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6 - Contact and borrowing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2013

By
Marius Sala
Edited by
Martin Maiden ,
John Charles Smith  and
Adam Ledgeway
John Charles Smith
Affiliation:
St Catherine's College, Oxford
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

The subject of contact and borrowing is perennially important in Romance linguistics. The analysis of the various types of linguistic contact focuses on the situation in Romance, but necessarily mentions research on other linguistic areas, especially where they are fundamentally relevant to Romance. It is generally considered that extra-linguistic factors in particular determine and stimulate contact between languages. A distinction must be made between contacts in the period of the emergence of the Romance languages and later contacts. Germanic languages are considered a superstrate for western Romance languages, whose influence is manifested to differing degrees in lexical, toponymic and anthroponymic loans. Romance languages in general show some lexical borrowings from modern Slavonic languages, usually as a result of cultured and written transmission. Where phonological, syntactic and morphological borrowing is concerned, Romance linguists have come to learn particular caution in attributing phenomena to foreign influence.
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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages , pp. 187 - 236
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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