Borrowing: the Synchrony of Integration

The notion of loanword assimilation is operationalized in a number of d~flerent ways, focusing on both linguistic and social aspects. The indices of integration thus constructed are applied to a set of lexical data elicited from Puerto Ricatz children and adults from East Harlem, New York. The results of this survey are analyzed statistically using the method of principal components. We interpret the output in terms of the social and linguistic trajectory of words during the borrowing and integration process. Of particular importance are the relatively close relationship between increase in usage frequencies and the processes of phonological ititegration, the transient nature of inconsistencies in gender assignment, and the fates of competing lexical items for a single referent. The lexical stock of languages may contain a considerable proportion of words borrowed from one or more other languages. The historical record, together with methods of historical and comparative linguistics, can help us infer which words were borrowed, from what language, and approximately when. On the synchronic level, however, making such inferences can be more difficult, particularly because there is no unequivocal way of deciding when a lexical item from one language, used during discourse in another language, whether by a single speaker, or repeatedly in a community, should be considered a loanword. It may constitute all or part of a code-switch, which is a phenomenon quite distinct from borrowing. It may be a manifestation of incomplete acquisition of one of a bilingual's two languages. It might be a momentary lapse of the type often classified as 'interference'. Or we might want to characterize it as still another kind of result of language contact. It has been claimed that 'from synchronic examination [i.e. without comparative or etymological evidence] no loans are discoverable or describable' (Fries and Pike 1949; see also Haugen 1950a; Weinreich Linguistics 22 (1984), 99-135 0024-3949/84/0022-0099 $2.00 @ Mouton Publishers 100 S. Poplack and D. Sankoff 1953), presumably because they are so perfectly assimilated to recipientlanguage patterns. We dispute this all-or-nothing viewpoint of the borrowing process, focusing specifically on the mechanisms by which an item is gradually converted from a foreign element to a nativized one. It is during this transition that it is difficult to recognize and distinguish loanwords. Though there is a large literature on the topic of borrowing, there remain many unanswered questions about the linguistic, sociological, acquisitional, and other aspects of borrowing, as well as the subtle methodological dilemrnas involved in detecting, defining, identifying, and characterizing loanwords. In this paper we first review the pertinent literature, focusing on three aspects of the borrowing process: the linguistic mechanisms involved, the social dynamics, and the definitional and analytic problems in studying lexical transfer. We will abstract from this work a number of concepts and hypotheses which have been developed to describe and account for the importation of forms from one language to another. We will proceed to operationalize these concepts on the basis of a corpus of potential loanwords collected from a group of bilingual Puerto Rican children and their parents. We then analyze these data statistically to evaluate the dimensionality of the borrowing process the degree to which processes of phonological, syntactic, lexical, and sociological integration of a foreign element occur in unison or proceed independently. We pay special attention to the intergenerational transmission of borrowed material, and in particular to the roles of older and younger, monolingual and bilingual speakers in its propagation and eventual phonological shape. Traditional as well as more recent studies of borrowing stressed that adaptations of foreign items of any linguistic level to the pattern of the recipient language, such as incorporation of verbal and nominal suffixes, assignment of gender, etc., were indications that the forms had been integrated into that language (e.g. Haugen 1950a: 396, 440; also implicit in Bloomfield 1933: 450, 453; see also Hyman 1970; Lovins 1974). Fries and Pike incorporate phonological, grammatical, and social criteria in their assun~ption (1949: 39) that a loan sequence of phonemes can be considered completely assimilated when (a) it parallels the sequences occurring in native materials, or is analogous to them; when (b) its occurrence in relation to grammatical boundaries is the same as sequences in rlative words; and when (c) the words containing it are in common use by monolinguals; or a loan sequence may be considered completely assimilated when it serves as a pattern for the development of new sequences in the native language. This state of complete assimilation, however, obviously does not come about instantaneously. And during the period, months, years, or generaBorrowing: the synchrony of integration 101 tions, over which it is attained, little is known about which of these criteria is satisfied first, or last, or about the intermediate stages in this attainment. The linguistic integration of loanwords is but one aspect of their assimilation into a language. The sociological process of acceptation is another. Studies of languages in contact have focused on two basically sociological or sociolinguistic distinctions as being relevant to the incorporation of borrowed material into the linguistic repertoire of the community. One is the differential role, as carriers of innovations, of monolinguals versus bilinguals of varying degrees of competence; the other involves the changing shape of loanwords across successive generations of speakers. A common view is that bilinguals tend to use loanwords before monolinguals, who learn them from the former. Bilingual speakers are also thought to assimilate new sounds sooner than their monolingual counterparts (Fries and Pike 1949: 39). Haugen distinguishes between monolinguals and those who became bilingual as adults on the one hand and childhood bilinguals on the other. Observing that borrowed items tend to retain an uncertain linguistic status for some time after their first adoption (1956: 5 9 , he attributes part of this vacillation to the awareness on the part of the bilingual of the origin of the borrowed word, and presumably to his indecision as to whether to produce it according to recipient or donor language rules. In addition, both monolinguals and nonfluent ('adult') bilinguals make phonic adaptations (or 'distortions') of loanwords, while fluent ('childhood') bilinguals reproduce the patterns of the donor language (Haugen 1950a, 1956). These individual differences in ability and desire are presumably responsible for the alternative forms often shown by loans reported by Haugen. He posits three stages of loanword integration (e.g. 1969: 394) ranging from 'pre-bilingual', when forms are reproduced according to recipient language patterns with great irregularity in the results, to 'adult bilingualism', at which point the loans are produced more systematically, through 'childhood bilingualism', during which sound types (and presumably other patterns) from the donor language are introduced into the recipient language. Indeed, childhood bilinguals or younger speakers (who seem to be thought of as indistinguishable), according to this schema, arc the spcokcrs responsible for introducing NEW patterns into the recipient language. Whichever speakers first make use of loanwords, and whatever the mechanism of spread within the lexicon through time and throughout the conlmunity, an important diagnostic for the incorporation of a form into the native lexicon is the increased frcquency of its usilge. Even the degree to which the loanword is linguistically integrated has been attributed to 102 S. Poplack and D. Sankof the frequency of its use within the community (Kreidler 1979: 143). Holden (1976: 131) has suggested that 'most loanwords which show even a minimal degree of acceptance by the target language immediately assume a phonetic shape which is identical to that of the native vocabulary'. Independent of these hypotheses correlating frequency of use with morphophonemic adaptations, frequency of use in itself has been considered a criterion of integration. Hasselmo suggests, for Swedish-English bilinguals, that 'some of the English discourse units introduced into Swedish discourse are used with such regularity that it may be necessary to regard them as in some sense irztegrated with an American Swedish mode of speaking' (1970: 179). More specifically 'if certain instances of interference are repeated often enough in discourse in a certain language to be regarded as habitualized, the forms and/or patterns involved can be referred to as (socially) integrated with the language of the community' (1970: 179; see also Mackey 1970). But as Mackey has observed (1970: 204), there is no necessary indication in the (single) occurrence of a given element in discourse of whether it represents a case of interference or a case of integration. 1.0. Analytical distinctions At first glance it might seem to be an easy matter to detect material borrowed from one language in the discourse of the other, merely by comparison with the standard variety of the recipient language, or with communities not in contact with the donor language. This type of external comparison is, howcvcr, quite inadequate. The co-occurrence of forms from two languages may be due to a number of processes other than borrowing, the most important of which are code-switching and incomplete second-language acquisition by native speakers of another. Codeswitching is simply the alternate use of the two languages in discourse, and even in a sentence, without any necessary influence of one language on those str&ches of discourse realized in the other. Partial acquisition of a second language may l