Language Variation and Change

Table of Contents - 1994 - Volume 6, Issue 01  

Research Article

Modeling lexical borrowability

Roeland van Houta1 and Pieter Muyskena2

a1 Tilburg University

a2 University of Amsterdam

Abstract

In this article, we develop analytical techniques to determine borrowability – that is, the ease with which a lexical item or a category of lexical items can be borrowed. The analysis is based on two assumptions: (1) the distribution of items in both the host and donor language should be taken into account to explain why certain items are, and others are not, borrowed; (2) the borrowability of a lexical category may result from a set of (underlying) operative factors or constraints. Our analysis is applied to Spanish borrowings in Bolivian Quechua on the basis of a set of bilingual texts.