Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2026
This article looks at the correlation between the use of a langugage as L2 and the amount of lexical material borrowed from it. Our data come from the highlands of Daghestan. By matching loanword counts with data on multilingualism, the study quantitatively supports the suggestion that lexical borrowing from a lingua franca is more intense than from other languages in a multilingual repertoire (Brown 1996, 2011). Brown hypothesizes that the importance of lingua francas as lexical donors is linked to a high rate of bilingualism. In our data, knowledge of languages other than the lingua franca was high at some locations but did not lead to substantial borrowing. We discuss the social conditions of a lingua franca that make it a likely donor. Among other factors, a lingua franca might not be as strongly associated with an ethnic identity as languages that are used only in communicating with L1 speakers of that language, and lexical borrowing from it does not threaten anyone's identity (cf. Epps 2018, Vaughan 2019).
The authors of the article express their gratitude to Patience Epps, Simon Greenhill, Johann-Mattis List, Ilya Schurov, George Starostin, and Matthias Urban, as well as to associate editor of this journal Carmel O'Shannessy and the anonymous referees for their thoughtful comments on early drafts of the paper, and to Paul Phelan who gave it a final, very careful read. We are also grateful to the language experts and speakers who shared their linguistic competence (in alphabetical order): Elena Armand (Persian), Maria Bulakh (Arabic), Tagir Gadzhiakhmedov (Kumyk), Shakhban Khapizov (Avar), Nestan Magalashvili (Georgian), Gadir Mamedov (Azerbaijani), Ramazan Mazhidov (Bezhta), Zarina Molochieva (Chechen), Murad Suleymanov (Azerbaijani), and Manana Tandaschvili (Georgian). We thank our colleagues and students who helped us with data collection, including Arseniy Averin, Faina Daniel, Lilia Terekhina (HSE University), and with data annotation, including Evgenia Egorova, Violetta Ivanova, Aleksandra Martynova, Anastasia Safonova, Anna Vishenkova, Anastasia Chasovskikh (HSE University), and Zarina Kerimova (Russian State University for Humanities), and we thank Oleg Belyaev, Anna Dybo, and Ilya Gruntov for helping us deal with some etymologies. All inaccuracies are ours. The article was prepared within the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program.