LWT :: Verbal Borrowings


Context

In the broader context of the loanword typology project at MPI EVA, and under the supervision of Martin Haspelmath, I worked on a typology of verbal borrowings.

Brief introduction

The question as to why most languages have more trouble borrowing verbs than nouns, and as to the possible mechanisms and paths by which verbs can be borrowed, were addressed by Edith Moravcsik in her 1975 paper "Borrowed verbs" (WLG 8, pp 3-30) on the basis of a small sample of languages. George Huttar gave a brief summary of the state of the art on LinguistList in March 2002; and in mid-2004 Soeren Wichmann collected further data on mechanisms of verbal borrowing through the LinguistList. As far as I know, however, no truly substantial typological research had been undertaken in this field thus far. 

I started working on this subject in March 2004. My dissertation topic (working title) was "Towards a typology of verbal borrowing", and the first step towards such a typology was the collection and classification of data and examples of loan verbs and their accommodation patterns from a large number of languages. From time to time, I reported on my progess at workshops and conferences. 

Please, if you have examples of verbal borrowings in whatever pair of languages, share them with me!
You can use this online form to send me your example(s).

My working definition of "borrowed verb" is: A loanverb is any occurrence of a loanword which can count as a verb (or is predomonantly verby) in the recipient (borrowing) language.
For the time being, I do not want to limit the input to a selected sample of languages, so any pair of languages is welcome.

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[LWT] [Jan Wohlgemuth]