Neighbors and Lexical Borrowings

Even with the recent interest in correlating linguistic performance with sociological variables, the tendency in discussions of lexical borrowing is to focus on the words themselves and to ignore the process. This paper argues that the process of borrowing determines what is borrowed. Most borrowings may well be nouns for items new to the borrowing language. However, given sufficiently pervasive cultural contact, speakers may borrow certain types of core vocabulary items in great numbers. Data to support these contentions come from a study of the dialects of Ateso, an East African language.