A typology of verbal borrowings / by Jan Wohlgemuth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wohlgemuth, Jan.

Series:

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 211.

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 211

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Verbals.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Language and languages--Foreign words and phrases.

Language and languages.

Sociolinguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (491 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The questions as to why most languages appear to have more trouble borrowing verbs than nouns, and as to the possible mechanisms and paths by which verbs can be borrowed or the obstacles for verb borrowing, have been a topic of interest since the late 19th century. However, no truly substantial typological research had been undertaken in this field before the present study. The present work is the first in-depth cross-linguistic study on loan verbs and the morphological, syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects of loan verb accommodation. It applies current methodologies on database management, quantitative analysis and typological conventions and it is based on a broad global sample of data from over 400 languages and the typological data from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). One major result of the present study is the falsification, on empirical grounds, of long-standing claims that verbs generally are more difficult to borrow than other parts of speech, or that verbs could never be borrowed as verbs and always needed a re-verbalization in the borrowing language.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of tables

List of figures

Abbreviations and symbols

Preliminaries and conventions

I. Towards loan verb typology

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Methodology

Chapter 3. Basic concepts

II. Loan verb accommodation

Chapter 4. Introduction

Chapter 5. Types of input forms

Chapter 6. Direct Insertion

Chapter 7. Indirect Insertion

Chapter 8. The Light Verb Strategy and other complex predicates

Chapter 9. Paradigm Insertion

Chapter 10. Other patterns

Chapter 11. Non-patterns

Chapter 12. Summary: The strategies compared

III. Distributional analysis

Chapter 13. Strategy distributions

Chapter 14. Genealogical strategy distribution

Chapter 15. Typological strategy distribution

Chapter 16. Pattern distributions

Chapter 17. Borrowing of accommodation patterns

IV. Interpretation and conclusion

Chapter 18. Determining factors

Chapter 19. Generalizations and implications

Chapter 20. Conclusion

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [391]-442) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612296659

9781282296657

1282296655

9783110219340

3110219344

OCLC:

535900289