This paper examines the state-of-the-art for the historical study of the Rma (Qiang) language (< Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan) and points out some methodological issues in earlier work. The paper discusses how vowel correspondences have been obfuscated by loanwords, onomatopoeic forms, and analogical levelling. It also discusses the analysis of compound forms and points out how certain compound forms have been incorrectly etymologized. It deals with broader, more fundamental issues in prior work such as top-down rather than bottom-up reconstructions, and problematic conceptualizations of what constitutes reconstructions. The article offers potential solutions to the issues discussed and points out where future work would be most profitable.

This article provides an overview of the Russian origin of Karelian cow names. It explores what the Russian-origin names mean, what the most common principles of naming are, and whether Russian names have Karelian equivalents. Attention is also paid to the spatial and temporal variation of the names. The data were collected in the 2010s by means of interviews. The data are compared with the name data recorded in the Dictionary of Karelian (KKS). The KKS data reveal extensive adaptation to the Karelian language, whereas in the interview data there is less adaptation to Karelian and the names are often thoroughly Russian. In the KKS data the most common principle of naming is the time of birth, and names based on colouration are also common. According to both data sets, the principles of naming have remained relatively consistent, and the data reveal no great spatial differences in the occurrence of names.

Ausbau processes increase differences between two close written language varieties. Finnish and Kven are considered two ausbau languages today, in contrast to an earlier view which considered Kven to be a dialect of Finnish. In this article, ausbau processes are illustrated by comparing the use of eera verbs, a group constituting international and Scandinavian loanwords in the two languages. Most eera verbs were purged from Modern Written Finnish and they are expressed via other means today. By contrast, Kven accepts eera verbs in the same way as Old Written Finnish. Purism – perceived as avoidance of certain linguistic elements – is the explanation behind ausbau processes in this case, and purist attitudes reflect the identities of language planners. Eera verbs represent a small corner of language, yet their use differentiates Kven from Modern Written Finnish, and underscores the independence of Kven as a separate language.

Loanword analysis is a unique contribution of historical linguistics to our understanding of prehistoric cultural interfaces. As language reflects the lives of its speakers, the substantiation of loanwords draws on the composite evidence from linguistic as well as auxiliary data from archaeology and genetics through triangulation. The Bronze Age of Central Asia is in principle linguistically mute, but a host of recent independent observations that tie languages, cultures and genetics together in various ways invites a comprehensive reassessment of six highly diagnostic loanwords (‘seven’, ‘name/fame’, ‘sister-in-law’, ‘honey’, ‘metal’ and ‘horse’) that are associated with the Bronze Age. Moreover, they are shared between Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic and sometimes Old Chinese. The successful identification of the interfaces for these loanwords can help settle longstanding debates on languages, migrations and the items themselves. Each item is analysed using the comparative method with reference to the archaeological record to assess the plausibility of a transfer. I argue that the six items can be dated to have entered Central and East Asian languages from immigrant Indo-European languages spoken in the Afanasievo and Andronovo cultures, including a novel source for the ‘horse’ in Old Chinese.

This study examines contact outcomes in Finnish spoken in a heritage community in Misiones province, Argentina, in the 1970s. The data show limited morphosyntactic differences from dialectal varieties of Finnish, and most of the Spanish influence is lexical loans or sporadic codeswitches that have an emphatic function. The results show that beyond established lexical loans, both fluent and less fluent speakers avoid mixing and comment on it when it occurs. Translation and word search strategies show evidence of the speakers’ awareness about language mixing in the interview setting in which data were collected.

The Persian lexeme pahrēz-, pahrēxtan (inf.), “to avoid, to abstain” and also “to care, to protect”, is found in Jewish, Christian, and Mandaic magical literature. It is also current in Mandaic works, and is found in some Geonic works in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It has not yet been found in the Babylonian Talmud itself. In this article I discuss a recently discovered occurrence of this word in a reconstructed codex of chapters of Babylonian Talmud, found in the Cairo Genizah (GM). I begin with a reading of the talmudic sugiya. I then discuss other uses of pahrēz in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, in other dialects of Eastern Aramaic, and in Middle Persian. I end with a re-reading of the talmudic sugiya in GM in light of the meaning of pahrēz.

A renewed interested in Indian Ocean studies has underlined possibilities of the transnational. This study highlights lexical borrowing as an analytical tool to deepen our understanding of cultural exchanges between Indian Ocean ports during the long nineteenth century, comparing loanwords from several Asian and African languages and demonstrating how doing so can re-establish severed links between communities. In this comparative analysis, four research avenues come to the fore as specifically useful to explore the dynamics of non-elite contact in this part of the world: (1) nautical jargon, (2) textile terms, (3) culinary terms, and (4) slang associated with society’s lower strata. These domains give prominence to a spectrum of cultural brokers frequently overlooked in the wider literature. It is demonstrated through concrete examples that an analysis of lexical borrowing can add depth and substance to existing scholarship on interethnic contact in the Indian Ocean, providing methodological inspiration to examine lesser studied connections. This study reveals no unified linguistic landscape, but several key individual connections between the ports of the Indian Ocean frequented by Persian, Hindustani, and Malay-speaking communities.

This article takes as its starting point the extent of borrowing in Middle English among the hundred meanings included in the Leipzig–Jakarta List of Basic Vocabulary, a recently developed tool for exploring the impact of borrowing on basic vocabulary on a cross-linguistic basis. This is adopted for the possibility it provides for taking an empirically based approach to identifying at least a proportion of those loanwords that have most impact on the core lexicon. The article then looks in detail at a particularly striking example identified using this list: the verb carry, borrowed into English in the late fourteenth century from Anglo-Norman, and found with some frequency in its modern core meaning from the very beginning of its history in English. The competition this word shows with native synonyms, especially bear, is surveyed, and the systemic pressures that may have facilitated its widespread adoption are explored, as well as the points of similarity it shows with some other borrowings into the core vocabulary of Middle English; in particular, the hypothesis is advanced that a tendency towards isomorphism in vocabulary realizing basic meanings may be a significant factor here. The article also contends that the example of carry sheds new light on the receptivity of even basic areas of the lexicon to Anglo-Norman lexis in the late Middle English period. The trajectory shown by this word is particularly illuminating, with borrowing in a restricted meaning with reference to the commercial bulk transportation of goods, merchandise, etc. being followed by very rapid development of a much broader meaning, which even within the fourteenth century appears in at least some varieties (notably the works of Chaucer) to be a significant competitor for native bear as default realization of the basic meaning ‘to transfer/carry (something, especially in one's hands)’.

For Rothwell (1998: 156) ‘words of ultimately French origin became part of the lexis of English as a result of the myriad daily contacts between Anglo-French and Middle English in the minds and under the pens of a whole literate class’. Although such contact interfaces between Francophone and Anglophone speakers clearly must have existed, not enough is known as to the means by which French-origin lexis was borrowed and diffused. I argue that a principal agency of contact-induced lexical change in Middle English was the clergy in their everyday role of spiritual guidance, whether or not they themselves composed religious texts. French loans in works of spiritual guidance are known to be common from the thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse onwards (Trotter 2003a). According to contemporaneous sources, English clerics received a Francophone-medium school education (Orme 1973), which would have familiarised them with the French vocabulary used in religious instruction in chantry schools and beyond.

The various manuscripts of the Cursor Mundi, a work of lay religious instruction probably composed around 1300, also offer a revealing window on the process of lexical innovation and replacement instigated by the clergy. An analysis of variant lexical forms, native and French-origin, found in the first 10,000 lines of this work shows that the latter would go on to replace native items the majority of the time. The loss of many native variants, e.g. niþ, mensk and þole, and their replacement, respectively, by envy, honour and suffer, can be attributed to the role played by the clergy in diffusing French-origin items in the domains of discourse they dominated. Rather than merely reflecting the pre-existing lexical knowledge of monolingual English speakers, the clergy's use of such items initially introduced and then maintained French-origin lexemes in at least the receptive competence of such speakers. Their regular and widespread contact with the population at large would have enabled the take-up of lexical innovation via the spoken medium, thus motivating the use observed in homiletic and devotional written texts of extensive French-origin lexis.