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Code–convergent borrowing in Louisiana French
Author(s) -
Brown Becky
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9481.00208
Subject(s) - morpheme , linguistics , dominance (genetics) , rule based machine translation , history , sociology , philosophy , biology , biochemistry , gene
The nature of lexical and structural borrowing has been at the forefront of sociolinguistic debates for many years. This study analyzes bilingual lexemes and morphemes of English–origin loanwords from a Louisiana corpus of twenty–two French/English speakers. French Louisiana, however, has been undergoing language shift from French to English for three generations and, as a consequence, language dominance is in a parallel state of shift. This competing dominance produces borrowings characterized by a range of phonological integration coupled with bound morphemes from both languages. These data suggest that examining borrowing beyond the word level reveals a highly complex interplay of often competing and overlapping grammars.