Re: vocabulary borrowing

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> Depending on which one of the two cultures is dominant, numerals could =
go
> from the dominant culture to the other - that happens fairly often and
> fairly quickly. Of course anything which one culture buys from the othe=
r
> will often have the words borrowed, too. Some political institutions -
> especially if they don't differ much, then the words might pass from
> one language to the other.
All depends, of course, some language never borrow any LEXICAL items,
they merely calque them.  However, if they're at an equal level, or, to
be more precise, neither ever has a long-term dominance (that is, A may
slightly dominate B for a while, then B may slightly dominate, quite
common, actually), then all kinds of words could be borrowed, depending
on how much contact.  If they rarely speak, there wouldn't be much
borrowing, but if they're in heavy contact, they may borrow a *lot* of
vocab from each other, especially to fill lexical gaps or to resolve
homophones.  In an equal situation, there really isn't much, other than
grammatical forms, that isn't likely to be borrowed.  Also consider
grammatical influences, over time, each will influence the grammar of
the other, if one is dominant, it will have little change while the
lesser one will be changed greatly, if they're roughly equal, the change
will be more two-sided.  This is how I explain the great differences
between Watakass=ED and Eastern - different substrate influences, with
Eastern having more intimate contact with them.

--=20
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