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Hilary Young wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>I was wondering if the members of this list
could contribute examples or counterexamples of this. Also, does
anyone have a functional explanation of why this might
be?</blockquote><br>
It is not particularly difficult at to find exceptions to this
generalisation -- the most obvious one being, as Dick Hudson pointed out,
English, with its 60% or so of borrowed material. Until recently, I
thought that was pretty exceptional, but I have now realised that it is
more common that I originally thought. For instance, figures of borrowed
vocabulary that have been suggested for some other languages
include:<br>
<br>
Korean - at least more than half<br>
Swedish - 65-70%<br>
Vietnamese - 60-70%<br>
Breton - 60-80% (including 40% core vocab)<br>
Lolak (Austronesian) - 80%<br>
Vlax Romani - 90% (note that this is not a so-called Para-Romani
variety!)<br>
Hungarian - 90%<br>
Albanian - 90%<br>
<br>
Clearly, then, such languages abound. I still think Bakker & Mous
have a point, though, that there is a rather clear difference between
languages such as the above, and what I would call truly mixed (aka
"intertwined") languages. In the former case, borrowing goes,
so to speak, from the periphery and towards the core. Presumably, the 10%
of Fenno-Ugric lexical material in Hungarian is core vocabulary, whereas
the core is mostly Spanish (ie from the "intruding" language in
an intertwiner such as Media Lengua). Similarly, while English is 60%
French, there are only six French items on the English version of the
Swadesh 100 list.<br>
<br>
Secondly, it would probably be possible to divide those 90% borrowed
items according to 1) different source languages, and/or 2) different
diachronic layers (as manifested by different sound correspondences or
the like). I would suspect that what I would call true intertwined
languages (eg Media Lengua and Michif), on the other hand, typically
derive the "borrowed" lexicon from one single source language
to the virtual exclusion of others, and the "borrowed"
component can not be demonstrated to have grown over time, but seems
rather to have entered the language all at once.<br>
<br>
So, while it is not remarkable that most of a language's word stock gets
replaced bit by bit over time, it is indeed remarkable that a large
proportion (and in particular its core vocabulary) is replaced overnight,
and this is what makes intertwined languages unique. I think that is what
Bakker & Mous were after, although the expressed themselves somewhat
awkwardly.<br>
<br>
As for Hilary Young's follow-up question "does anyone have a
functional explanation of why this might be?", the way I see it (and
I'm now deliberately oversimplifying) is that borrowing reflects one
culture being impressed by another. There may then be a "critical
mass" of how many borrowings can be received from one language at
any one given time before the perceived cultural superiority of the other
party would make you rather want to shift language altogether. In other
words, there is a limit for how impressed you can be by somebody without
giving in completely, and you want to become fully assimilated. So (if we
for the sake of discussion) assume the Bakker & Mous quote to be
true, 45% would reflect speakers of A being impressed by speakers of B,
100% would reflect a complete language shift to B, and 90%+ would
represent the unique cases of language intertwining. 45% is then the
threshold that represents the point where there is no longer any
perceived use for the ethnic language as a symbol of identity -- this
would then be (empirically, if the quote were true) how impressed you can
be before being completely outcooled by the socioeconomically superior
group.<br>
<br>
Again, I am of course deliberately oversimplifying here, but I hope you
get the point.<br>
<br>
<br>
/MP<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</div>
<div>Mikael Parkvall</div>
<div>Institutionen för lingvistik</div>
<div>Stockholms Universitet</div>
<div>SE-10691 STOCKHOLM</div>
<br>
<div>+46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (home)</div>
<div>Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89</div>
<br>
<div>parkvall@ling.su.se</div>
<br>
Creolist Archives:
<a href="http://www.ling.su.se/Creole" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://www.ling.su.se/Creole</a>
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