercises

1. With illustrations in at least two languages, discuss how words are formed.

2. What is borrowing?

3. Discuss the different types of borrowing, with ample data.

NB

a. In the next lecture, we will examine morphological typology.

 b. For other lectures on word formation rules see Acronyms and Compounding.

b Excerpts are taken from Arokoyo (2017 and 2018).

References

Arokoyo, Bolanle Elizabeth. (2018). Owé Linguistics: an Introduction. Aba: NINLAN https://bit.ly/36uYAFw

Arokoyo, Bolanle Elizabeth. (2017). Unlocking Morphology. Ilorin: Chridamel Books.

Iloene, Modesta. (2010). Igbo Morphology. In Yusuf, Ore (ed.). Basic linguistics for Nigerian languages. Ijebu-Ode: Shebiotimo Publications. 188-201.