The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation

Abstract

This paper represents a comprehensive study of English loanword usage in five diverse francophone neighborhoods in the national capital region of Canada.Twenty thousand loan tokens extracted from informal conversations with 120 speakers are analyzedfor degree oflinguistic integration into French and social assimilation by the francophone community.Attestation histories of English forms in Canadian and European French are compared with current usage frequencies and various measures of integration.We distinguish two basic patterns of borrowing -nonce and establishedwhich show similar linguistic characteristics, contrasting thereby with unambiguous code-switches.We trace the differential effects ofenvironmental (majority/minority status of French in the neighborhood) , individual (degree of bilingual proficiency), and sociodemographic (occupational class, age, etc.) factors on overall borrowing rates anti patterns of use of different types of loanwords.With respect to overall rate of borrowing, social class membership is found to be a better predictor than either environmental effects or individual bilingual proficiency.In terms ofborrowing pattern, environmentalfactors are paramount, suggesting that borrowing behavior is acquired, and not merely a function of lexical need.