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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 36:1 (2019) ► pp.66–99

The semantic development of borrowed derivational morphology

Change and stability in French-English language contact

| Universität Bielefeld

This study investigates the effects of borrowing on the semantics of a derivational suffix. It presents a case study that compares the borrowed Middle English suffix -ery to Middle French -erie, paying special attention to their respective semantic structures and analysing them with semantic maps. The semantic structure of the borrowed suffix -ery is very similar to that of its origin -erie and there is no evidence for semantic reduction as a result of the borrowing process. This stability is linked to sociolinguistic aspects of the contact situation. Substantial semantic changes do occur in the recipient language after the suffix has become an established word formation process, however. On the basis of empirical data, this paper makes a contribution to the study of derivational semantics and contact linguistics by proposing a methodology for the analysis of the semantic structure of (borrowed) derivational morphology.

Keywords: derivational morphology, semantics, morphosemantics, morphological borrowing, language contact, semantic map
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Derivational morphology and semantics
  • 3.Borrowing derivational morphology
  • 4.The suffixes -erie and -ery
    • 4.1Data and methodology
    • 4.2The Middle French suffix -erie
    • 4.3The Middle English suffix -ery
    • 4.4The Present Day English suffix -ery
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17016.sch
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