Borrowing of verbs vs. nouns? [from LINGUIST list]

[Dave Robertson]

...You might find it a good exercise to think of the following in light of Chinook Jargon...Dave

Date:  Fri, 01 Mar 2002 10:25:24 -0500
From:  "george huttar" <george_huttar at sil.org>
Subject:  borrowing of verbs

    Here's a summary of my inquiry appearing in a Linguistlist posting of
    24 February 2002, which read:

         A standard textbook on historical linguistics, Hock's 1991
         Principles of Historical Linguistics, 2nd ed., p. 386, says:

         "...it has been noted that verbs are crosslinguistically less
         easily borrowed than nouns..."

         Is this a generally accepted claim?  Can you suggest a basic
         bibliography where I could find documentation?

    First, my thanks to the following for their valued responses:

      Fredric W. Field         Pete Unseth              Daniel Villa
      Nicholas Sobin           James A. Walker          John E. Koontz
      Natalia Gagarina         Hal Schiffman            Martin Haspelmath
      Joost Zwarts

    Second, bibliography suggested by respondents, in ascending order by
    date:

      Moravcsik, Edith (1975). Borrowed verbs.  Wiener Linguistische
    Gazette 8:3-30.

      Moravcsik, Edith (1978). Language contact. In J. H. Greenberg, C. A.
    Ferguson & E. A. Moravcsik, eds., Universals of human language, Volume
    1, Method and theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 93-122.

      Comrie, Bernard (1981, 1989). Language universals and linguistic
    typology: Syntax and morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [This turned out to have little on the subject--GLH]

      Sobin, Nicholas (1982).  Texas Spanish and lexical borrowing.  In J.
    Amastae & L. Elias-Olivares, eds., Spanish in the United States:
    Sociolinguistic aspects. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, pp.
    166-181.

      van Hout, Roeland and Pieter Muysken (1994).  Modeling lexical
    borrowability.  Language variation and change 6:39-62).

      Gomez, David Zarazua (1995).  Prestamos verbales en el espa¤ol
    chicano.  New Mexico State U. Master's thesis.

      Dressler, W. and M. Lad nyi (1999).  Productivity in word formation
    (WF):  A morphological approach.  Acta linguistica hungarica
    46:103-145.

      Morimoto, Yukiko (1999). Loan Words and Their Implications for the
    Categorial Status of Verbal Nouns.  In Chang, Steve S., Lily Liaw, and
    Josef Ruppenhofer (eds.),  Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting
    of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Feb. 12-15, 1999: General Session and
    Parasession on Loan Word Phenomena (BLS 25). Berkeley:  Berkeley
    Linguistics Society, 371-82.

      Field, Fredric W. (In press).  Linguistic borrowing in bilingual
    contexts.  Philadelphia/Amsterdam:  John Benjamins.  [Having read
    Chapter 2 and section 4.3, I believe this is a book to look forward
    to--GLH]

      For those who read Russian, recent books of Zems Kaja.

    Third, respondents provided examples from several language contact
    situations confirming Hock's claim:

      Endo (Kenya) has borrowed more nouns than verbs from Swahili.

      US Spanish has borrowed more nouns from English than verbs.

      Dravidian languages "almost never borrow verbs".

      The few loanwords from European languages into Native American
      languages of the Northeastern and Plains areas are typically nouns.

      On the other hand, it was noted that there are many examples of
      verbs being borrowed from one Indo-European language to another, and
      from Latin to Basque--but no indication that these have ever been as
      numerous as borrowed nouns.

    Fourth, suggested explanations and general observations:

      The usual greater morphological complexity of verbs hinders their
      being borrowed.

        Specifically, the usual greater morphological complexity of verbs
        increases the chances of typological mismatch between potential
        source and borrowing language, and thereby hinders their being
        borrowed.

      The referents of nouns are more readily delineable from the
      environment than those of verbs, so nouns are more readily borrowed
      than are verbs.  {cf. literature on child language acquisition on
      why children acquire nouns before verbs--GLH]

      Nouns are semantically less complex than words of other form
      classes.

      Nouns are syntactically more independent than, say, verbs and
      adjectives, which typically rely on tautoclausal arguments (for
      verbs) and head nouns (for adjectives); nouns are also semantically
      more independent of their syntagmatic context than are adjectives.

      Finally, several mentioned that instead of borrowing verbs as such,
      languages borrow (verbal) nouns and compound them with dummy verbs
      like 'do'.

    Again, my thanks to all respondents.  I hope I have represented your
    input accurately in my above paraphrases.

    George Huttar
    george_huttar at sil.org

    SIL & Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology
    Box 24686
    00502 Karen
    Nairobi
    KENYA

--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



__________________________________________________________________
Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop at Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/

Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/