Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- 1 Early English Inscriptions, Glosses and Documents
- 2 Vernacular Speech in Writing
- 3 Orality in the History of English
- 4 The Story of English Orthography and Its Analysis
- 5 English Manuscript Traditions
- 6 Text Editions and the Philological Tradition
- 7 The History of Books and Printing
- 8 Historical Corpora of English
- 9 Historical Thesauri of English
- 10 Assessing Loanwords and Other Borrowed Elements in the English Lexicon
- 11 Historical Slang
- 12 Phraseology: From Phrasal Verbs to Proverbs
- 13 The Language of Dialect Writing
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
10 - Assessing Loanwords and Other Borrowed Elements in the English Lexicon
from Part I - The Textual Record
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2025
Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- 1 Early English Inscriptions, Glosses and Documents
- 2 Vernacular Speech in Writing
- 3 Orality in the History of English
- 4 The Story of English Orthography and Its Analysis
- 5 English Manuscript Traditions
- 6 Text Editions and the Philological Tradition
- 7 The History of Books and Printing
- 8 Historical Corpora of English
- 9 Historical Thesauri of English
- 10 Assessing Loanwords and Other Borrowed Elements in the English Lexicon
- 11 Historical Slang
- 12 Phraseology: From Phrasal Verbs to Proverbs
- 13 The Language of Dialect Writing
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
Summary
The chapter considers the nature of lexical borrowing and the challenges of identifying the contribution that it has made to the lexicon of English. It looks at the major sources of data, especially historical dictionaries. It considers the importance of identifying by whom a word is used, and in which contexts. It also examines phenomena of discontinuity and multiple inputs in the histories of words, and the challenges that these present for constructing linear histories of English words, and larger-scale narratives of the history of the lexicon.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of the English LanguageDocumentation, Sources of Data and Modelling, pp. 251 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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