The question of what is the difference between borrowing and code-switching has attracted the attention of scholars far and wide and gave at the same time rise to a plethora of publications in order to draw a boundary between these two terms. In the most recent of these publications (Grosjean 1982, Poplack & Meechan 1995 & 1998; to name but a few), it has been often argued that borrowings are donor-language items that are integrated in the grammar of the recipient language at a community level, while code-switches take place at individual level and they retain the grammar of the language from which they derive. However, the current political and economic uncertainties in various regions of the world have been found to cause mass refugee movements to conflict-free places, where contact between newcomers and locals usually lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. The current study discusses the contactinduced German-origin lone lexical items used by Iraqi-Arabic-speaking refugees in Germany. It is the aim of this study to show whether or not these lexical items can be considered as code-switches or established borrowings. The data I am analyzing come from spontaneous and elicited conversations of the first and second wave of Iraqi- Arabic-speaking refugees and asylum seekers to Germany as well as from online- and paper-pencil-questionnaires.
The text discusses words occurring in the Polish-East Slavic borderlands and prevalent in eastern Polish dialects. Differntiation between old references and loans in this area is not always easy. The material presented here is very diverse. In the case of certain words, identifying them as East Slavic loans with an indisputable source is possible, while in the case of others it is difficult to identify the direct source of the loan. Among the words recorded in the East Slavic borderlands we can find those whose range in Polish dialects seems to indicate the possibility of Ruthenian influence; however, their Polish phonetic form implies their native origin and one should speak about an old reference in this respect. We also encounter Pan-Slavic words, where a doubt arises as to whether they are loans or old references in Polish in the East Slavic area and Eastern Poland.
The article attempts to differentiate, on the basis of selected words recorded in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, whether we are dealing with language loans or old references. The analysis takes into account e.g. ethymological, morphological and geographical criteria. The study focuses on the following words: cot ‘an even number’, czapigi, czepigi ‘plough handle’, had ‘an abominable animal’ and hydzić się ‘loathe’, ‘abhor’, ‘denigrate’, kosiec ‘scyther’, liszka ‘an odd number’, liszny/liszni ‘superfluous’, ‘supernumerary’, przewiąsło ‘a straw belt to tie sheaths siewiec ‘sower’, śloza ‘tear’, żeniec ‘harvester’, żenich, żeniuch ‘bridegroom’, ‘fiancé’, żnieja ‘female harvester’. Recognition as borrowings may be based on those word forms where phonetic elements characteristic of other languages, unknown in Polish, occur. Analysis of certain words has revealed the occurrence of Proto-Slavic and all- -Slavic words, preserved in the Polish language as relics, in peripheral areas. In some cases, it is difficult to make clear-cut decisions, because, for example, the stem of the word is a continuation of the Proto-Slavic forms, to be found in the Polish language, while the derivatives are borrowings.
To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.
This article presents the essential information about the Polish language variety in Stubno, a village located about 20 km north-east of Przemyśl, close to the border with Ukraine. Until 1945, the village was inhabited by Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. A significant part of the paper is devoted to some passages authored by one M.W,. a woman who lived in Stubno in 1924-2004 and kept records in her personal journals from 1981 and until her death. In this case, her parents were Poles, but maternal grandparents were of Ukrainian descent. The author of the analysed texts received primary education only, worked on a farm and raised children and never left the village for long periods of time. Also, the notes contain a number of information concerning mostly farming and significant events of both the country’s and the world’s history. In addition, the texts include a language commentary on the most important phonetic, morphologic, word-formation, syntactic and lexical features of the local variety that occurred in the records. Furthermore, the notes provide answers to some questions about regional features of the Southern Kresy (present-day Ukraine) as reflected in the language of native inhabitants including the extent of the influence of Ukrainian, together with its local variety of the Nadsannia region.
The author reviews the latest book by Leszek Bednarczuk devoted to the beginnings and the borderlands of the Polish language. The book under review deals with a wide array of topics related to the prehistory and history of Polish taken in its relation to Indo-European and the neighboring languages, the borderland varieties of Polish, and the linguistic vicissitudes of the Christianization of Poland.
Two types of names for ‘Turkish delight’ are known in the Slavic languages: rahat-lokum ~ ratluk, and lokum. Even though most etymological dictionaries derive them from the same Arabo-Turkish etymon, their different structures are not discussed and the phonetic differences not explained. The aim of this paper is to establish the relative chronology of changes made to the original phrase, as well as to point out some problems which still remain more or less obscure.
Following G. Bellmann, the article divides the German loanwords in Czech and Slovak roughly into two groups, namely those lexical units that represent a basic code extension (= type A) and those that are used immediately after adoption as (approximately) synonymous lexical duplicates of already existing designations (= type B). While type A words have the best chances of lasting integration, type B words elicit a competitive situation between old and new designations, which can result in substitution, negative integration or semantic diversification. Furthermore, the paper deals with idiosyncrasies of German loanword integration such as the expressiveness of German loanwords in Czech and Slovak and the emotional attitude towards German loanwords in those languages. The article also discusses the causality of displacement and substitution of German loanwords, subsequently elaborates on the loss of terms and realities, the change in domain-specific language use, the role of language awareness and language culture, the loss of immediate contact areas as well as the question of prestige, and concludes with an outlook on future developments.
The article deals with the question of linguistic interference among Slavic languages at the example of Choroszczynka, a bilingual village in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship. The presentation of two complete questionnaires for the Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA), Polish and Ukrainian, not only makes it possible to capture grammatical and lexical peculiarities of both sets assigned to individual dialects, but also reveals carelessness of the fi eldworkers who collected the data. This, in turn, contributed to such an interpretation of dialectal data presented in OLA maps which does not refl ect linguistic reality.