In the case of squisare , the -are ending assigns the verb to the first conjugation, the most regular of all Italian verbal paradigms, and the remaining sounds are restructured according to native pronunciation patterns. A statistical analysis of the loanword data collected over the last decade. These are assigned to both the masculine and feminine genders. The factors which determine gender assignment are too complex to mention here. Suffice it to say that the shape of the word itself, its referent, its similarity to a native item, and the like, all influence its gender.
Borrowing constitutes a psycholinguistic response to new environmental conditions.
Rarely do the loanwords refer to abstract notions. In other words, they describe the immigrant's new environment in ways that would not be possible, or appropriate, by the lexical resources of the native language. The ethnolect spoken in Canada elicits different reactions from the Italian community. Among first-generation immigrants, the degree of penetration of the loanwords is so high that they are generally no longer of their foreign origin. Italians of subsequent generations, recently arrived immigrants, teachers of Italian, and others, consciously recognize most of the features which distinguish Italo-Canadian form of Peninsular Italian.