ABSTRACT
‘Borrowing’ is a term that denotes the use of a structure within a linguistic system although it is typically associated with another system. In this chapter we start with a historical overview on borrowing and its central role in contact linguistics. We then introduce critical issues such as the distinction between borrowing and code-switching, integration, borrowability, motivations for borrowing, and the role of borrowing in language genealogy. Next, we review current contributions on the Markedness Hypothesis, the Specificity Hypothesis, the Utilitarian motivation, usage frequency, social motivations, and morphological borrowing. Finally, we offer an overview of recent methodologies (corpus studies and cross-linguistic samples) and discuss future research directions.
