Borrowing of verbal morphology

[Larry Trask]

There have recently been claims on this list that verbal morphology can
never be borrowed.  But I note now that this claim is falsified by an
example presented in the Thomason and Kaufman book which started the
discussion.  On pp. 215-222, T&K discuss the example of Asia Minor Greek,
which has been massively influenced by Turkish -- in phonology, in
morphology, in syntax, and in lexicon.  There are many local varieties of
Greek in Asia Minor; all have been heavily influenced by Turkish, though
each shows a different array of borrowed features.

On p. 219, T&K point out that some varieties of Greek have borrowed Turkish
verbal inflections -- specifically personal agreement suffixes.  They cite
examples from Cappadocian Greek, in which the Turkish past-tense agreement
suffixes <-ik> (first-plural) and <-iniz> (second-plural) have been
borrowed and are attached to Greek verbs.  These suffixes are taken over in
invariant form, without the Turkish vowel-harmony alternants, even though
Asia Minor Greek has also borrowed vowel harmony from Turkish, and applies
vowel harmony to certain Greek suffixes, at least when these are added to
words of Turkish origin.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

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