[Lingtyp] Borrowability of prepositions

[Ian Joo]

Deae Sergey,

In Sinosphere, consisting of Chinese and non-Chonese lects heavily influenced by Chinese, Korean and Japanese have borrowed a large share of their vocabulary from Chinese, but nearly no prepositions. Vietnamese, on the other hand, has extensively borrowed them, such as tại(<在 ‘at’), do (< 由 ‘due to’), như (<如 ‘as, like’). I think this is due to the fact that Vietnamese, like Chinese, is syntactically isolating, while Korean and Japanese are not.

Regards,
Ian

> 07.04.2023 16:59, Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com> 작성:
> 
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> My Neo-Babylonian corpus (an Akkadian variety of 8-7 centuries BC) has a preposition la ‘to(wards)’, obviously borrowed from the contemporary Aramaic. Since Neo-Babylonian was an administrative language of the time, while Aramaic had no official standing, the borrowing of a preposition might look weird. What do we know about the ways prepositions are borrowed, and in particular about linguistic situations that favour this kind of borrowing? (Note that this was the time of Akkadian-Aramaic bilingualism in Mesopotamia)  
> 
>  Thank you very much,
> 
> Sergey
> 
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