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Article published In:
Spanish in Context
Vol. 14:3 (2017) ► pp.391–412

Contextualising the emergence of English-induced morphological borrowing in Spanish

The case of -er

| University of Cambridge

This article concentrates on the competing forces underlying the use of the English morpheme -er in Spanish. Despite some asymmetries concerning the semantics of this morpheme in Spanish and English, I argue that we are witnessing one of the earliest instances of morphological borrowing in Spanish: -er has achieved a unique status in peninsular Spanish in so far as speakers have started to use it productively to mean “an avid fan of X”. In order to support my argument, I provide empirical evidence and place this phenomenon within the framework of both contact language studies and fandom studies, particularly online fandom communities, the forerunners of this linguistic innovation in fields such as music, politics, or TV shows.

Keywords: morphological borrowing, Anglicisms, fandom
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The phenomenon of morphological borrowing
  • 3.Online communities of fandom: The “breeding ground”
    • 3.1Music fandom
    • 3.2Political fandom
    • 3.3A few notes on other realms of fandom
  • 4.A morphosemantic characterisation of -er
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Listo of textual sources
Published online: 30 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.14.3.03roi
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