29.3516, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Poplack (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3516. Wed Sep 12 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3516, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Poplack (2017)

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Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2018 16:06:25
From: Natalie Operstein [natacha at ucla.edu]
Subject: Borrowing

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4953.html

AUTHOR: Shana  Poplack
TITLE: Borrowing
SUBTITLE: Loanwords in the Speech Community and in the Grammar
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Natalie Operstein,  

The overarching goal of ''Borrowing: Loanwords in the Speech Community and in
the Grammar'' by Shana Poplack is to provide an empirical foundation for the
much-theorized distinction between borrowing and code-switching. More
narrowly, the volume centers on disentangling the differences between three
categories of borrowed material, attested loanwords, nonce borrowings, and
code-switches, with the emphasis on morphological and syntactic means for
doing so. The volume is preceded by a foreword by Pieter Muysken and is
divided into a preface and twelve chapters. 

SUMMARY
 
The first three chapters provide an extended introduction to the volume's
goals and the methodology that underlies the research findings and theoretical
discussions in subsequent chapters. 

Chapter 1 ''Rationale'' introduces the purpose of the book, which is to
provide a detailed characterization of the structural, sociolinguistic,
synchronic and diachronic aspects of lexical borrowing; as well as its
methodology, which centers on the process of integration of donor-language
material into the morphological, syntactic and phonological structures of the
recipient languages based on an analysis of spontaneous bilingual speech. The
process of integration is to be examined by comparing the grammatical
structure of borrowed words with that of the unmixed or monolingual stretches
of the corresponding donor and recipient languages (''the benchmark
varieties''). The chapter provides definitions of the operative terms,
including ''donor language'' (LD), ''recipient language'' (LR), ''attested
loanwords'' (loanwords already attested in dictionaries or word lists and not
involving active borrowing by bilinguals), ''established loanwords''
(loanwords that are widely diffused in the community) and ''nonce words''
(''LD-origin items occurring only once''). The status of nonce words as
borrowings or single-word code-switches, the central issue that unites most of
the chapters, is to be determined by comparing their behavior with that of
attested loanwords, unambiguous code-switches, and corresponding items in the
benchmark varieties.  

Chapter 2 ''A variationist perspective on borrowing'' elaborates on the
methodology of variationist sociolinguistics that was used to obtain the raw
data and guide its analysis. Large amounts of spontaneous bilingual discourse
were recorded by trained in-group members in carefully stratified community
samples. Following transcription of the recordings, the LD material was
extracted and divided into two major categories, multiword LD sequences,
identified as unambiguous code-switches, and lone LD items. The latter
category was further divided into attested loanwords and ambiguous items. The
latter were then systematically compared to attested loanwords and to their
counterparts in the benchmark varieties (unmixed LD and LR of the same
speakers as well as multiword code-switches) in order to clarify their status
as nonce borrowings or code-switches. The comparison exploited the existence
of ''conflict sites'', or areas of structural or distributional divergence
between the LD and LR (such as nominal case marking in the Tamil/English
language pair). 

Chapter 3 ''Bilingual corpora'' describes the datasets. The Ottawa-Hull French
Corpus, which underlies the research findings in Chapters 4 and 8 through 11,
was collected in the early 1980s in Ottawa and the Hull sector of Gatineau.
Samples of spontaneous speech totaling about 270 hours and 2.5 million words
were recorded by in-group members from 120 representative individuals from
five neighborhoods differing with respect to the status of French, as majority
or minority language, and ratios of francophones to anglophones. Two
additional corpora, to be used in Chapter 8 for the study of the diachronic
evolution of loanwords, are audio recordings of the elderly Québécois born
between 1846 and 1895 and collected in the 1940s and 1950s, and spontaneous
speech recorded between 2005-2007 in a school located in one of the
neighborhoods represented in the Ottawa-Hull corpus. Smaller bilingual corpora
involving other language pairs provide the basis for the discussion in
Chapters 5 through 7 and 9.

Chapter 4 ''Borrowing in the speech community'' presents the key research
finding, to be further tested and refined in subsequent chapters, that the
morphosyntactic integration of LD-origin words in LR occurs at their first
mention or soon thereafter. The specific study reported in the chapter is
based on nearly 20,000 spontaneously occurring lone word tokens of English
origin extracted from the Hull-Ottawa French Corpus; these correspond to 0.83%
of the tokens and 3.3% of the types in the 2.5 million word corpus. The study
finds that English-origin nouns are assigned gender early and consistently,
with the small amount of variation in this area mirroring similar variation in
monolingual French. Parallel results obtain with respect to plural marking on
English-origin nouns and inflection on English-origin verbs; all
English-origin words are also found to be syntactically integrated into
French. In contrast to its robust morphosyntactic integration, the phonetic
integration of the borrowed material shows both inter- and intra-speaker
variation. These findings lead the author to conclude that the loanword versus
code-switch status of LD-origin words may be disambiguated based on their
morphosyntactic, but not phonetic, integration. 

Chapter 5 ''Dealing with variability in loanword integration'' puts under
further scrutiny the hypothesis that variability in the morphosyntactic
integration of loanwords mirrors internal variability in the LR, including
with respect to its conditioning. The hypothesis is tested on spontaneous
bilingual speech data involving the Tamil/English language pair. The study
finds that English nouns borrowed into Tamil display variation in the
accusative and dative case marking as well as with respect to preverbal
placement when used as direct objects, paralleling similar variability in the
unmixed Tamil of the same speakers. Tamil nouns borrowed into English were
found to take on English inflection and determiners and to be placed
postverbally when functioning as objects. The chapter also emphasizes the
inherent ambiguity of morphologically bare LD-origin nouns with respect to the
borrowing/code-switch dichotomy. 

Chapter 6 ''The bare facts of borrowing'' takes up the issue of the
borrowing/code-switch status of LD-origin nouns in LRs without overt nominal
morphology. The method involves reliance on syntactic clues, with the focus on
nominal modification patterns in the French/Wolof and French/Fongbe language
pairs. The conflict sites exploited for this purpose are LD/LR differences in
the placement of determiners and attributive adjectives as well as in their
tolerance for bare (undetermined) nouns. The results indicate that, with
regard to modification, French nouns in Wolof and Fongbe pattern like nouns in
the recipient languages rather than as in unmixed French, which is taken as
evidence that they are instances of borrowing rather than code-switching. This
result is then confirmed by the study of nominal modification patterns in the
English/Igbo language pair. 
 
Chapter 7 ''Confirmation through replication'' uses similar morphological and
syntactic means to determine the status of lone LD-origin items in other LD/LR
language pairs. One of the reported studies exploits LD/LR differences in the
noun-adjective, noun-possessor, and constituent orders to determine the status
of English-origin nouns in Gulf Arabic. Another exploits LD/LR differences in
the placement of attributive and predicative adjectives to determine the
status of English-origin adjectives in Persian. The occurrence patterns of
undetermined English-origin nouns in Spanish are found to adhere to LR rather
than LD norms. English-origin verbs in Igbo are found to be furnished with
Igbo inflectional morphology and to trigger vowel harmony in the affixes. In
all these cases, adherence to the structural or distributional properties of
the LRs argues for the borrowed status of the studied LD words. Two of the
reported studies emphasize the need to compare bilingual speech with the
unmixed speech of the same individuals rather than with the respective
standard varieties. The studies examine case marking on English-origin nouns
in languages with nominal case, Ukrainian and Japanese, and conclude that the
occurrence of bare (non-case-marked) nouns is due not to the code-switch
status of these nouns but rather to variable case marking in the LRs. The
chapter closes with a discussion of French-origin nouns in Tunisian Arabic;
these nouns' resistance to morphological integration is explained by reference
to ''a higher-order community resistance to inflecting LD-origin nouns'' (p.
120).

Chapter 8 ''How nonce borrowings become loanwords'' answers the question posed
in its title by empirically testing two assumptions, the assumption that lone
LD-origin items enter LR as nonce forms and are subsequently diffused across
the community, and the assumption that such items enter LR as code-switches
and are then gradually integrated into LR in the process of their diffusion.
Methodologically, the study relies on isolating nonce borrowings in three
diachronic corpora of spoken Quebec French, recordings of the elderly
Québécois born between 1846 and 1895 and representing nineteenth-century
speech, the Ottawa-Hull corpus representing twentieth-century speech, and
recordings made between 2005-2007. The major finding is that, based on such
diagnostics as verbal morphology, plural marking on nouns, determiner
realization, and assignment of nominal gender, the linguistic integration of
nonce forms takes place abruptly at their first mention rather than gradually,
as assumed by some theorists. A companion finding is that the linguistic
integration of a loanword proceeds independently from its social integration,
as measured by its intra-speaker recurrence and inter-speaker diffusion. 

Chapter 9 ''Distinguishing borrowing and code-switching'' confronts nonce
forms with their counterparts in multiword code-switches. (Multiword
code-switches were chosen for the comparison instead of the more logical
single-word code-switches because of the researchers' inability to identify
more than two potential examples of the latter (p. 156).) The study finds that
the two categories are both psychologically and structurally distinct,
including with respect to their part-of-speech composition, inflection on
verbs, plural marking on nouns, assignment of nominal gender, placement of
attributive adjectives, and determiner realization. 

Chapter 10 ''The role of phonetics in borrowing and integration'' examines the
potential of the phonetic integration of LD material to serve as a diagnostic
for distinguishing between different types of bilingual behavior.
Methodologically, the study focuses on the verbal production of speakers from
the Ottawa-Hull French Corpus who engaged in both nonce-borrowing and
code-switching behaviors. The conflict sites exploited for the study are the
segments represented orthographically as <th>, <h>, <r> and VOT in voiceless
stops. The major finding is that all three categories of language-mixing
showed variability in phonetic integration, with nonce forms being
phonetically integrated into French only 26% of the time, attested loanwords
only 57% of the time (both results are contrary to the expected 100% for <th>,
<h>, <r> and 88% for VOT), and that code-switches were also phonetically
integrated 39% of the time (where 0% was expected). The overall conclusion is
that phonetic integration proceeds independently from morphosyntactic
integration and cannot be used for distinguishing LD-origin material. 

Chapter 11 ''The social dynamics of borrowing'' uses the Ottawa-Hull French
Corpus to look at the influence of extra-linguistic factors on the
introduction and diffusion of borrowed material. The factors examined are the
speakers' age, gender, education, occupation, neighborhood of residence, and
proficiency in English.  A major finding is that, where the borrowing rate and
type are concerned, individual bilingual ability is outweighed by the norms of
the speech community. The chapter also emphasizes the need to recognize the
explanatory potential of community norms for the observed cross-community
differences in the borrowing strategies, particularly with respect to some
speech communities' failure to integrate LD-forms morphologically and/or their
preference for some but not other integration strategies. 

Chapter 12 ''Epilogue'' summarizes the key findings and methodological
contributions of the volume and outlines future research directions. 

EVALUATION 

''Borrowing'' brings a wealth of empirical evidence and proposes a concrete
and falsifiable conceptual framework to bear on the much-discussed theoretical
distinction between borrowing and code-switching. It describes in detail the
employed datasets and methodological tools and innovations, making the
reported studies replicable and applicable to other donor/recipient language
pairs. It also does much more than that: by putting the data into the
theoretical context of prevailing assumptions, and by systematically situating
the volume's findings against the background of prevailing expectations, it
contributes concrete empirical materials for testing proposals in a number of
areas, including cross-linguistic borrowability of different part-of-speech
categories, the gradualness theory of loanword integration, the impact of
community norms on bilingual behavior and integration strategies, and the
wealth of proposals about the phonetic and phonological integration of
loanwords. But perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the volume is that it
raises new and important issues for future research by, among other things,
inviting comparison with thematically related studies. 

One interesting issue concerns the heart of the methodology, the use of
morphological integration as a criterion for differentiating between
borrowings and code-switches, in light of Heath's (1989: 24) caution against
automatically taking morphological integration as evidence of borrowing (since
''in cases of prolonged language contact, speakers of Lx [LR] may develop
productive routines for spontaneously inserting Ly [LD] stems into Lx [LR]
frames''). The types of morphological integration discussed in the volume
include integration into majority inflectional patterns in the receiving
languages (e.g. assimilation of English verbs into the first conjugation in
French), integration into non-canonical patterns (e.g. assimilation of English
verbs into an analytical construction reserved for non-verbs in Persian), and
lack of integration (e.g. non-inflection of French nouns for number in
Tunisian Arabic). Participation in all three types of integration is viewed as
evidence of the borrowing rather than code-switch status of the affected items
because ''[a]ll of these strategies derive from LR and are absent from LD''
(p. 121). It would be interesting to see how this approach applies to
borrowing situations in which different degrees of integration are present in
the same datasets, and whether it may be refined to incorporate the factors
that govern such variation. Some published studies suggest that different
degrees of integration of borrowed material may be correlated with both
linguistic and extra-linguistic factors; for example, a combination of factors
is invoked by Hafez (1996: 16) with respect to different pluralization
patterns of borrowed nouns in Egyptian Arabic: ''The choice could be dictated
by the degree of conformity of the loanword to E[gyptian] A[rabic] patterns.
Such degrees of integration could also reflect language attitudes. For
instance, the use of broken plurals (where there is a sound-plural form
available) could mean that the user is less educated while use of the
sound-plural form could be regarded positively as educated or negatively as
affected and foreign''. 

A related issue is how the integration-based diagnostic of the
borrowing/code-switch status may be applied to borrowing situations in which
the morphology of the loans (or lack thereof) ends up shaping that of the
recipient language rather than the other way around. Smeaton (1973) reports
that English loans in Hasawi Arabic, which reflect only about a decade of
contact, ''exhibit a whole spectrum of integrational changes'' (103 fn. 185).
The least integrated forms in Smeaton's (1973) study ''must be regarded as
stable members of a special atypical (or marginal) morphological category''
(89). Similarly, the pluralization pattern of Spanish ''xenonyms'' like
'lócker(s)' ''locker(s)'' and 'menú(s)' ''menu(s)'' is atypical when compared
with that of ''domestic'' nouns like 'líder(es)' ''leader(s)'' and 'tisú(es)'
''tissue(s)'' (Harris 1992: 69-70). Complete failure to integrate the loans
morphologically may also lead to the emergence of new inflection classes in
the LR; e.g., in Russian most borrowed vowel-final nouns do not enter the
system of nominal declension, constituting a stable and growing class of
indeclinables (Ungebaun 1947). It also seems that the integration-based
diagnostic of the borrowing/code-switch status may need to be refined to
accommodate cases in which the words are borrowed together with their LD
inflectional formatives, thereby creating new inflection classes in the LRs. A
well-known example of this kind in English are nominal pluralization patterns
derived from foreign sources, such as alumnus / alumni, phenomenon /
phenomena, and kibbutz / kibbutzim. Outside nominal number, paradigm borrowing
has been described for nominal case as well as for adjectival, pronominal and
verbal morphology (Kossmann 2010; Seifart 2013). Borrowing of inflectional
formatives appears to be correlated with the degree of structural congruence
between the donor and recipient languages and is influenced by a range of
''cognitive, communicative, and sociocultural constraints'' (Gardani, Arkadiev
and Amiridze 2015: 10).

These are some of the questions that arise from reading this richly-documented
and thought-provoking work. A synthesis of several decades of original
research based on large sets of data, the volume offers empirical,
theoretical, and methodological insights and raises interesting new questions
relevant not only to the distinction between borrowing and code-switching but
also to a range of additional issues in language contact, bilingualism, and
diachronic linguistics research. 

REFERENCES

Gardani, Francesco, Peter Arkadiev, and Nino Amiridze. 2015. Borrowed
morphology: an overview. In Borrowed Morphology, Francesco Gardani, Peter
Arkadiev, and Nino Amiridze (eds), 1-23. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Hafez, Ola. 1996. Phonological and morphological integration of loanwords into
Egyptian Arabic. Égypte/Monde Arabe 27-28: 383-410.

Harris, James W. 1992. The form classes of Spanish substantives. Yearbook of
Morphology 2: 65-88.

Heath, Jeffrey. 1989. From Code-Switching to Borrowing: Foreign and Diglossic
Mixing in Moroccan Arabic. London/New York: Kegan Paul International.

Kossmann, Maarten. 2010. Parallel system borrowing: Parallel morphological
systems due to the borrowing of paradigms. Diachronica 27: 459-487.

Seifart, Frank. 2013. AfBo: A world-wide survey of affix borrowing. Leipzig:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at
http://afbo.info, Accessed on 2018-04-24.) 

Smeaton, B. Hunter. 1973. Lexical Expansion Due To Technical Change: As
Illustrated by the Arabic of Al Hasa, Saudi Arabia. Bloomington, IN: Research
Center for the Language Sciences, Indiana University. 

Unbegaun, Boris O. 1947. Les substantifs indéclinables en russe. Revue des
Études Slaves 23: 130-145.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Natalie Operstein is the author of ''Consonant Structure and Prevocalization''
(2010) and ''Zaniza Zapotec'' (2015) and co-editor of ''Valence Changes in
Zapotec: Synchrony, Diachrony, Typology'' (2015) and ''Language Contact and
Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond'' (2017). Her research interests center on
language change, phonology, and language contact.





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