Loan Word Accommodation Biases: Markedness and Finiteness

One way or another, loan words have to be grammatically integrated in the grammar of their recipient language. For verbs, Wohlgemuth (2009) finds that DIRECT INSERTION, where native inflections are added directly onto the borrowed stem, is cross-linguistically the most frequent accommodation strategy. He concludes from this that the borrowing of loan verbs is not constrained by inflection. Based on a two-fold corpus study on the integration of English loan verbs in Present-day Dutch and French loan verbs in Late Middle English, we propose a correction to Wohlgemuth’s (2009) argument. Even under direct insertion, loan verbs are subject to constraints, as they enter some usage categories more readily than others. More specifically, we find evidence for loan verbs being avoided in finite forms and in morphologically marked forms. We refer to these joint tendencies as ACCOMMODATION BIASES. The specific nature of accommodation biases in loan verbs suggests that loan verbs are underrepresented in those categories where they carry a dense functional load as markers of both lexical and grammatical information.

Publication year:2022

Accessibility:Open