47.1 [...] Whenever two idiolects come into contact, one or both may be modified. In face-to-face communication, either speaker may imitate some feature of the others speech; when the contact is indirect, as in reading, the influence can of course pass only in one direction. The feature which is imitated is called the model; the idiolect (or language) in which the model occurs, or the speaker of that idiolect, is called the donor; the idiolect (or language) which acquires something new in the process is the borrowing idiolect (or language). The process itself is called borrowing, but this term requires some caution. Thus, that which is borrowed does not have to be paid back; the donor makes no sacrifice and does not have to be asked for permission. Indeed, nothing changes hands: the donor goes on speaking as before, and only the borrowers speech is altered.
From our definition, we see that the conditions for borrowing are present constantly, as a natural accompaniment of every use of language except genuine soliloquy. In the contact of idiolects A and B, the chances that borrowing will actually occur depend on several factors, one of which is the degree of similarity of A and B. If the two idiolects are very similar, borrowing is unlikely, since neither speaker is apt to use any form unknown to the other. If A and B are so divergent that the speakers cannot understand each other, borrowing is equally unlikely. Between the two extremes we find the situations in which borrowing is more probable. In practice, these situations can be classed roughly into two types. In one type, the two idiolects share a common core; under these conditions we speak of dialect borrowing. In the other, there is no common core but rather some degree of bilingualism or semibilingualism; in this case we speak of language borrowing.
47.2. Individual and Mass Effect. A single act of borrowing affects, in the first instance, only the borrowing idiolect. [...] if take a fancy to the French word ivrogne, and start to use it in my English, my idiolect is modified. The future of the language is not affected unless others imitate me, so that the newly imported word passes into more or less general usage and is transmitted to subsequent generations. This would be more probable if a number of speakers of English who knew some French were, at more or less the same time, to start using the French word in their English. Such mass importation from another dialect or language is very common, and in historical linguistics is the kind of borrowing that interests us most.
Consequently, it is customary to speak loosely of a single borrowing even in cases where thousands of individual acts of borrowing from one idiolect to another must have been involved. Thus we say that the Latin word vinum has been borrowed into English just twice (not thousands of times); once into pre-English, giving OE [wi n], NE wine; later, via Norman French, giving ME [vijn ], NE vine. Even if the factor mentioned in the preceding paragraph were not operative, this sort of mass-statistical approach would be forced upon us by the limitations of our documentary evidence.
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47.3. Conditions for Borrowing. The mere contact of idiolects A and B does not guarantee that one will borrow from the other. For a borrowing to occur, say from B to A, two conditions must be met:
(1) The speaker of A must understand, or think he understands, the particular utterance in idiolect B which contains the model.
(2) The speaker or A must have some motive, overt or covert, for the borrowing.
The first condition need not detain us long. Our reference must be to apparent rather than genuine understanding, because in many known instances there is really some measure of misunderstanding. [...]
The second is more difficult. We cannot profit from idle speculation about the psychology of borrowers, but must confine ourselves to such overt evidence as is at hand. This may lead us to miss some motives of importance, but we can be much surer of those which we do discern. These are two in number: prestige and need-filling.
47.4. The Prestige Motive. People emulate those whom they admire, in speech-pattern as well as in other respects. [...] Upper- and middle-class Englishmen, in the days after the Norman Conquest, learned French and used French expressions in their English because French was the language of the new rulers of the country. [...]
Sometimes the motive is somewhat different: the imitator does not necessarily admire those whom he imitates, but wishes to be identified with them and thus be treated as they are. The results are not distinguishable, and we can leave to psychologists the sorting out of fine shades of difference. [...]
The prestige motive is constantly operative in dialect borrowing; it becomes important in language borrowing only under special conditions. When speakers of two different languages live intermingled in a single region, usually one of the languages is that spoken by those in power; this is the upper or dominant language, and the other is the lower. Such a state of affairs has most often been brought about by invasion and conquest, more rarely by peaceful migration. The prestige factor leads to extensive borrowing from the dominant language into the lower. Borrowing on the other direction is much more limited and largely ascribable to the other principal motive.
47.5. The Need-Filling Motive. The most obvious other motive for borrowing is to fill a gap in the borrowing idiolect. [...]
... new experiences, new objects and practices, bring new words into language. [...] Tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar, cocoa, chocolate, tomato have spread all over the world in recent timed, along with the objects to which the words refer. Typhoons and monsoons have not spread, but direct or indirect experience with them has. [...]
Immigrants to the United States in the last seventyfive years have drawn heavily on English for new words, partly on the prestige basis and partly for need-filling purposes: the two motives must often be mingles, and we cannot always say which was more important in a given instance. In exchange, however, American English has acquired only a sparse scattering of need-filling loans from the various languages of the immigrants: delicatessen, hamburger [...] from immigrant German, chile con carne, fortilla from Mexican Spanish, spaghetti from Italian to stick to the sphere of humble foodstuffs. [...]
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If a local dialect gains ascendancy for political and economic reasons, then one expects extensive borrowing from that dialect for prestige reasons, but forms borrowed into the ascendant dialect have to be explained and usually, if the records are not too scanty, explanation on the need-filling basis is possible.
Questions
1. How does the author understand the process of borrowing?
2. What difference does he see between dialect borrowing and language borrowing?
3. What does a single act of borrowing affect?
4. What is the accepted understanding of the expression single borrowing in historical linguistics?
5. What conditions must in the authors opinion be met for a borrowing to occur?
6. What motives for the borrowing does the author distinguish?
7. What does the author mean by the prestige motive? Under what conditions is it operative?
8. What is understood by the need-filling motive?
OTTO JESPERSEN
