Japanese and Chinese Lexical Borrowing as an Outcome of Language Contact and Influence

Abstract

As a commonly observed phenomenon, no language has not borrowed lexical items from some other language(s), just as no culture has developed with no influence from some other culture(s). There have been numerous studies of linguistic borrowing to explore why a particular language incorporates some linguistic elements from another language into its linguistic repertoire. This is known as a phenomenon of linguistic transference. Abundant research findings provide strong evidence that such a transference most commonly occurs in the realm of vocabulary because the borrowing language (i.e., the recipient language) incorporates some cultural items or conceptual elements and the names along with them from some external source. More specifically, this particular linguistic phenomenon is recognized as lexical borrowing. From some cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives, this study describes and explains lexical borrowing in terms of linguistic transformation as an outcome of language contact. Linguistic transformation is defined as adaptation of one linguistic form in one language to another linguistic form in another language. Language contact is defined as the phenomenon where two languages come into contact at various cross-linguistic and cross-cultural levels. Based on the representative examples as observed in contemporary Japanese and Chinese lexical borrowing, this paper presents a case study of such a particular language contact phenomenon by categorizing the borrowed lexical items into several areas of language contact. It describes linguistic transformation in terms of phonological/morphological adaptation and semantic transfer/creation/substitution. Thus, this study presents a model of lexical borrowing through language contact and its linguistic outcome.