s - WyÅ¼sza SzkoÅa Filologiczna we WrocÅawiu

Languages in Contact 2011

Philologica Wratislaviensia: Acta et Studia 

Edited by Zdzisław Wąsik 

Advisory Board 

Janusz Arabski (Katowice) 

Jerzy Bańczerowski (Poznań) 

Piotr Chruszczewski (Wrocław) 

Andrzej Ciuk (Opole) 

Anna Duszak (Warszawa) 

Jacek Fisiak (Poznań) 

Krzysztof Janikowski (Wrocław) 

Norbert Morciniec (Wrocław) 

Tadeusz Piotrowski (Wrocław) 

Michał Post (Wrocław) 

Stanisław Prędota (Wrocław) 

Stanisław Puppel (Poznań) 

Teresa Siek-Piskozub (Poznań) 

Liliana Sikorska (Poznań) 

Anna Stroka (Wrocław) 

Aleksander Szwedek (Poznań) 

Jerzy Wełna (Warszawa) 

Ryszard Wolny (Opole) 

Vol. 9 

PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL 

OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN WROCŁAW 

PUBLISHING

Zdzisław Wąsik 

Piotr P. Chruszczewski 

(eds.) 

Languages in Contact 2011 

WYDAWNICTWO 

WYŻSZEJ SZKOŁY FILOLOGICZNEJ 

WE WROCŁAWIU

This volume basing on the principles of peer-review has been published with 

a financial support from Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław. 

ABSTRACT. Zdzisław Wąsik, Piotr P. Chruszczewski, (eds.) 2012: Languages in Contact 2011. 

Wrocław: Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław Publishing (Philologica 

Wratislaviensia: Acta et Studia. Vol. 9. Edited by Zdzisław Wąsik). 246 pp. ISBN 978-83-60097-15-1 

KEY WORDS: comparative linguistics, multilingualism, languages in contact, evolution of 

languages, anthropological linguistics 

ZDZISŁAW WĄSIK, Rector, Professor and Head, Department of Linguistic Semiotics and 

Communicology, Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław; 

Professor, Institute of Humanities, Angelus Silesius State School of Higher Vocational Education 

in Wałbrzych; Professor, School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań; Visiting 

Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Karkonosze State School of Higher Education in Jelenia Góra; 

Fellow of the International Communicology Institute, Member of the I.C.I. Bureau and Director 

of Regional Coordinators for Europe, Washington, DC 

PIOTR P. CHRUSZCZEWSKI, Associate Professor, Institute of English Studies, University of 

Wrocław; Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages, Philological School of Higher 

Education in Wrocław; Deputy Chair, Committee for Philology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 

Wrocław Branch; 

© Copyright by Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2012 

Typesetting by Zdzisław Wąsik 

Language proof: Mariusz Tereszewski 

Assistant to the editors: Jacek Mianowski 

Editorial reading by Sylwia Rudzińska and Barbara Woldan 

Cover design by Beata Opala 

ISBN 978-83-60097-15-1 

WYŻSZA SZKOŁA FILOLOGICZNA WE WROCŁAWIU 

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Table of contents 

ELŻBIETA ADAMCZYK On the fate of the s-stems in West Germanic: 

Evidence from Old English and Old High German ... ………………………007 

ANDREI A. AVRAM The distribution of diagnostic features in English-lexified 

contact languages: The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago ........ ……..….…….027 

GABRIELA BROZBĂ On the variability of vocalic inventory in Black South 

African English .............................................................................................. 045 

ZUZANNA BUŁAT SILVA Spanish pain, el dolor ............................................ 061 

DOROTA BUSZYŃSKA Laughing at or with? Humor as no laughing 

(cultural) matter............................................................................................... 073 

MICHAEL HORNSBY A posthumous life for Yiddish? The presence of 

Yiddish in American comedy.......................................................................... 091 

PABLO IRIZARRI VAN SUCHTELEN Dative constructions in the Spanish of 

heritage speakers in the Netherlands............................................................... 103 

KATARZYNA JAWORSKA-BISKUP English-Polish language contact in the 

translation of EU law ...................................................................................... 119 

RHIDIAN JONES Welsh language – survival against the odds ......................... 135

6 

Table of contents 

RICHARD L. LANIGAN Familiar frustration: The Japanese encounter with 

Navajo (Diné) “code talkers” in World War II ............................................... 143 

ELŻBIETA MAŃCZAK-WOHLFELD The status of English lexis 

in the Polish language ..................................................................................... 165 

KATARZYNA MOLEK-KOZAKOWSKA Identity styling through code-mixing 

in journalistic discourse .................................................................................. 177 

DENISE SCHMANDT-BESSERAT Numeracy before literacy ............................ 191 

AGNIESZKA STĘPKOWSKA Language shift in the Raeto-Romansh 

community....................................................................................................... 201 

ALEKSANDER SZWEDEK More evidence on the primacy of the noun 

over the verb. A cognitive explanation ........................................................... 213 

ALICJA WITALISZ English loan translations in Polish – 

preliminary comments.................................................................................... 225 

KAMILA BINIEK Etymology: who is right? Aspects of etymological research 

on the source languages of borrowings in selected Polish dictionaries .......... 237

ELŻBIETA ADAMCZYK 

ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ 

On the fate of the s-stems in West Germanic: 

Evidence from Old English and Old High German 

ABSTRACT. The present study investigates the complex development of one of the minor 

inflectional types in Germanic, the s-stem paradigm, which is a continuation of the PIE 

neuter *es-/os-stem declension. The focus of the paper is on the developments which 

contributed to the later reorganisation and eventual decline of the s-stem paradigm. Using the 

evidence of corpus data and other attestations of two representatives of West-Germanic, Old 

English and Old High German, the study explores the tendencies pertinent to the 

restructuring process in the investigated dialects, with a view to accounting for the most 

significant discrepancies. The evidence clearly suggests that the Germanic s-stem paradigm 

was on the verge of disintegration, with the two sister languages testifying to different stages 

of the restructuring process. 

KEYWORDS. Inflectional morphology, s-stems, Old English, Old High German, Analogy 

1. Preliminary remarks 

The Germanic s-stem declension, containing a handful of neuter nouns, 

represents one of the minor inflectional paradigms, characterized by a lack of 

productivity even in the early stage of its attestation. The paradigm is only scantily 

attested in Germanic and the textual material availed by individual languages 

bears witness to a rather discrepant pattern of retention of this declensional 

type. While Gothic and Old Scandinavian preserve no vestiges of the 

original inflection whatsoever, the West Germanic dialects, in particular Old 

English and (partly) Old High German, retain the s-stem inflection as a separate 

declensional type, albeit in both dialects this class is rather poorly represented. 

Such a state of affairs can be ascribed to an early activity of the disintegrative 

processes, which gradually affected all the minor inflectional types in Germanic 

(e.g., i-stems, u-stems, nd-stems, r-stems, etc.), operating at a different pace in 

individual languages. As a result, the original pattern of inflection gradually lost 

its stability and submitted to the impact of other, more stable inflectional types, 

in particular to the (masculine and neuter) a-stem paradigm. 

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the earliest stage of the operation 

of the restructuring process as it occurred in the s-stems of two representatives 

of Germanic, namely Old English and Old High German. What is certainly 

most intriguing about this declensional type in West Germanic, especially when 

seen from the Modern English and Modern German perspective, is the subse- 

LANGUAGES IN CONTACT 2011

8 

Elżbieta Adamczyk 

quent divergent development of this inflectional pattern in the two languages; 

more precisely, the fact that while English lost this archaic inflection completely 

(save for the isolated instance of children), German extended it to many 

other nouns which did not originate as s-stems. In what follows, two aspects of 

the development of this declensional type will be subject to a closer scrutiny: 

firstly, the extent to which the original pattern was retained (or abandoned) in 

the two aforementioned languages in their earliest attested stages, and secondly, 

the potential productivity of this inflectional pattern in one of them, i.e., in Old 

High German. The investigation of both aspects will, in turn, allow exploring 

some more theoretical implications of the process of gradual reorganization of 

the early (West-) Germanic nominal inflection. 

2. The s-stem inflection in Old English 

2.1. Origin and general profile 

The Germanic s-stems constituted a very small group of neuter nouns which 

can be viewed as no more than relics of the original PIE *es-/os- inflection. 1 

This initially numerous group of nouns (possibly still so in Proto-Germanic) 

must have been considerably reduced by the time of the first attestations of individual 

Germanic languages. 2 Of the two investigated languages, it is in Old 

English, and in particular in its Anglian variety, that the s-stem paradigm is best 

preserved. Formally, the Old English s-stems can be divided into two subgroups: 

(a) nouns in which the attested nominative and accusative sg. appear 

without the r-stem formative (< *z) (lamb ‘lamb’, cealf ‘calf’, dǣg ‘day’, ǣg 

‘egg’, hrēð ‘glory’), (b) nouns in which the suffixal -r is attested consistently in 

all cases, including the nominative/accusative sg. (ēar ‘ear’, ēgur ‘sea’, hrīðer 

‘cattle’, sigor ‘victory’), and their identity as *es-/osstems can be recognized 

essentially on the basis of (i) their relation to forms which did not preserve the -r, 

and (ii) their occasional consonantal inflection of the dative sg. (endingless dative) 

(cf. Brunner 1965 /1942/: 244; Boutkan 1992: 12). 

1 

2 

As Walter Schenker notices (1971: 57), the *es-/os- pattern of inflection in Germanic has 

been occasionally perceived as a Germanic innovation rather than a continuation of the PIE 

pattern. Such a premise is based on the fact that most of the alleged *es-/osstems have no 

external (non-Germanic) cognates. Crucial for such an interpretation is a terminological distinction 

between the “*es-/osstems” and “*es-/os- inflection” (for details see Schenker 

1971: 50, 57). 

Bernfried Schlerath (1995: 255) adduces three main criteria according to which the PIE *es- 

/osstems can be theoretically identified in Germanic, making at the same time a qualification 

that none of them is totally unambiguous. They include: (a) the *-ez > *-iz ending in the 

nominative/accusative sg., (b) the neuter gender, (c) the suffix *-iz (North-West Germanic -ir-) 

in the genitive and dative (instrumental) sg. and in the plural.

On the fate of the s-stems in West Germanic 9 

The subdivision presented above may be of significance when seen from the 

point of view of the restructuring process: while the first group can be expected 

to reveal some synchronic variation in the paradigm (between the inherited and 

innovative inflection), the second, according to Karl Brunner (1965 /1942/: 244), 

follows almost entirely the strong productive inflection of the a-stems. 

The presence of the vestigial -r- (which constitutes a regular development 

from the PGmc suffixal *-z) in cases other than the nominative/accusative sg. is 

a prominent feature of the Old English s-stem declension (e.g., the nominative/accusative 

pl. calfur, dōgor, lombur, the genitive pl. calfra, hrōðra, lombra, 

etc. (see the paradigm in Table 1). The -or (-ur) ending of the nominative/accusative 

sg. in the second subgroup (dōgor, sigor) is believed to have 

been an effect of intraparadigmatic leveling and, accordingly, the new nominative 

form owes its existence to the presence of analogical forms in the oblique 

cases (the genitive and dative sg., e.g., dōgores, dōgore), which appeared due to 

the influence of the a-stems, serving as a template for the reanalysis (see Boutkan 

1992: 15; cf. Wright & Wright 1925 /1908/: 213; Hirt 1932: 59; Casaretto 

2000: 219). 

Another significant feature of this declensional type in Old English is the 

presence of a mutated vowel in the nominative and accusative sg. (e.g., cælf, 

dǣg, hrēð, lemb), ensuing from the impact of the inflectional ending containing 

a high front vowel -i (PGmc *-iz: *calfiz, *lambiz). 3 The retention of the inflectional 

vowel in short syllable stems as -e may have facilitated the early transfer 

of s-stems to the i-stem declension (on the pattern of hete, sige). Since the umlauted 

base form could be extended to other cases in the paradigm, forms such 

as the genitive sg. celfes, cælfes, etc. are frequently attested in the earliest Old 

English material. 

2.2. Patterns of paradigmatic restructuring in the Old English s-stems 

A number of the Old English historical s-stems must have entirely shifted to 

other declensional types in the prehistoric stage, since they never appear with 

vestiges of the s-stem inflection in the attested Old English material. Early 

transfers to other declensional types entailed shifts to the i-stem and u-stem 

declensions, and the original affiliation of these transferred nouns can be confirmed 

by the evidence from other Germanic dialects. 

As the s-stem declension comprised of neuter nouns exclusively, the synchronically 

attested process of morphological reanalysis involved the remodel- 

3 

In Old English Grammar by Joseph Wright and Elisabeth Wright (1925 /1908/: 213), the 

nominative sg. form *lambiz has been explained as an analogical formation on the pattern of 

the genitive and dative sg. The preservation of i in Gothic hatis ‘hatred’, sigis ‘victory’ (instead 

of the expected *hats, *sigs) is adduced as a corroboration of this assumption.

10 


ing of the inherited paradigm on the pattern furnished by the neuter a-stems. 

The following sentences illustrate the vacillation to be found in the paradigm of 

the s-stems: 

[1] Muntas hwy gefægenodon swa rammas & hylla swa lambru sceapa (Montes quare 

exultastis ut arietes et colles uelut agni ouium) (PsGlD), 

[2] Muntas wynsumedon swa swa rammas & hylla swa swa lamb sceapa (Montes 

exultaverunt ut arietes et colles velut agni ovium) (PsGlB). 

At the same time, in view of the expansiveness of the masculine a-stem 

declension, attested even in the early Old English material, the analogous influence 

of this most productive type on the neuter paradigm of the s-stems is only 

to be expected. Potentially, members of the s-stem declension could evince also 

some inclination towards the relatively widespread weak inflectional pattern, 

reflected in their appropriation of the endings of the genitive pl. -ena and the 

nominative/accusative pl. -an (-on/-en). Traces of these morphological realignments 

are expected to be found in the following grammatical forms: 

the genitive sg. -es marker in place of a historical zero ending 

the dative sg. -e ending in place of a historical zero ending 

the neuter zero ending (without the r-stem extension) in the nominative/accusative pl. 

the masculine -as ending in the nominative/accusative pl. 

the genitive pl. -a or -ena ending in place of the original marker -ra 

the dative pl. -um ending in place of the expected -rum marker 

the weak -an ending in all cases in the singular except the nominative, and in the 

nominative/accusative pl. 

The new analogical endings were essentially attached to the forms without 

the r-stem extension. Occasionally, however, they could be joined to those 

formations where -r had been preserved, as in dōgores, ehras, sigores. At the 

same time, the original stem formative -r- was more consistently retained in the 

paradigm of the plural, where, in contrast to the singular, the inflectional 

endings were frequently attached to the stem formative. In order to account for 

the more systematic preservation of the stem formative in the plural (which was 

also the case in Old High German), Dieter Kastovsky (1995: 234) adduces 

semantic considerations, namely the functional-semantic status of the plural and 

its referential function, emphasizing the predominance of the category of 

number (as “semantically more salient, dominant, or marked”) over the 

category of case. Accordingly, analogical leveling is more expected to operate 

within one number category (spreading across cases) rather than within one case 

category (spreading across number). 

All these abovementioned potential traces of external analogical pressure in 

the s-stem inflection are summarised in Table 1, where the two rival paradigms 

are presented.


Table 1. The competing paradigms of the Old English s-stems 

archaic 

innovative 

singular plural singular plural 

nominative cælf calfur, -(e)ru cealf cealf,-as 

genitive calfur calfra cealfes cealfa 

dative calfur calfrum cealfe cealfum 

accusative cælf calfur cealf cealf,-as 

The Old English endings of the genitive and dative pl., whether attached to 

a bare stem (e.g., lamba, lambum) or to the stem formative -r- (e.g., lambra, 

lambrum), are attributed to the early, prehistoric influence of the a-stem declension. 

Early influence can also be sought in the OE -u (< *ō) ending of the nominative/accusative 

pl. (e.g., cildru, lambru), extended from the productive thematic 

inflection (see Boutkan 1992: 15). In the present investigation, however, 

the forms of the genitive and dative pl. which preserve the r-stem formative (-ra, 

-rum) will be considered archaic and accordingly counted against the plain 

forms without the stem formative (-a, -um). Likewise, the -ru ending in the 

nominative and accusative pl., though it could arguably be interpreted as an 

innovation, emerging under the pressure of the strong neuter paradigm, is 

viewed here as conservative. Such a synchronic approach to these inflectional 

endings seems justifiable, given the special status of the -r- formative, serving 

as a hallmark of the West Germanic s-stem inflection. 

Finally, representing one of the minor declensional types, the class of the 

Old English s-stems was synchronically unproductive; however, the pattern 

seems to have been attractive to some words which did not originate in *es-/osstems. 

These include: brēadru (brēad) ‘bread crumbs’, hǣmedru (hǣmed) ‘married 

relationships’, hæteru ‘garments’, lēower (lēow) ‘ham, thigh’, mǣdrum 

(*mǣd, *mǣder?) ‘measures’, scerero (-scruru) ‘shears’ (scear), speldra (speld) 

‘torches’ (cf. Brunner 1965: 244; Campbell 1959: 258). Most of these forms are 

recorded in very early Old English texts, in particular in glossaries, including 

Corpus Glossary (8/9th c.), Erfurt Glossary (9th c.) and Lorica Glosses (9th c.), 

which may be indicative of an earlier productivity of this pattern (for a discussion 

see Adamczyk in press). 

3. The s-stems inflection in Old High German 

3.1. General profile 

The Old High German textual material attests to a very interesting pattern 

of preservation of the s-stem inflection. On the one hand, the number of nouns 

which can be treated as members of the s-stem paradigm is very limited due to 

their frequent transfers to other inflectional types. On the other hand, the num-

12 


ber of forms in which the -ir- formative serves as a marker of plurality is considerable 

and, more importantly, evidently tends to increase. Worth noticing 

here is the semantic constitution of the s-stem inflection and the fact that many 

s-stems are concrete nouns belonging to the limited semantic field of agriculture 

and hunting, and denote in particular names of animals, e.g., farh ‘piglet’, kalb 

‘calf’, lamb ‘lamb’, hrind ‘cow’, huon ‘hen’, wild ‘wild animal’. This very feature 

is not without meaning when it comes to the restructuring process: being 

semantically homogeneous, the class of s-stems may have been relatively resistant 

to the external analogical pressure of other, more stable declensional types 

(cf. Section 3.2). 

Just as the Old English s-stem declension, the group of Old High German 

s-stems can be formally divided into two subtypes: (a) nouns in which the attested 

nominative and accusative sg. appear without the r-stem formative (e.g., 

kalb ‘calf’, lamb ‘lamb’, (h)rind ‘cow’, huon ‘hen’), (b) nouns in which the 

suffixal -r is attested consistently in all cases, including the nominative and /or 

accusative sg. (e.g., ahir (ehir) ‘ear of corn’, demar ‘twilight’, liodar ‘noise, 

sound’, treber, trestir ‘draff’ 4 ). 

Of crucial importance for the subsequent development of this group in 

German is the fact that the morpheme -ir- underwent at some stage a process of 

morphologization in Old High German, which can be described as a phonologically-conditioned 

development, occurring as a result of the decay of the original 

phonological conditions. Functioning initially as a stem formative of the neuter 

s-stems, the -ir- element was with time reinterpreted and developed into a plural 

marker. The mechanism of this reanalysis can be summarized after Wolfgang 

Ullrich Wurzel in the following statement: “Der Inhalt der Reanalyse besteht 

darin, daß ein Stammbildungsmorphem in bestimmten seiner Instanzen zum 

Kategorienmarker uminterpretiert, in anderen Instanzen dagegen als semantisch 

leeres Element gewertet wird” [The essence of the reanalysis lies in the fact that 

the stem formative is in certain instances reinterpreted as a category marker, 

while in others it is perceived as a semantically empty element] (1992: 285). 5 

4 

5 

It is arguable whether the two forms are attested in the singular or the plural. Given the 

meaning of these words, it seems conceivable that the plural forms in -ir influenced the singular 

and hence the singular can be viewed, according to Wolf von Unwerth (1910: 6), as 

a secondary formation. 

In order to account for the phenomenon of morphological reanalysis, Wurzel (1992: 283) 

brings into play the principle of morphosemantic transparency (Prinzip der morphosemantischen 

Transparenz). As a result of reanalysis, the morpheme -ir- is reinterpreted uniquely 

as a marker of plurality. A direct consequence of this development is the fact that the -ir-, 

present in the forms of the genitive, dative and instrumental singular (early OHG hrindires, 

hrindire, hrindiru), is semantically empty, and as such renders these forms strongly marked. 

Such marked formations will naturally tend to be replaced by less marked (or unmarked) 

forms; in other words, they will tend to be much more susceptible to the analogical pressure


Eventually, the significance of -ir- as a plural marker increased and it became 

one of the most expansive plurality exponents, spreading to forms in which it 

would not be expected (cf. Modern German Kinder, Männer, Wälder, Leiber, 

etc.). Significantly, the -ir- formative has been viewed as the first plural marker 

in the German inflectional system to have been independent of case marking 

(Wurzel 1989: 448). 

Such a morphological reanalysis was facilitated (or even prompted) by the 

fact that no distinction existed between the singular and the plural in the paradigm 

of the corresponding strong neuter nouns, and it was the new morpheme -irthat 

was able to provide such a means of distinction. This had been made explicit 

by Herman Hirt (1932: 58), who stated: “Da aber die gewöhnlichen Neutra 

im Sing. und Plur. gleich waren, ahd. daʒ wort : diu wort, so empfand man 

das überschießende ir als Pluralzeichen, das sich im Laufe der Zeit sehr ausgedehnt 

hat und bei uns heute herrscht” [As the singular and plural were identical 

in the typical neuters, OHG daʒ wort : diu wort, one came to perceive the 

excessive ir as a plural marker which has expanded over time and prevails still 

today] (cf. Prokosch 1939: 238). Although the large-scale expansion of this 

plural marker occurred mostly in the later stage of the development of German 

(especially in Early Modern German), traces of the spread of the -ir- morpheme 

as a plural marker can be found relatively early, i.e., partially in the Old High 

German period. Accordingly, a number of non-historical s-stems can be found 

with the newly adopted inflectional endings. These include: abgot ‘idol’, bant 

‘band, bridle’, bret ‘board’, feld ‘field’, grab ‘grave’, hār ‘hair’, hol ‘cave’, holz 

‘wood’, hūs ‘house’, krūt ‘cabbage’, loh ‘grove, wood’, loub ‘leaf’, rad ‘wheel’. 

In the later textual material, the -ir- extension appears sporadically also in: kar 

‘container’, lid ‘joint, link’, tal ‘valley’, tior ‘animal’, smalenōz ‘sheep’, swīn 

‘swine’, wēlf ‘cub, whelp’. Single forms are attested in the neuter wa-stems, as 

in: hlēo ‘mound’ (classified as masculine, but originated as neuter) (nom. pl. 

lēwir, dat. pl. lērium), (h)rēo ‘corpse’ (acc./nom. pl. rēwir), spriu ‘chaff’ 

(nom./acc. pl. spriuuir, spriuwir) and in the a-stems tiufal (diufal) ‘devil’ (pl. 

diufilir), wiht ‘dwarf’ (pl. wihtir) (see Braune 2004 /1875/: 188). In all these 

substantives, some synchronic alternation between the ir-less and ir-full plural 

forms can be expected. 

Interestingly, the suffixal form -ir- was also sporadically attested in some 

geographical names containing kalb, blat, huon and tag, where they appear as 

the first element of compounds, e.g., Kelbirsbach, Pletirspahc, Huonirislo, Tagarhilt. 

It is assumed that these forms may have spread from the nominative/accusative 

pl. or dative sg. (cf. Boutkan 1995: 268 and Baesecke 1918: 

156). 

of unmarked formations. For more details on the mechanism of this development, see also 

Kastovsky (1995).

14 


3.2. Patterns of paradigmatic restructuring in the Old High German s-stems 

Describing the shape of the s-stem declension in Old High German, 

Wilhelm Braune (2004: 213) made a statement to the effect that the s-stems lost 

their original inflectional pattern, following the paradigm of the u-stems and the 

a-stems. Just as in the case of Old English, the analogical transfer to other declensional 

types must have occurred prehistorically. This early transition involved 

words such as haz ‘hatred’, seli-, sali- (present only in compounds, but 

dative pl. selin), sigi ‘victory’, stedi ‘bank’, heil ‘health’, lêhan, lêhin ‘loan’, 

geist ‘ghost’, hlêo ‘mound’, situ ‘custom’ and sigu ‘victory’, which are formally 

classified as i-stems, a-stems, or u-stems, but can be easily traced back to the 

original *es-/os-stems. The synchronically attested process of morphological 

restructuring involved the emergence of novel features, which, much like the 

Old English ones, arose due to the influence of the strong neuter or possibly 

masculine a-stems. Since the singular follows entirely the pattern of the a-stems, 

preserving few vestiges of the original inflection, hardly any synchronic alternation 

can be expected in the paradigm. An exception here, often cited in the standard 

descriptions of the Old High German s-stem inflection, are two forms: the 

genitive sg. rindares ‘cow’ and the dative sg. chalbire ‘calf’, attested in the 

second Reichenauer Glossar (Gl (Rb)), in which the -ir- formative survived in the 

singular, despite the overwhelming influence of the productive a-stem inflection. 

They are attested in the contexts of [3] and [4]: 

[3] in vitulo trimo in chalbire driiarigemo (Gl 1,409,9 (Rb)) 

[4] bubule carnis des rindares … fleisc' (Gl 1,426,24 (Rb)) 

Alongside the major direction of transfer to the a-stem declension, the paradigm 

of the s-stems may potentially evince some inclination towards the weak 

inflectional pattern, with the prominent endings of the genitive pl. -ono and the 

nominative/accusative pl. -on (-un). The impact of the productive inflectional 

patterns is to be sought in the following grammatical forms: 

the genitive sg. -es (-as) marker in place of an original -ires 

the dative sg. -e (-a) ending in place of an original -ire 

the neuter zero ending (without the r-stem extension) in the nominative/accusative pl. 

the masculine -a (-ā) ending in the nominative/accusative pl. 

the genitive pl. -o or -ono (weak) ending in place of an original -iro 

the dative pl. -um ending in place of the expected -irum 

the weak -n (-en/-in/-on/-un) ending in all cases in the singular except the nominative, and in 

the nominative/accusative pl. 

All these abovementioned potential influences were summarised in Table 2, where 

the two competing paradigms, i.e., conservative and innovative, are presented.


Table 2. The competing paradigms of the Old High German s-stems 

archaic 

innovative 


nominative lamb lembir lamb lamb, -a 

genitive lambires lembiro lambas amba 

dative lambire lembirum lamba (-e) lambum 

accusative lamb lembir lamb lamb, -a 

instrumental lambiru, -o 

4. Material and data analysis 

4.1. Corpora 

The present investigation is based on two representative samples of Old 

English and Old High German. The data for the Old English part come from 

a selection of texts as edited in the Dictionary of Old English Electronic Corpus 

(Healey 2004) and comprise of: the Lindisfarne Gospels (10th c.), Durham Ritual 

(10th c.), Psalter Glosses (PsGl) (mainly 10th c.) (including Canticles of the 

Psalter, Vespasian Psalter (9th c.), Junius Psalter (early 10th c.), Paris Psalter 

(early 10th h c.), the West-Saxon Gospels (c. 1000) and the poems of Beowulf 

(8th c.?-early 11thc.) and Judith (c.1000). The works considered represent religious 

prose and verse, covering mainly the 9th and 10th centuries. The analysis 

of the Old High German material was conducted on major Old High German 

works, including the translations of Tatian’s Gospel Harmony (9th c.), Otfrid’s 

Evangelienbuch (late 9th c.), Isidor’s De fide catholica contra Judaeos (9th c.), 

the Monsee Fragments (late 8th c., constituting remnants of the manuscript 

which contained the Gospel of St. Matthew, several homilies by St. Augustine 

and others, and some other theological writings), Murbach Hymns (9th c.), Notker’s 

translation of Psalms and Boethius (early 11th c.), the poetic text of 

Hildebrandslied (9th c.) and a number of shorter poems of religious nature 

(Ludwigslied (9th c.), Georgslied (c.1000), Galluslied (9th c.). 6 The choice of 

texts was determined by the age of the manuscripts; accordingly, the samples 

were compiled in such a way so as to include texts of relatively similar dates of 

attestation. Another factor determining the shape of the Old English and Old 

High German samples was the diatopic provenance of the texts, therefore, texts 

originating in various dialects were included in the respective samples, which 

was especially significant for the investigation of the Old English material 

(where the pattern of preservation of the s-stem inflection varies considerably 

depending on the dialect). Finally, the samples were also diversified in terms of 

6 

Most of the OHG text editions come from the database of Thesaurus Indogermanischer Textund 

Sprachmaterialien (TITUS). For more detailed bibliographic information see the reference 

section.

16 


their literary genres and, accordingly, alongside the translated prose fragments 

of religious texts, the original Germanic verse was included. 7 

4.2. Analysis of the Old English material 

The complete list of nouns which were subject to the qualitative and 

quantitative investigation comprised of the following nouns: (a) cealf (cælf) 

‘calf’, cild ‘child’, dǣg (dōgor) ‘day’, ǣg ‘egg’, hrēð ‘glory’, lomb ‘lamb’; (b) 

ǣgor/ēgur ‘sea, flood’, alor (aler) ‘alder-tree’, ēar (eher, æhher) ‘ear of grain’, 

gycer ‘acre’, hālor ‘health’, hōcor ‘mockery’, hrīðer, hrȳðer ‘horned cattle’, 

hrōdor ‘solace’, (masculine) nicor ‘water-monster’, 8 salor ‘hall’, sigor ‘victory’, 

stǣner ‘stony ground’, stulor ‘theft’, *wildor ‘wild animal’. Of these, the 

following nouns were not found in the investigated sample: ēgur, hālor, hrīðer, 

salor, wildor. The synchronic variation between the archaic and novel inflection 

was attested in the paradigms of the following nouns: cealf (cælf), cild, dǣg, 

lomb, hrēð, ēar, nicor. The remaining words from this group did not testify to 

any alternation (ǣg, stǣner). It must be noted that the interpretation of some of 

the forms can be problematic, if not impossible. An example here is dogor 

which is directly related to dǣg, yet the OE dǣg merged at some point with 

a parallel a-stem dæg, making unambiguous interpretation impossible. Following 

standard historical accounts and relying on the opinions quoted there (Brunner 

1965, Ross 1937), the present analysis took into consideration only those 

forms of dǣg which are attested in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, in 

particular in the Lindisfarne Gospels, where its origin as an s-stem is reflected 

in the spelling variant doeg. 

The findings from the quantitative analysis are demonstrated in tables 3 and 

4 below. Italics were used to present the result for the cases which cannot provide 

any reliable information about the restructuring process in the paradigm 

(the nominative/accusative sg.). An identical procedure was applied to the Old 

High German part of the analysis. 

7 

8 

One needs to be aware of an evident oversimplification inherent in such a selection of the OE 

and OHG material. Both languages are characterized by a considerable amount of dialectal 

and temporal variation, which needs to be taken into account in any more detailed investigation. 

The present analysis, being a pilot study to a more comprehensive research project, did 

not aspire to be exhaustive and was accordingly designed to only tentatively frame the general 

tendencies present in both languages. 

Problematic here seems the OHG nichus (nihhus) ‘crocodile’ which serves as counterevidence 

to the origin of the OE nicor as an s-stem (cf. ON nykr). See Classen (1915: 85–86) 

for an alternative explanation of the OE nicor.


Table 3. The distribution of the archaic and innovative inflection in the Old English material 

with respect to cases 

archaic 

innovative 


nominative 14 (7) 100% - (0) 

genitive - (12) 100% (12) 100% (0) 

dative (4) 16% (6) 100% (21) 84% (0) 

accusative 37 (13) 52% - (12) 48% 

Table 4. The overall distribution of the archaic and innovative inflection in the paradigm 

of the Old English s-stems 9 

s-inflection 

a-inflection/n-inflection 

singular (4) 11,1% (33) 88,9% 

plural (20) 62,5% (76%*) (12) 37,5% (24%*) 

TOTAL 34,8% (48,3%*) 65,2% (51,7%*) 

*including the forms of the genitive and dative pl. 

What can be inferred from the data presented above is that the paradigm of 

the Old English s-stems did stay under the substantial influence of the productive 

inflectional pattern, whether vocalic or consonantal. The advancement of 

the process is particularly well seen in the category of the genitive sg., which 

completely eliminated the historical inflectional pattern. Traces of synchronic 

alternation between the innovative and archaic inflection are attested for in two 

categories only, namely the dative sg. and the accusative pl. Interestingly, the 

latter, being relatively progressive, stays in stark contrast to the nominative pl. 

which, quite unexpectedly perhaps, shows no traces of innovation in the investigated 

sample. Remarkably, there seems to be a clear borderline between the 

Anglian and non-Anglian material: while the former dialects display minor 

traces of the impact of the new inflectional pattern, the latter testify to a fairly 

extensive spread of the a-stem inflection in the paradigm (for details see 

Adamczyk in press). 

The noun cild was analyzed separately due to its controversial status with 

respect to its origin. According to the OED, cild (< PGmc *kilþo m ) did not 

originate as an s-stem, but was towards the end of the Old English period partially 

assimilated to the inflection of neuter s-stems, which justifies the appearance 

of the nominative pl. cildru, and genitive pl. cildra, so common in the later 

9 

It must be noted that the forms of the genitive and dative pl. are counted on the archaic side, 

as the stem formative -r- is always present there (-ra, -rum). A potential problem with such 

an interpretation is, however, that both emerged probably due to a very early analogical influence 

of the a-stem paradigm. Their status is therefore rather ambiguous and that is why 

table 4, presenting the overall distribution of forms, features two final counts, namely, one 

including and the other excluding the forms of the genitive and dative pl.

18 


West-Saxon texts (cf. Bammesberger 1990: 211). Indeed, in the present analysis 

cild turned out to be extremely innovative, testifying to only one s-stem inflectional 

ending (genitive pl. cildru), which constitutes 10 percent of all the attested 

forms in the genitive pl., and no more than 3 percent of the whole inflection. 

Even the earliest sources (e.g., Vespasian Psalter), where the conservative 

features can be expected, testify to no traces of the s-stem inflection in cild. 

Interestingly, the noun attests to an evident lack of stability with respect to gender, 

which is manifested in an apparent vacillation between the neuter and masculine 

paradigm (alongside the expected accusative pl. neuter cild, the masculine 

forms cildas and cildes are found). 

Finally, hardly any influence of the weak productive pattern is attested in 

the Old English material, which seems unexpected, given the frequent forms of 

cildren, calveren, lambren, ægeran, or eiren, found in the Middle English material. 

4.3. The analysis of the Old High German material 

Due to a complex pattern of preservation of the s-stem inflection in Old 

High German, the investigation of the material consisted in two parts. The first 

part of the study was parallel to the one conducted on the Old English material 

and, accordingly, the investigation focused on the quantitative relation between 

the incidence of the inherited s-stem inflection and the innovative (a- and n-stem) 

inflection in the paradigm. The quantitative analysis was conducted on the set of 

nouns declining according to the pattern depicted in Table 2, displaying some 

synchronic variation in the paradigm. 

The list of nouns for the analysis was compiled on the basis of the information 

found in the standard historical grammars of Old High German (Wright 

1906 /1888/, Schatz 1907, Franck 1909, Baesecke 1918, Braune 2004) and was 

supplemented by the data from the major dictionaries: Althochdeutsches 

Wörterbuch (inter alia, Köbler 1993 /1875/, Schützeichel 2006), Althochdeutsche 

Wortschatz (Graff 1834˗1842) and Notker-Wortschatz (Sehrt & 

Legner 1955). The group included both nouns which originated as s-stems, as 

well as those which are formally classified as s-stems in the standard grammars 

of Old High German, namely: blat ‘leaf’, ei ‘egg’, ehir ‘ear of corn’, farh ‘piglet’, 

(h)rind ‘cattle’, (h)rīs ‘twig’, huon ‘hen’, kalb ‘calf’, lamb ‘lamb’, luog 

‘cave’, *wild 10 ‘wild animal’. The second part of the analysis entailed nouns 

which did not originate as s-stems, but adopted the -ir- formative as a plural 

10 

According to the authors of standard historical grammars of Old High German, notably 

Johannes Franck (1909: 176), the form uuildirun found in Tatian (in: uuas her thô mit 

uuildirun giengun thô zuo gotes engila inti ambahtitun imo. (Tat., Ev. Harm. 15,6) is a derived 

formation based on the adjective uuild ‘wild’.


marker, namely: abgot ‘idol’, bant ‘band’, bret ‘board’, feld ‘field’, grab 

‘grave’, hār ‘hair’, hlēo ‘mound’, hol ‘cave’, holz ‘wood’, hrēo ‘corpse’, hūs 

‘house’, kar ‘container’, krūt ‘cabbage’, lid ‘joint’, loh ‘cave’, loub ‘leaf’, rad 

‘wheel’, smalenōz ‘sheep’, swīn ‘swine’, tal ‘valley’, wēlf ‘whelp’. Since the 

focus of the analysis in the second group of nouns was on the productivity of 

the s-stem pattern, or, more precisely, of the -ir- formative, its scope was restricted 

to an investigation of the plural inflection and the findings were presented 

separately (and independently of the Old English data, where the s-stem 

plural pattern is no longer productive). 

Tables 5 and 6 present the results of the quantitative investigation conducted 

on the Old High German material. 

Table 5. The distribution of the archaic and innovative inflection in the Old High German 

material with respect to cases 

archaic 

innovative 


nominative 14 (10) 100% - (0) 

genitive (1) 16,7% (2) 100% (5) 83,3% (0) 

dative (1) 9,1% (5) 100% (10) 90,9% (0) 

accusative 10 (11) 91,7% - (1) 9,3&% 

instrumental - (1) 100% (0) 

Table 6. The overall distribution of the archaic and innovative inflection in the Old High 

German material 

s-inflection 

a-inflection/n-inflection 

singular (2) 11,1% 16) 88.9% 

plural (28) 96,6% (1) 3,4% 

TOTAL 63,8% 36,2% 

As can be seen from the data presented above, the group of the original s-stems 

is scantily attested in the Old High German material. The shape of the paradigm, 

though not totally intact, proves to have been relatively invulnerable to 

the analogical pressure. Sparse traces of synchronic alternation between conservative 

and novel forms are found in the genitive and dative sg., and the accusative 

pl. However, given the scant number of occurrences, the data must be interpreted 

with some caution. What seems to be most intriguing about the pattern 

of preservation of the s-stem inflection in the Old High German material is the 

remarkable discrepancy in the singular and plural inflection. While the former 

turns out to have been almost completely overwhelmed by the productive a-stem 

inflection (save for the isolated chalbire and rindares), the latter preserves the 

archaic inflection in close to 100 percent of all the forms. The attested archaism 

of the plural inflection tallies, to some extent, with the Old English state of af-

20 


fairs, where the plural still preserves the original inflection in over 60 percent of 

all the attested forms (see Table 4 above). 

4.4. Productivity of the Old High German -ir- stem formative 

The set of nouns which was included in the second part of the investigation 

was presented in Section 4.3. The quantitative analysis investigated the incidence 

of forms containing the -ir- plural formative relative to those which followed 

the inherited strong or weak productive inflection (of the a-stems and 

n-stems). The results of the investigation are presented in Table 7. 

Table 7. The distribution of the s-stem plural inflection vs. a-/n-stem inflection in nonoriginal 

s-stems 

s-stem plural inflection 

a-/n-stem plural inflection 

nominative (10) (11) 

genitive (10) (4) 

dative (22) (17) 

accusative (18) (18) 

TOTAL (60) 54,5% (50) 45,5% 

The nouns lid, kar, tal, tior, swīn, hwelf, smalenōz were excluded from the 

final count since the -ir- formative appears here sporadically and only single, 

isolated instances are attested. Three of these nouns (tal, kar, smalenōz) were 

not found in the analysed sample (in the plural form). 

The pattern which emerges from the data presented above is very transparent. 

It can be inferred that the -ir- stem formative even at this early stage must 

have been fairly expansive, extending to nouns which did not originate as s-stems. 

The early productivity of the -ir- plural pattern is illustrated by examples [5]– 

[12], culled from the corpus of the investigated Old High German texts. 

[5] Wio fuarun thiu díufilir úz \ thar zi Pétruses hus (Otfr., Ev. 3, 14, 53) 

(6) ir zimbrit grabir forasagono enti sconit reht uuisigero grapehûs (MF, 1 M, XVIII, 7 (29)) 

[7] Vuanda êr ist confiteri. unde dára nâh inuocare. husir pîgihte reîniû so getûo únseriû 

templa fone confessione munda (Notker, Ps., 73 (266, 27)) 

[8] Únde úbe sie fóre chíusko lébetôn . sô uuérdent sie íngóv\men híusero álde búrgô. 

(Notker, Mart. Cap., II (142, 9)) 

[9] Ther selbo Iohannes habeta giuuâti fon harirun olbentono inti fillinan bruohhâh umbi sino 

lentin, sîn muos uuas heuuiskrekco inti uuildi honag (Tat., Ev. Harm., 13, 11) 

[10] Inti gisah einan figboum nah themo uuege inti quam zi imo inti ni fand niouuiht in imo 

nibi ekkorodo thiu loubir (Tat., Ev. Harm., 121, 1) 

[11] …ambahti keuuisso, dar deisu alliu kernlihho pirum kiuurchit, pilohhir sint in monastre 

indi statigii in samanungu. (Ben. Reg., 4, 18) 

[12] natorum dira funera chindo chrimmiu reuuir solus gaudebat israhel [ei]no [mand]ta 

[israhel] (Murb. H., I, 5, 2)


5. Summary of the research results 

Table 8 presents the distribution of the competing forms found in the investigated 

material in both languages, with respect to the category of number, 

whereas Table 9 features the overall distribution of innovative and archaic 

forms as found in the analyzed corpora, irrespective of the category of case and 

number. 

Table 8. The distribution of archaic and innovative forms in the OE and OHG material (with 

respect to number) 

OLD ENGLISH 

OLD HIGH GERMAN 

archaic forms innovative forms archaic forms innovative forms 

singular 10,8% 89,2% 11,1% 88,9% 

plural 62,5% (76%*) 37,5% (24%*) 96,6% 3,4% 

Table 9. The overall percentage of archaic and innovative forms in the OE and OHG material 

OLD ENGLISH 

OLD HIGH GERMAN 

archaic forms innovative forms archaic forms innovative forms 

34,8% (48,3%*) 65,2% (51,7%*) 63,8% 36,2% 

The comparison of the Old English and Old High German material reveals 

that the two closely related dialects show a discrepant pattern of reorganization of 

the s-stem declension. While the Old English paradigm stays under a substantial 

influence of the productive inflectional types (in particular of the a-stems), the 

Old High German inflection retains the original pattern in over 60 percent of 

forms. Remarkable is the discrepancy attested for the singular and plural inflection, 

evident especially in the Old High German data. In both languages, the 

pattern of preservation of the original s-stem inflection is a harbinger of the 

tendencies to be observed in the subsequent stages of the development, beginning 

with the Middle English and Middle High German periods. 

6. Concluding remarks 

The picture emerging from the investigation of the fate of the West Germanic 

s-stems testifies to a divergent development of this inflectional type. If 

one takes a broader pan-Germanic perspective, the process of disintegration 

seems to range alongside a continuum where at one extreme there is the Gothic 

language, with its highly innovative pattern, corroborating the early, prehistoric 

shift of the s-stems to the thematic inflection, and thus preserving no traces of 

the original state of affairs, while at the other pole there is a small set of Anglian 

archaic forms, bearing witness to the original shape of inflection. The space 

between these two extremes is occupied by the non-Anglian (West-Saxon) and

22 


Old High German forms which display some synchronic alternation between 

the archaic and innovative inflection. Finally, beyond the continuum extends the 

Old High German pattern of plural inflection, which, quite unexpectedly, 

gradually expands and becomes productive. 

Crucial for an adequate interpretation of the restructuring process in Germanic 

s-stems was the extension of the e-grade (pertaining originally to the 

oblique cases exclusively) to the nominative/accusative sg., characterized by the 

o-grade, whereby the shape of these two cases became identical with that of the 

i- and a-stems. This development must have shattered the stability of the s-stem 

inflection very early, which opened the way to subsequent reshaping of the s-stem 

paradigm on the pattern of the more influential inflectional types. In effect, the 

class of s-stems began to shrink dramatically at a very early stage, i.e., prehistorically, 

as its members drifted away to the i-stem or to the a-stem declensions. 

As far as the mechanism behind the process of morphological restructuring 

is concerned, it must be emphasized that in Old English the process involved 

a gradual restriction of the forms containing the r-stem formative to the plural 

and an accompanying elimination of the umlauted forms in the singular. These 

two developments were followed by a total eradication of the original stem 

formative from the plural – a process whose absence from Old High German 

was decisive for the future shape of the s-stem inflection in German. 

In Old High German, where the -ir- formative was reinterpreted as a plural 

marker, not only was this declensional type better preserved, but it also became 

a productive plural pattern, spreading to nouns of various etymological backgrounds. 

As could be inferred from the data presented above, it is the Old High 

German period that testifies to the initial stage of this spread, where synchronic 

alternation can be found in a number of frequent nouns which otherwise declined 

regularly as the a-stems. In contrast to Old High German, the -r-formative 

was probably never recognized as a plural marker in Old English; instead all 

nouns of this class eventually joined the major inflectional pattern characterized 

by the sibilant plural marker (Kastovsky 1985: 102). In order to account for the 

discrepant development of the original s-stem declension in English and German, 

and in particular for the fact that the r-stem formative was never generalized 

in English, the overall condition of the Old English nominal system needs 

to be invoked, which, as a result of a complex interplay of phonological and 

morphological factors, lost its original declensional diversity. The predominance 

and rapid spread of one inflectional type in Old English (the a-stem pattern) 

has been associated with a typological shift (well evinced in the a-stem 

declension), whereby the inherited stem-based inflection lost its ground in favour 

of word-based inflection (Kastovsky 1995: 233; 1997: 67). The newly 

emerging “monoparadigmatic, stem-invariant and word-based” inflection left 

consequently no chance for the extension of -r- as a plural marker in Old Eng-


lish. Old High German, on the other hand, being phonologically more conservative 

(especially in the domain of unstressed syllables), managed to retain greater 

inflectional diversity longer and allowed for the simultaneous existence of more 

than one dominant inflectional type (e.g., the plural inflection of the original 

n-stems, i-stems, or s-stems). The stem inflection remained a dominant pattern 

in Old High German and the typological reorientation took place somewhat 

later (Harnisch 2001: 63, 289; Wurzel 1989: 91, 103). 11 Another crucial factor 

which may have prevented the functionalization of the r-stem formative in Old 

English was an early phonemicization of the i-mutation, which, in contrast, 

occurred relatively late in German (during the transition to the Middle High 

German period) (Kastovsky 1995: 236). 

The pattern of retention of the archaic features in the s-stem declension, as 

attested in the analyzed material, portends the tendencies to appear in the later 

stages of the development of English and German. While the former is characterized 

by a monoparadigmatic noun morphology (Kastovsky 1995: 236), with 

one declensional pattern offering a model for the other types, the latter, being 

phonologically less innovative, represents a polyparadigmatic type where more 

than one declensional pattern can be productive. 

Given the evident limitations of the present study, namely the fact that the 

analysis covered relatively small samples of texts, the findings must be interpreted 

as tentative, not necessarily representative of the entire Old English and 

Old High German material. For a more accurate and comprehensive picture of 

the process of dissemination of the productive inflection in the s-stem paradigm, 

a systematic analysis of the complete available material from the two languages, 

taking into account their diatopic and chronological diversity, needs to be performed. 

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24 


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Dialekten. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 36, 1–42. 

Wright, Joseph 1906 /1888/: An Old High German Primer. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Wright, Joseph, Elisabeth Wright 1925 /1908/: Old English Grammar. 3rd ed. London: Oxford 

University Press /London, New York, Toronto: Henry Frowde. Oxford University Press/. 

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1989: Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness. Berlin: Akademie- 

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Substantivflexion. Folia Linguistica Historica 13, 297–307.

ANDREI A. AVRAM 

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST 

The distribution of diagnostic features 

in English-lexified contact languages: 

The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago 

ABSTRACT. This paper presents the earliest attestations in the creoles of Trinidad and 

Tobago diagnostic features of English-lexified contact languages proposed by Philip Baker 

and Magnus Huber (2001). It compares the distribution of these features in the creoles of 

Trinidad and Tobago and in the seven Atlantic English-lexified pidgins and creoles 

considered by Baker and Huber (2001). Also included is a discussion of a number of selected 

features. 

KEYWORDS. Diagnostic features, creole, Atlantic, Caribbean, world-wide 

1. Introduction 

The creoles of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidadian and Tobagonian, have not 

been subject to extensive systematic analysis in comparative work on the Atlantic 

English-lexified pidgins and creoles. Moreover, most previous studies of 

these varieties focus on synchronic data. 

Only a rather limited number of comparative studies have looked at data 

from Trinidadian. Thus, Mervyn C. Alleyne (1980), Lise Winer (1984) and 

Peter A. Roberts (1988) include occasional remarks on various features occurring 

in Trinidadian. Ian Hancock (1987) is an investigation of a number of syntactic 

features, on the basis of 50 sentences and phrases in 33 Atlantic Englishlexified 

creoles, including Trinidadian. John C. Wells (1987) analyzes eight 

phonetic characteristics which exhibit regional variation in several Atlantic 

English-lexified contact languages, including Trinidadian. Richard Allsopp 

(1996) lists mainly lexical items, phrases and idioms. Andrei Avram (1999 and 

2004a) supplements Philip Baker’s (1999) list of first attestations in Atlantic 

English-lexified creoles with data from Trinidadian and discusses a number of 

selected features. 

Similarly, data from Tobagonian have been included in only a few comparative 

studies. Various features are mentioned by Alleyne (1980).Tobagonian 

figures among the 33 Atlantic English-lexified creoles considered by Hancock 

(1987). A comparison of mainly lexical items from Tobagonian and other Atlantic 

English-lexified creoles is found in Lise Winer and Glenn G. Gilbert 

(1987). Tobagonian lexical items, phrases and idioms are also listed in All- 


28 

Andrei A. Avram 

sopp’s Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (1996). Avram (2002) presents 

first attestations of the features proposed by Baker (1999) and discusses some of 

these features. 

For the purposes of this paper, Trinidadian and Tobagonian (henceforth Tri 

& Tbg) are treated as a single entity 1 . I present the first attestations in Tri & Tbg 

of the diagnostic features suggested by Baker and Huber (2001). To qualify as 

diagnostic features, they must “represent significant phonological, lexical, or 

grammatical deviations from, or innovations to, varieties of British English – 

since British English was the major input in the restructuring process” (Baker 

and Huber 2001: 163) 2 . Such an approach takes into account features attested in 

earlier stages of Tri & Tbg, but which are no longer in use. 

The corpus of textual sources consists of both published and unpublished 

sources. These include early records of Tri & Tbg, such as travel accounts, 

memoirs, diaries, novels by James Edward Alexander (1833: Transatlantic 

Sketches, Comprising Visits to the Most Interesting Scenes in North and South 

America, and the West Indies. With Notes on Negro Slavery and Canadian Immigration), 

Mrs. (A. C.) Carmichael (1833: Domestic Manners and Social Condition 

of the White, Coloured and Negro Population of the West Indies. Vol. 2), 

Charles William Day (1852: Five Years’ Residence in the West Indies. Vol. 2), 

Mrs. William Noy Wilkins (1854: The Slave Son), Grant Allen (1886: In All 

Shades), Lise Winer (1984: “Early Trinidadian Creole: The Spectator texts”), 

Lise Winer and Glenn G. Gilbert (1987: “A 19th century report on the Creole 

English of Tobago: The Uh-Schuchardt correspondence”), Lise Winer (1993: 

Trinidad and Tobago), Lise Winer and Mary Rimmer (1994: “Language varieties 

in early Trinidadian novels”), Lise Winer (1995: “Penny Cuts: Differentiation 

of Creole varieties in Trinidad, 1904–1906” and 1997: “Six vernaculars 

texts from Trinidad, 1839–1851”), dictionaries by Richard Allsopp (1996: The 

Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage) and Wiwords the West Indian Dictionary 

(2008), Lise Winer (2009: Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & 

Tobago. On Historical Principles), as well as phrase books Evelin Seeliger- 

Mander and Osbert Mander (2003: Kreol für Trinidad & Tobago). 

The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, I present the earliest attestations 

in Tri & Tbg of the diagnostic features suggested by Baker and Huber 

(2001). Section 3 briefly compares the distribution of diagnostic features in Tri 

& Tbg and in seven other Atlantic English pidgins and creoles considered by 

Baker and Huber (2001). Section 4 discusses the status of several diagnostic 

features. The conclusions are set out in section 5. 

1 

2 

Similarly, the creoles of Suriname are treated as a single entity in Baker and Huber (2001: 

161). 

See also Baker (1999: 316).

The distribution of diagnostic features in English-lexified contact languages 29 

For the ease of reference, each diagnostic feature is numbered and labeled 

and/or defined as in Baker and Huber (2001). The entry for each feature includes 

the date of the first attestation and the relevant reference. The sources are 

mentioned between brackets. Features followed by an asterisk do not figure in 

Winer (2009). All examples appear in the original orthography or system of 

transcription in the sources. Quotations illustrate only features either not recorded 

in Winer (2009) or attested earlier. The length of quotations has been 

kept to a reasonable minimum. Relevant items in quotations are in bold characters. 

All quotations are accompanied by their translation. 

2. The first attestations in Tri & Tbg 

Baker and Huber (2001: 197–201) suggest 173 Atlantic features 3 . These 

features are attested only in the Atlantic, in at least two varieties (Baker and 

Huber 2001: 165). The following is the list of first attestations in Tri & Tbg of 

Atlantic features: 

[3] aki (fruit/tree)* 

ackee 2008 (Wiwords the West Indian Dictionary 2008) 

[4] akra (a savoury cake): 

accra 1919 (Winer 2009: 4) 

[5] all we (1PL): 

a we no like 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, vol. 2: 175) 

‘we don’t like’ 

[6] all you (2PL): 

a you 1838 (Winer 2009: 30) 

[7] Anancy (folktale character): 

Nancy 1858 (Lalla and D’Costa 1990: 118) 

[8] bad mouth ‘speak ill of, curse’* 

Whoever put bad mouth on you 1935 (Allsopp 1996: 67) 

‘Whoever cursed you’ 

[9] bakra ‘European, white person’: 1802 (Winer 2009: 41) 

buccara 1802 (Winer 2009: 41) 

[11] banja ‘banjo’: 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 247) 

banja 1987 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 247) 

[15] big eye ‘greed(y)’: 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 247) 

big-eye 1883 (Winer 2009: 80) 

[16] binness ‘business’* 

wha’ binness you hab 1854 (Wilkins 1854: 216) 

‘what business do you have’ 

[19] bonikleba ‘sour milk’* 

Me massa and he wife eat it when it bonny clover, (that is curdled) 1825/1826 

(Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 188) 

‘My master and his wife ate it when it curdled’ 

3 

These features include most of those initially proposed by Baker (1999: 317–336).

30 


[23] bubby ‘woman’s breast’: 

bubby 1987 (Winer 2009: 134) 

[24] buddy (egalitarian address for a male): 

buddy 1827 (Winer 2009: 135) 

[25] bumbo ‘vulva’: 

bombo 1974 (Winer 2009: 111) 

[27] calaloo ‘a rich soup or stew’: 

calliloe 1843 (Winer 2009: 155) 

[29] chigger ‘chigoe’: 

chigger 1827 (Winer 2009: 200) 

[30] copper ‘money’* 

kaapaa ‘penny’ 2005 (Winer 2005: 14) 

[31] crapaud ‘frog’: 

crapeau 1827 (Winer 2009: 258) 

[34] da, de (progressive): 

my kin da hurt me 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 205) 

‘my skin is hurting me’ 

[36] day clean ‘daybreak’: 

day-clean 1939 (Winer 2009: 286) 

[37] de, da, na, a (equative copula): 

da 1827 (Winer 2009: 280) 

[38] de (locative copula): 

de 1845 (Winer 2009: 286) 

[39] dead house ‘mortuary’: 

dead-house 1849 (Winer 2009: 287) 

[40] dem (article, demonstrative): 

you know dem two Backra 1845 (Winer 1984: 206) 

‘you know those two white men’ 

[41] postposed dem (nominal plural): 

dem 1883 (Winer 2009: 289) 

[43] dem (3PL POSS): 

dem 1847 (Winer 2009: 289) 

[44] do (clause-initial entreaty): 

do 1839 (Winer 2009: 301) 

[45] dokunu/dukna (kind of starchy food)* 

duckenoo 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 249) 

[47] done VERB (completive): 

When dem done laugh 1845 (Winer 1984: 207) 

‘When they finished laughing’ 

[48] doormouth ‘threshold’: 

doe-mout 1883 (Winer 2009: 307) 

[49] dohti ‘earth, dirt’: 

lef be bit dutti 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 259) 

‘leave a little bit of dirt’ 

[51] duppy ‘zombie’* 

duppie 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 249) 

[52] eddoe/ede ‘taro’: 

eddoe 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 165) 

[55] eyewater ‘tear’: 

eye-water 1933 (Winer 2009: 333) 

[58] for PRON NP (genitive):


Something chook for my kin 1827 (Winer 1993: 78) 

‘Something stabbed my skin’ 

[59] for VERB (modal)* 

Judge Scatl_d say dey for keep you in prisonment 1843 (Winer 1993: 83) 

‘Judge Scatl_d said they must keep you in prison’ 

[60] for true ‘truly’: 

for true 1827 (Winer 2009: 359) 

[61] fufu (starch food, boiled and pounded): 

fufu 1974 (Winer 2009: 368) 

[62] fullup ‘fill, be-full’: 

full up 1940 (Winer 2009: 368) 

[64] funji ‘corn meal’: 

funge 1974 (Winer 2009: 369) 

[65] goatmouth ‘a Cassandra’: 

goat mout 1827 (Winer 1993: 78) 

Goat’s Mouth 1827 (Winer 2009: 385) 

[66] gongosha ‘deceit; gossip’: 

conconsa 1945 (Winer 2009: 238) 

[68] heart burn ‘be angry’* 

You heart burn 1827 (Winer 1993: 78) 

‘You’re angry’ 

[71] hungry ‘hunger, starvation’: 

Dog ha two massar, but hungry kill he 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 256) 

‘A dog that has two masters will die of hunger’ 

[72] ina, na (locative preposition): 

go n’a house 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘[I] went into the house’ 

[73] Irish potato ‘potato’: 

Irish potato 1917 (Winer 2009: 453) 

[75] jackspaniard ‘wasp’: 

jack-spaniard 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 330) 

[76] john crow (bird sp.): 

Johnny crow 1888 (Winer 2009: 470) 

[77] jook ‘pierce, stab etc.’: 

chook 1827 (Winer 2009: 471) 

[79] jumbee ‘malevolent spirit, zombie’: 

Jumbee-bird 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

[81] k/g palatalized before /a/: 1939 

a cyap with the ears turn down 1939 (Winer 1993: 264) 

‘a cap with the ears turned down’ 

Gyal, you too rough 1939 (Winer 1993: 261) 

‘Girl, you’re too rough’ 

[82] kaanki (corn dish): 

conkee 1974 (Winer 2009: 241) 

[83] kaban/cabin ‘bed’: 

caban 1800 (Winer 2009: 150) 

[84] kaka ‘shit, excrement’: 

caca 1933 (Winer 2009: 482) 

[86] kasada ‘cassava’: 

casada 1802 (Winer 2009: 179) 

[87] kata ‘head-pad’:

32 


cattar 1881 (Winer 2009: 489) 

[88] ki! (exclamation): 

ky, Massa, whar you buy dat saddle? 1846 (Day 1852, vol. 1: 204) 

‘Master, where did you buy that saddle?’ 

[91] kokobe ‘leper, leprosy’: 

Coco-Bay 1852 (Winer 2009: 226) 

[94] kunumunu ‘stupid person’: 

kunumunu 1939 (Winer 2009: 504) 

[98] maga ‘thin’: 

maga 1845 (Winer 2009: 551) 

[99] magass ‘crushed cane’: 

mogass 1825 (Winer 2009: 592) 

[100] married ‘marry’: 

marrid 1904 (Winer 2009: 579) 

[102] mauby ‘drink from potatoes’: 

mawby 1833 (Winer 2009: 588) 

[106] mouth ‘word, language’: 

mouth 1956 (Winer 2009: 616) 

[107] mouth water ‘saliva’: 

mout’-water 1945 (Winer 2009: 616) 

[108] mumu ‘dumb’: 

mou-mou 1883 (Winer 2009: 619) 

[110] no more ‘merely’* 

nomo 1858 (Lalla and D’Costa 1990: 118) 

[111] nose hole ‘nostril’: 

nose hole 1940 (Winer 2009: 638) 

[112] NP1 for NP2 (possessive N2’s N1): 

de behind fou dahouse 1845 (Winer 2009: 355) 

[114] nufnuf ‘many, plenty of’* 

The crowd … kissed him up ‘nough-nough’. n.d. (Allsopp 1996: 410) 

‘The crowd … kissed him a lot’ 

[115] (n)yam ‘eat food’: 

yam 1827 (Winer 2009: 640) 

nyam 1904 (Winer 2009: 640) 

[116] (n)yampi ‘dirt in the eyes’: 

yampee 1961 (Winer 2009: 978) 

[118] (n)(y)anga ‘proud; pride; ostentation’: 

yangar 1827 (Winer 2009: 978) 

[119] n(y)ung ‘young’: 

nung 1883 (Winer 2009: 640) 

[120] obeah ‘kind of magic’: 

obea-man 1800 (Winer 2009: 642) 

[121] palaver ‘dispute, discourse, matter’: 

palaver 1843 (Winer 2009: 662) 

[122] pantap ‘on’* 

pantap ‘on (top of) 2008 (James and Youssef 2008: 675) 

[125] pikin ‘small; child, offsping’: 

picken 1883 (Winer 2009: 691) 

[126] pikni ‘small; child, offspring’: 

picknie 1883 (Winer 2009: 691) 

[132] potapota ‘mud; muddy’:


putto-putto 1883 (Winer 2009: 734) 

[133] rata ‘rat’: 

ratta 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 156) 

[134] rockstone ‘stone’: 

rack stone 1845 (Winer 2009: 765) 

[135] (for) sake (of) ‘because’: 

sak 1884 (Winer 2009: 779) 

[137] santapi ‘centipede’: 

santapee 1936 (Winer 2009: 784) 

[138] sapata ‘footwear’: 

shapat 1849 (Winer 2009: 785) 

[139] say (complementizer): 

What you tink say me see 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘What do you think I saw’ 

[143] soso ‘only’* 

Is so-so bread we have to eat. n.d. (Allsopp 1996: 519) 

‘We only have bread to eat’ 

[144] so te(l) ‘until; a long time’: 

Dem tan up pan da hase de so-o te-e-e 1845 (Winer 1984: 206) 

‘They stood on the horse for a long time’ 

[146] strong ears/hard ears ‘stubborness’: 

hard aze 1883 (Winer 2009: 859) 

[147] sweet ‘tasty; please (v)’: 

De crab dem bery sweet. 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987) 

‘The crabs are very tasty.’ 

[148] sweetmouth ‘flattery’: 

sweet mouth 1993 (Winer 1993: 57) 

[149] Takoma ‘Anansi’s son’: 

Tacooma 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 252) 

[150] tan lek ‘be like, resemble’: 

tan like 1827 (Winer 2009: 879) 

[152] tief ‘steal’: 

He tief yam from me 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 191) 

‘He stole food from me’ 

[154] too (preverbal) ‘very, exceeding’: 

They too lie 1975 (Allsopp 1996: 561) 

‘They lie a lot’ 

[155] tote ‘carry’: 

toat 1904 (Winer 2009: 908) 

[156] tother, tara ‘other’: 

toder 1845 (Winer 2009: 905) 

[157] tumtum = fufu: 

tum-tum 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 183) 

[161] vex ‘be-angry’: 

bex 1827 (Winer 2009: 933) 

[164] we (1PL POSS): 

We house bun 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 253) 

‘Our house burned’ 

[165] we (1PL OBL): 

we 1849 (Winer 2009: 948) 

[166] WH make ‘why’*

34 


wha make dem no put door 1845 (Winer 1984: 207) 

‘Why didn’t they put a door?’ 

[169] woodslave (lizard sp.): 

woodslave 1894 (Winer 2009: 971) 

[172] yai ‘eye’: 

yie 1827 (Winer 2009: 984) 

[173] yerri ‘hear’: 

yerry 1845 (Winer 2009: 980) 

Baker and Huber (2001: 201–203) also consider 75 world-wide features. 

Features classified as having a world-wide distribution are attested in at least 

one Atlantic and one Pacific variety respectively (Baker and Huber 2001: 165). 

The first attestations in Tri & Tbg of world-wide features are listed below: 

[174] all about ‘everywhere’: 

he blow all about 1843 (Winer 1993: 84) 

‘it blew everywhere’ 

[178] been (past/anterior): 

bin 1827 (Winer 2009: 83) 

[179] before time ‘formerly’: 

before time 1985 (Winer 2009: 67) 

[181] bruck ‘break’: 

When guinea fol foot bruk 1883 (Winer and Gilbert 1987: 256) 

‘when a guinea fowl breaks its foot’ 

[182] byandby (adv.) ‘soon’: 

by and by, massa, me run 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 149) 

‘soon, master, I’ll run’ 

[186] da(t) (definite article): 

da Coromatree blood be in him 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 171) 

‘the Coromante blood is in him’ 

[187] dead ‘die’: 

all a we go dead 1884 (Winer 1993: 92) 

‘we will all die’ 

[188] dem (3PL): 

wha dem cost you 1827 (Winer 1984: 80) 

‘what did they cost you’ 

[192] for (infinitive): 

I no wish for be happy 1809 (Winer 2009: 384) 

‘I don’t wish to be happy’ 

[193] go (future): 

go 1809 (Winer 2009: 384) 

[194] got ‘have’: 

Me no got wine 1839 (Winer 1997: 72) 

‘I don’t have wine’ 

[195] grande ‘big’: 

grandee 1833 (Winer 2009: 395) 

[196] he (resumptive): 

Massa And_n he do great tings for me 1843 (Winer 1993: 83) 

‘Master And_n did great things for me’ 

[197] he (3SG OBL):


he neber know nothing ’t all about he 1854 (Wilkins 1854: 74) 

‘he never knows anything about him’ 

[198] he (3SG POSS): 

Me tell he mammy and he daddy 1825/1826 (Winer 1984: 194) 

‘I told his mother and his father’ 

[199] him (3SG POSS)* 

hold him two ear 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘I held him by both his ears’ 

[200] him (3SG)* 

Him imp’rence feller 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘He’s an impudent fellow’ 

[201] lick ‘flog’: 

she go lick her again 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 147) 

‘she will flog her again’ 

[202] lili ‘little’: 

lilly 1847 (Winer 2009: 531) 

[203] little bit ‘slightly’* 

when he come little bit lower down 1853 (Winer 1993: 89) 

‘when he came slightly lower’ 

once you lily bit white 1853 (Winer 1993: 90) 

‘once you are slightly white’ 

[205] make (causative/imperative): 

make him say who handkerchief it be 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 159) 

‘let him say whose handkerchief it is’ 

[206] make haste ‘hurry’* 

Mek ees bifor ah wi riitsch tu leet. 2003 (Seeliger-Mander and Mander 2003: 32) 

‘Hurry up or we will be too late’ 

[207] -man (agentive suffix): 

carter man 1939 (Winer 2009: 563) 

[208] me (1SG): 

me 1802 (Winer 2009: 591) 

[209] me (1SG POSS): 

For you me … sell me tannia 1827 (Winer 1993: 80) 

‘I sold my tannia for you’ 

[211] more better: 

mo bettar / mo betta 1904 (Winer 2009: 608) 

[212] most ‘almost’* 

In George Street most anything lies in the drains 1952 (Allsopp 1996: 388) 

In George Street almost anything lies in the drains’ 

[213] NP1NP2 (possessive N1’SN2) 

Buckra servant 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘white man’s servant’ 

[215] no (negator): 

me no care 1802 (Winer 1993: 67) 

‘I don’t care’ 

[218] one (indefinite article): 

D. was one very bad pic-a-ninny 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 140) 

‘D. was a very bad child’ 

[219] one time ‘(at) once’: 

one time 1904 (Winer 2009: 651) 

[220] paragogic vowels:

36 


me takee 1802 (Winer 1993: 67) 

‘I take’ 

[221] piccaninny ‘small; child’: 

D. was one very bad pic-a-ninny 1825/126 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 140) 

‘D. was a very bad child’ 

[222] plenty NOUN ‘a lot of’: 

Plenty people bin drownded dere 1846 (Day 1852: 299) 

‘A lot of people drowned here’ 

[223] plenty (postverbal) ‘a lot’* 

me milk da goat plenty 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 188) 

‘I milked the goat a lot’ 

[225] sabby ‘know’: 

savy 1809 (Winer 2009: 773) 

[226] -side (locative suffix): 

from ship’s side 1854 (Wilkins 1854: 101) 

‘from the ship’ 

[227] sitdown ‘sit, reside’ (reanalysis)* 

When he siddong na de new house 1845 (Winer 1984: 194) 

‘After he settles in the new house’ 

[228] word derived from something ‘thing’* 

me sabby do um all something 1888 (Winer 2009: 18) 

‘I can do all things’ 

[231] suppose ‘if’: 

Spose you tink to fool Quaco dat way 1827 (Winer 1993: 80) 

‘If you think [you can] fool Quaco that way’ 

[232] that time ‘when’: 

dat time 1827 (Winer 2009: 891) 

[236] ADJ/VERB too much ‘a lot’: 

He wicked too much 1825/1826 (Winer 1984: 194) 

‘He’s very wicked’ 

[239] walkabout ‘wander’* 

Oll day ah walk bowt 1904 (Winer 1993: 96) 

‘I wandered all day’ 

[240] we (relativizer): 

wey 1845 (Winer 2009: 950) 

[241] WH for ‘why’: 

wha for 1827 (Winer 2009: 950) 

[243] WH place ‘where’* 

wa place? 1845 (Winer 1984: 210) 

[244] WH side ‘where’: 

which side 1972 (Winer 2009: 953) 

[246] WH time ‘when’* 

wa time? 1845 (Winer 1984: 210) 

[247] ZERO (equative copula): 

Who you? 1845 (Winer 1984: 205) 

‘Who are you?’ 

[248] ZERO (predicative copula): 

He saucy for true 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘He is really infuriating’


Finally, Baker and Huber’s (2001: 203–204) list includes 54 Pacific features. 

To qualify for this group, a diagnostic feature has to be attested only in 

the Pacific, in at least two varieties (Baker and Huber 2001: 165). 5 such features 

are recorded in Tri & Tbg as well: 

[259] calico ‘cloth(es)’* 

help her sew calicoes 1825/1826 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 2: 188) 

[268] first time ‘ahead, formerly’* 

fos taim 2003 (Seeliger-Mander and Mander 2003: 152) 

[277] look see ‘inspect, see’* 

fou look see all way da Parson da do 1845 (Winer 1984: 207) 

‘to see everything that the parson is doing’ 

[287] saltwater ‘sea; coastal’ 1850 

[295] VERB-VM (transitive suffix) 1888 (Winer 2009: 18) 

The total number of diagnostic features attested in Tri & Tbg amounts to 

160. Of these, 28 diagnostic features not listed in Winer’s Dictionary of the 

English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago (2009) are actually found in Tri & Tbg: 

[3] aki (fruit/tree); [8] bad mouth ‘speak ill of, curse’; [16] binness ‘business’; [19] bonikleba 

‘sour milk’; [30] copper ‘money’; [45] dokunu/dukna (kind of starchy food); [51] duppy 

‘zombie’; [59] for verb (modal); [68] heart burn ‘be angry’; [110] no more ‘merely’; [114] 

nufnuf ‘many, plenty of’; [122] pantap ‘on’; [143] soso ‘only’; [164] WH make ‘why’; [199] 

him (3SG); [200] him (3SG POSS); [203] little bit ‘slightly’; [206] make haste ‘hurry’; [212] 

most ‘almost’; [223] plenty (postverbal) ‘a lot’; [227] sitdown ‘sit, reside (reanalysis)’; [226] 

word derived from something ‘thing’; [239] walkabout ‘wander’; [243] WH place ‘where’; 

[246] WH time ‘when’; [259] calico ‘cloth(es)’; [268] first time ‘ahead, formerly’; [277] look 

see ‘inspect, see’. 

Moreover, as set out in Table 1, the first attestations of 40 diagnostic features 

predate those in Winer’s Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago 

(2009): 

Table 1. The first attestations predating those in Winer’s dictionary (2009) 

Feature 1st attestation 1st attestation 

in Winer (2009) 

[5] all we (1PL) 1825/1826 1834 

[7] Anancy (folktale character) 1858 1919 

[34] da, de (progressive) 1825/1826 1827 

[40] dem (article, demonstrative) 1845 1847 

[47] done verb (completive) 1845 1898 

[49] dohti ‘earth, dirt’ 1883 1904 

[58] for PRON NP (genitive) 1827 1843 

[71] hungry ‘hunger, starvation’ 1883 1936 

[72] ina, na (locative preposition) 1827 1838 

[75] jackspaniard ‘wasp’ 1825/1826 1831 

[79] jumbee ‘malevolent spirit, zombie’ 1827 1838

38 


[139] say (complementizer) 1827 1845 

[144] so te(l) ‘until, a long time’ 1845 1904 

[147] sweet ‘tasty; please (v)’ 1883 1993 

[148] sweetmouth ‘flattery’ 1993 1996 

[149] Takoma ‘Anansi’s son’ 1883 1933 

[152] tief ‘steal’ 1825/1826 1827 

[154] too (preverbal) ‘very, exceeding’ 1975 1982 

[164] we (1PL POSS) 1883 1904 

[174] all about ‘everywhere’ 1843 1904 

[181] bruck ‘break’ 1883 1904 

[182] by and by (adv.) ‘soon’ 1825/1826 1847 

[186] da(t) (definite article) 1825/1826 1845 

[187] dead ‘die’ 1884 1919 

[188] dem (3PL) 1827 1847 

[192] for (infinitive) 1809 1838 

[194] got ‘have’ 1839 1853 

[196] he (resumptive) 1843 1883 

[197] he (3SG OBL) 1854 1904 

[198] he (3SG POSS) 1825/1826 1847 

[201] lick ‘flog’ 1825/1826 1840 

[205] make (causative/imperative) 1825/1826 1979 

[209] me (1SG POSS) 1827 1904 

[215] no (negator) 1802 1809 

[218] one (indefinite article) 1827 1843 

[221] piccaninny ‘small; child’ 1825/1826 1846 

[222] plenty NOUN ‘a lot of’ 1852 1904 

[226] -side (locative suffix) 1854 1989 

[231] suppose ‘if’ 1827 1843 

[236] ADJ/VERB too much ‘a lot’ 1825/1826 1831 

Note that 10 of these diagnostic features date from a considerably earlier period: 

[205] make (causative/imperative): 152 years earlier; 

[226] -side (locative suffix): 135 years earlier; 

[147] sweet ‘tasty; please (v)’ 110 years earlier; 

[209] me (1SG POSS): 77 years earlier; 

[7] Anancy (folktale character): 61 years earlier; 

[174] all about ‘everywhere’: 61 years earlier; 

[47] done VERB (completive): 53 years earlier; 

[71] hungry ‘hunger, starvation’: 53 years earlier; 

[222] plenty NOUN ‘a lot of’: 52 years earlier; 

[149] Takoma ‘Anansi’s son’: 50 years earlier. 

Finally, 119 diagnostic features (74,3%) out of 160 are first attested before 

1900. This rather impressive proportion is significant since the discovery of 

attestations which predate 1900 “minimizes the effect of later, non-diffusionist 

cross-influences” between the Atlantic English Creoles “e.g. through the media, 

modern communication or increased mobility in the 20th century” (Baker and 

Huber 2001: 159).


3. Tri & Tbg vs. other Atlantic English-lexified pidgins and 

creoles 

It would be instructive to briefly compare Tri & Tbg and other Atlantic 

varieties, in light of some of the figures reported by Baker and Huber (2001). 

Consider first the absolute number of attested features (Baker and Huber 2011: 

171). With a total of 161, Tri & Tbg ranks lower than Jamican and Krio, but 

higher than Bajan, Gullah, St Kittitian, Suriname, West African Pidgin English. 

According to Baker and Huber (2001: 171), “a fundamental difference between 

the Atlantic and Pacific varieties” is that “the absolute number of features 

in the latter is generally lower, with the average in the Atlantic being more than 

twice as high than that in the Pacific”. As shown below, this claim is confirmed 

by the total number of features attested in Tri & Tbg, which is above the average 

for the Atlantic varieties considered by Baker and Huber (2001): 

Average in Pacific varieties: 63,3 (Baker and Huber 2001: 171) 

Average in Atlantic varieties: 145,4 (Baker and Huber 2001: 171) 

Tri & Tbg: 160 

The absolute number of world-wide features attested in Tri & Tbg is 50. Table 2 

compares the distribution of world-wide features in the Atlantic varieties4 considered 

by Baker and Huber (2001) and in Tri & Tbg: 

Table 2. The world-wide features in 8 Atlantic varieties 

Baker and Huber (2001: 171) 

Srn Bjn SKi Jam Gul Kri WAf Tri & Tbg Average 

44,5 36 38 52,5 42 63 63 50 48,6 

Tri & Tbg thus fall within the range of Atlantic varieties (from 36 to 63). The 

deviation from the average (= number of world features − average) is shown in 

Table 3: 

Table 3. The deviation from the average 

Baker and Huber (2001) 

Srn Bjn SKi Jam Gul Kri WAf Tri & Tbg 

−4,1 −12,6 −10,6 +3,9 −6,6 +14,4 +14,4 +1,4 

As can be seen, Tri & Tbg have the lowest deviation from the average. Consider 

next the proportion of world-wide features: 

4 

Abbreviations: Bjn = Bajan; Gul = Gullah; Jam = Jamaican; Kri = Krio; SKi = St Kittitian; 

Srn = Suriname; WAf = West African Pidgin English.

40 


Table 4. The percentage of world-wide features in 8 Atlantic varieties 

Baker and Huber (2001: 172) 

Srn Bjn SKi Jam Gul Kri WAf Tri & Tbg Average 

33,2 30,9 28,4 28,8 34,6 35,4 41,6 31,2 33,0 

Once again, Tri & Tbg are situated within the Atlantic varieties range (from 

28,4% to 41,6%). This is also consistent with the observation made by Baker 

and Huber (2001: 173) regarding the differences in average between the Pacific 

and the Atlantic varieties: 

Average percentage in Pacific varieties: 66,6% 

Average percentage in Atlantic varieties: 33,0% 

Tri & Tbg: 31,2% 

Finally, Table 5 shows that Tri & Tbg have the second lowest deviation 

from the average (= percentage − average percentage): 

Table 5. The deviation from the average 

Baker and Huber (2001) 

Srn Bjn SKi Jam Gul Kri WAf Tri & Tbg 

+0,2 −2,1 −4,6 −4,2 +1,6 +2,4 +8,6 −1,8 

To conclude, in terms of the distribution of diagnostic features, Tri & Tbg 

exhibit the characteristics typical of Atlantic English-lexified pidgins and creoles. 

4. The status of selected features 

Consider first the status of feature [200] him (3SG), rendered respectively in 

[200a] and [200b], being is not listed in Winer’s dictionary (2009). In a discussion 

of the samples of Trinidadian found in a late 19th century novel, Baker and 

Winer (1999: 114) dismiss as “[t]he most distinctly un-Trinidadian features … 

the two Jamaican-style uses of him as subject pronoun”: 

[200a] him can read de book 1886 (Allen 1886, vol. 2: 91) 

‘he can read the book’ 

[200b] Him gwine to delibber me 1886 (Allen 1886, Vol. 2: 91) 

‘He is going to set me free’ 

However, feature [200] him (3SG) is recorded in three other sources, cf. [200c]– 

[200e]. Thus, in addition to the example given in section 2, it occurs three times 

in the same text which, incidentally, has been used by Winer (1993 and 2009) 

herself as a source of early attestations of Trinidadian:


[200c] him no tink me butt him 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘he didn’t think I would hit him’ 

[200d] At last him take road, run way 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘At last he took to the road and ran away’ 

[200e] you say … him you modder 1827 (Winer 1993: 79) 

‘you’ll say … he’s your mother’ 

It also occurs twice in a slightly later text, cf. [200f] and [200g]: 

[200f] me tink him dam drunk 1831 (Alexander 1833, Vol. I: 205) 

‘I think he is damned drunk’ 

[200g] him black nigger 1831 (Alexander 1833,Vol. I: 205) 

‘he is a black Negro’ 

Finally, the feature at issue is found in yet another text, cf. 200h]: 

[200h] him werry tin 1851 (Day 1852, Vol. 2) 

‘it is very thin’ 

On the strength of the evidence provided by these four independent sources, 

feature [200] him (3SG) can be considered to have existed in Tri & Tbg. 

Table 6. The world-wide status of five features 

Feature classified as Pacific 

Atlantic varieties in which it is attested 

(Baker and Huber 2001) 

[259] calico ‘cloth(es)’ SVi, Tri & Tbg 

[268] first time ‘ahead, formerly’ Alu, Jam, Kri, Lib, Ndy, Sar, Sra, Lib, Tri & Tbg 

[277] look see ‘inspect, see’ Kri, Sra, Tri & Tbg 

[287] saltwater ‘sea; coastal’ Jam, MSL, Sra, Tri & Tbg 

[295] verb-vn (transitive suffix) AssCamPE, Bjn, CamPE, FPPE, NPE, Tri & Tbg 

Table 6 shows that the 5 features at issue are found in (at least) the following 

Atlantic pidgins and creoles, either in their earlier stages or in the modern 

varieties 5 : 

Evidence from Tri & Tbg also sheds light on the classification of some of 

the diagnostic features suggested by Baker and Huber (2001). The occurrence in 

Tri & Tbg of the features [268] first time ‘ahead, formerly’, [277] look see ‘inspect, 

see’, [287] saltwater ‘sea; coastal’, and [295] VERB-VN (transitive suffix) 

constitutes further evidence in support of the proposal by Avram (2004b) that 

these allegedly Pacific features (Baker and Huber 2001: 203–204) should be 

5 

Abbreviations: Alu = Aluku; AssCamPE = Assimilated Cameroon Pidgin English; CamPE = 

Cameroon Pidgin English; FPPE = Fernando Po Pidgin English; Guy = Guyanese; Lib = Liberia; 

MSL = Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language; Ndy = Ndyuka; NPE = Nigerian 

Pidgin English; Sar = Saramaccan; Sra = Sranan; SVi = St Vincentian. For attestations 

see Avram (2004b).

42 


reclassified as world-wide ones. One other Pacific feature in Baker and Huber’s 

(2001: 203) classification, which needs to be reclassified as world-wide, is 

[259] calico ‘cloth(es)’ 6 . 

5. Conclusions 

The first attestations in Tri & Tbg presented in this paper are an addition to 

the data base reflecting the distribution of diagnostic features in English-lexified 

contact languages. The data from Tri & Tbg are also relevant to the broad distinction 

made in the literature between the Western Caribbean and the Eastern 

Caribbean English-lexified creoles. For instance, according to John Holm 

(1989: 445), “the normal word for the spirit of a dead person is usually jumby in 

the Eastern group and duppy in the Western group”. However, both are attested 

in Tri & Tbg. Michael Aceto (2008: 652–653) writes that “(h)im (as both subject 

and object pronoun) in Western varieties”, while it is “nearly always (h)i 

(as a subject pronoun) … in Eastern Caribbean varieties”. Again, both him and 

he are attested in the creoles of Tri & Tbg. Similarly, Aceto (2008: 653) states 

that “wi is often the first person plural pronoun (as both subject and object pronouns) 

in Western varieties, and the corresponding form is aawi in the Eastern 

Caribbean”, but both wi and aawi are attested in Tri & Tbg. The coexistence of 

Western and Eastern Caribbean features is consistent with the multiple inputs in 

the formative period of Tri & Tbg. As is well known, several Atlantic English 

contributed to the emergence and development of Tri & Tbg, e.g., Bajan, Krio, 

Grenada English, St Vincentian (cf. Alleyne 1980: 211, Winer 1984: 182–186; 

Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985: 52–54; Holm 1989: 459–460; Winer and 

Gilbert 1987: 237–240; Winer 1993: 6–11). 

Finally, the earliest attestations in Tri & Tbg can shed new light on the issues 

of diffusion and genetic relationships. Establishing the inventory of diagnostic 

features occurring both in Tri & Tbg and in all relevant Atlantic Englishlexified 

creoles would be instrumental in assessing the influence of the latter on 

Tri & Tbg. Unfortunately, with the exception of Bajan, the relevant Eastern 

Caribbean varieties are generally under-researched (Aceto 2008: 658). The 

quantification of the affinities 7 between Tri & Tbg and other Atlantic Englishlexified 

creoles remains a topic for further research. 

6 

7 

Which also occurs twice in St. Vincentian: he want calicoes ‘he wanted cloth(es)’ and sell 

me for calicoes ‘he sold me for cloth(es)’ –1820 (Carmichael 1833, Vol. 1: 310). 

Using the statistical method proposed by Baker and Huber (2001: 181).


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syntax. In: Schneider (ed.), 645–660. 

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features. English World-Wide 25 (1), 81–108. 

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and Negro Population of the West Indies. Vol. 2. London: Whittaker, Treacher & Co. 

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Co. 

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syntax. In: Schneider (ed.), 661–692. 

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Wiwords the West Indian Dictionary 2008: http://www.wiwords.com.

GABRIELA BROZBĂ 

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST 

On the variability of vocalic inventory in Black South 

African English 

ABSTRACT. Black South African English resembles other African non-native varieties in 

that most of the vocalic phonemes have undergone some kind of restructuring or have 

disappeared altogether and it resulted in a system which has far less vowels. The current 

paper looks at some vocalic features from a phonetic point of view, i.e., the paper is meant to 

be an analysis at the interface between phonetics and phonology. Phonetic pieces of evidence 

will be provided in support of the phonological assumptions. Although the amount of data at 

my disposal is far too limited to allow for the assumptions made to be treated as 

generalizations, some facts become obvious by looking into more depth even at the acoustic 

results for the samples of a single subject. The results also attest to intra-speaker variation, as 

studies have dealt mostly with inter-speaker variation so far. 

KEYWORDS. Monophthongs, lexical set, Praat, diphthong trajectory, variation, acrolectal 


Many studies in the past on the varieties of English in South Africa have 

dealt only with “white” South African English. In comparison, Black South 

African English (henceforth BSAE) has received considerably less attention 

regarding its development and phonetic description. Researchers (e.g., Lanham 

1985, Mesthrie 1992, Van Rooy 2000, de Klerk and Gough 2002, Wissing 

2002) have separated the varieties spoken in South Africa into five main 

groups: South African English, Afrikaans English, Colored English, South African 

Indian English and Black South African English. 

It has been argued that BSAE does not exist as one single entity due to drastic 

differences in levels of proficiency among black South Africans, and that 

BSAE varieties in South Africa have radically been changing, with access to 

English in schools being one of the primary social factors. The elimination of 

segregated schools has had a dramatic effect on the varieties of English spoken 

in South Africa. Leketi Makalela (2004: 356) points out that there are at least 

four reasons for which some distinctive features of BSAE emerged and spread 

across the country: (1) the demographic power of the BSAE users; (2) their 

dispersion through the educational system; (3) the influence of mother tongues; 

(4) the value of English in the new dispensation. In terms of demographics, 

since the overwhelming majority of ESL speakers are to date those who are 


46 

Gabriela Brozbă 

most likely to produce BSAE-like features, 1 they will surely continue to produce 

and diffuse them. The spread of BSAE through education is promoted by 

teachers themselves who are users of this variety and spread it to their students. 

Makalela (1998), for instance, shows that in the province of Limpopo teachers 

transfer and model BSAE features to their students as norms. Consequently, the 

cross-generational spread of BSAE is ensured in this way. By the time most of 

the children enter the schooling system, some of the major Bantu structures are 

already in place and, hence, used as a reference point in the acquisition and use 

of ESL. According to Makalela (2004: 257), BSAE will be at least partially the 

result of a sort of “creative bilingualism” which rises from two linguistic systems 

and creatively produces a “well-formed and rule governed variety of English”. 

Finally, in the post-apartheid era, i.e., after 1994, English has gained more 

ground than ever and has become the dominant official language used in public 

domains such as government, media, technology, commerce, mostly due to its 

being associated with upward social mobility and economic welfare. David 

Crystal (2003 /1997/: 107) writes that there are about 11 million speakers of 

English as a second language in South Africa, and about 3.7 million speakers of 

English as L1, 2 figures which offer per se a reason to look into this variety of 

English. 

Finally, what I refer to and treat as BSAE will be mostly mesolectal-like 

features, but I will also bring forth and comment on features which prove to be 

characteristic of and appear recurrently in the speech of basilectal and acrolectal 

users. 3 The speech samples for the acoustic analyses are from the CD accompanying 

the Varieties of English textbook, edited by Bernd Kortmann, and Edgar 

W. Schneider (2008). In processing the sound files I have used the Praat software 

of Paul Boersma, David Weenink (2010). The phonological standard used 

for reference and ease of comparison, to which I will refer hereinafter as RP, is 

Received Pronunciation. The standard of comparison used for vowels consists 

in the lexical sets of John. C. Wells (1982). 

1 

2 

3 

African – 79.4%, White – 9.2%, Colored – 8.8%, Indian/Asian – 2.6% 

Similar to the figure in Mesthrie (2002: 13), which gives an approximate of 3,5 million L1 

English speakers on the basis of the 1996 census. 

This will prove important as I believe that these three levels are parts of a lectal continuum 

and, depending on the degree of formality/informality of the situation, the speakers may alter 

their speech in the need to adjust to their interlocutors. It may be harder to believe that 

basilectal speakers can put on their “best” English, i.e., something “better” than they already 

speak, when interacting with more proficient users of English, since they are categorized as 

such by linguists/specialists because the features in their grammars are quite stable. However, 

acrolectal speakers will accommodate their speech to less proficient speakers in order 

to get along smoothly, to convey the meaning in such a way that successful communication 

is warranted.

On the variability of vocalic inventory in Black South African English 47 

2. The vocalic inventory of BSAE 

Bertus Van Rooy (2008: 179) argues that BSAE is characterized by the 

absence of the tense/lax contrast and that of central vowels, at least in the 

mesolectal variety. His findings point to the fact that mesolectal speakers of 

BSAE have five contrastive vowel phonemes, namely /i/, /ɛ/, /a/, /N/ and /u/. 

Acrolectal speakers have some other vowels as well, which, as expected, bring 

their variety closer to the native varieties of English, but there are some features 

which are common along the lectal continuum. These and other features of the 

BSAE vocalic system are discussed in what follows. 

2.1. The monophthongs 

According to Van Rooy (2008), drawing on Van Rooy and Van Huyssteen 

(2000), the monophthongs of BSAE are the ones in Table 1; the mergers are 

illustrated by their association with the same vowel in BSAE: 

Table 1. Monophthongs mergers in BSAE (adapted from Van Rooy 2008: 179) 

Lexical set item 

KIT 

FLEECE 

FOOT 

GOOSE 

DRESS 

TRAP 

NURSE ɜ: 

LOT 

ɒ 

CLOTH 

ɒ 

THOUGHT ɔ: 

FORCE ɔ: 

NORTH ɔ: 

STRUT 

RP target 

vowel 

ɪ 

i 

ʊ 

u 

ɛ 

æ 

ʌ 

BATH ɑ: 

PALM ɑ: 

commA 

lettER 

ə 

ə 

BSAE 

realization 

i 

u 

ɛ 

ɔ 

ɑ‚ 

Van Rooy (2008: 180) writes that in terms of vowel quality monophthongs 

are consistently transcribed as tense vowels but intermediate realizations between 

tense and lax may occur. Also vowel length is found to not have phonemic 

value but it may sometimes acquire a suprasegmental function, as vowels in 

stressed words may be considerably longer than in unstressed words. He also 

notes that central vowels are commonly realized as mid front vowels or as central 

low vowels, in the sense that NURSE, for instance, will be realized as [ɛ],

48 


whereas a schwa in syllable-final position, especially if the syllable is open, will 

be realized as the low vowel [ɑ‚]. A phonetic variability of the latter is observed, 

its quality ranging from slightly back to slightly fronted, as in some cases (most 

of them) the second formant is below 1500 Hz, but for some tokens its value 

goes below 1300 Hz. 

Table 2. Mean F1 / F2 values and duration of BSAE vowels (Mboniswa) 

Lexical set item F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) Duration (milliseconds) 

BATH 616 1366 132 

PALM 4 606 1285 115 

STRUT 5 545 1336 92 

commA 352 1265 118 

lettER 325 1260 110 

KIT 292 2190 118 

FLEECE 311 2188 140 

FOOT 302 802 166 

GOOSE 305 897 168 

NURSE 434 1585 185 

DRESS 482 1732 175 

TRAP 501 1712 156 

LOT 434 1111 145 

CLOTH 431 1123 128 

FORCE 452 1065 156 

THOUGHT 470 1109 127 

NORTH 466 1091 153 

About 583 1208 83 

Van Rooy’s (2008: 182) comparison between the mesolect and the acrolect 

data indicates that the latter displays more variability than the former, even if in 

some aspects it comes closer to standard varieties of English. He argues that 

both tense and lax vowel phonemes are present in the use of acrolectal speakers, 

and that there is some degree of contrast between pairs such as KIT and FLEECE, 

LOT and NORTH, or STRUT and START, while for the FOOT and GOOSE pair he 

claims that the lax counterpart occurs much more frequently than the tense one. 

Besides the five phonemes of the mesolect, one can also hear sporadically in the 

acrolect [ɪ], [ɜ], [ʌ], [æ], or [ɒ] (Van Rooy 2008: 182). Acrolectal speakers vary 

between [ɑ‚] and [ʌ] in the pronunciation of the following vowels: STRUT, 

4 

5 

In the case of this vowel, I have included the mean values of formants averaged only over the 

first half of the vowel, as during the second part of the vowel the formants are influenced by 

the formant transitions in the nasal. 

The vowel in this word may be actually longer, but when I made the cut I wanted to avoid 

including part of the preceding consonant.


START, BATH and PALM. I will leave aside for the time being the status of 

schwa, on which I will focus later in relation to the phenomenon of vowel reduction. 

Consider next the results of an acoustic analysis which I have performed on 

the monophthongs of a BSAE female subject (Mboniswa) using Praat software 

(Boersma and Weenink 2010). The speech samples can be found on the CD 

accompanying the Varieties of English textbook, under the Lexical Set reading 

style. Table 2 provides both the mean values of the first two formants and the 

duration for vowels, which were rounded up or down to the nearest integer. 

BATH PALM CommA LettER STRUT NURSE 

KIT FLEECE FOOT GOOSE DRESS TRAP 

LOT CLOTH FORCE THOUGHT NORTH A-bout 

F2-Backness (HZ) 

2300 

2100 

i 

1900 

ǫ 

1700 

Ǭ 

1500 

1300 

ǩ 

Ȝ 

1100 

Ǥ 

900 

700 

200 

u 

300 

400 

500 

600 

700 

F1-Height (Hz) 

800 

900 

1000 

Figure 1. Formant plot of BSAE monophthongs (Mboniswa) 

A plot of the mean formant values indicated in Table 1 for BSAE female 

speaker Mboniswa is shown in Figure 1. The combined effect of duration and 

vowel quality, as it can be deducted from the vowel plot is discussed in what 

follows. 

Although the data analyzed here are far too limited to allow for the assumptions 

made to be treated as generalizations, some facts become obvious by looking 

into more depth even at the acoustic results for the samples of a single subject. 

A first glance at the vowel chart above shows that this speaker has a vowel 

system made up of more or less seven vowels. I will discuss here the mergers 

that have led to this effect and how these mergers can be explained. 

The KIT and FLEECE vowels are very similar to one another, both in terms of 

duration (see Table 1) and in terms of quality, as they are almost overlapping as

50 


can be seen in Figure 1. Moreover, the mean values of their first formants (both 

around 300 Hz) point to the fact that they are tense. Consequently, they have 

merged into a single vocalic element which is shorter than the long RP counterpart 

but the result of their merger retains the tense feature, characteristic of long 

RP vowels. The FOOT and GOOSE pair behaves similarly: their duration is almost 

identical and they are also a perfect match in terms of tenseness. GOOSE 

appears to be a bit more fronted than FOOT but a look at the formant transitions 

on the spectral band will show that it is the movement of the second formant 

towards the higher frequencies of the subsequent fricative that raises the F2 of 

GOOSE earlier than that in FOOT, thus altering its mean value in terms of backness. 

The KIT, CLOTH, THOUGHT, NORTH and FORCE have merged into one 

vowel, namely [ɔ]. Their proximity in the vowel chart attests to their similar 

quality and the duration values (ranging between 127–153 milliseconds) in Table 

1 also shows that they have more or less the same vowel for all the lexical 

set items / words. The realizations of the vowels in STRUT, PALM and BATH are 

close enough to each other for one to safely assume that they are similar in quality. 

Even though the space between them is wider than in the case of the KIT / 

FLEECE merger or the LOT / CLOTH / THOUGHT / NORTH / FORCE merger, the 

difference is not so obvious as to become statistically significant. As can be 

seen form the chart, the realizations are situated more in the area of [ʌ], rather 

than other back low realizations such as [ɑ] or [ɒ]. The DRESS and TRAP vowels 

are clearly very similar in terms of both quality and duration. The NURSE vowel, 

which appears a bit further back in the spectrum, its first formant keeps it in the 

area of the front open-mid central unrounded vowel [ɜ]. This can also be confirmed 

by an auditory judgment of the recorded sample. Additionally, as can be 

noticed in table 1, it is also the longest 6 vowel in the whole series of lexical set 

items. The commA and lettER vowels merge for this female speaker, and they 

are unanimously rendered as a schwa-like sound, judging by their position and 

proximity in the spectrum. However, the vowel in the first syllable of the word 

about is realized rather as a back low vowel and not like a schwa, as it usually 

happens in non-native varieties of English (this will be discussed in more details 

when the phenomenon of vowel reduction will be in focus). Finally, by looking 

at the vowel system of this speaker, one can claim that we are clearly dealing 

with an acrolectal user: the occurrence of vowels like [ʌ] or [ɜ], which Van 

Rooy (2008) lists among the features of the acrolect certainly support this claim. 

However, the length distinction, alongside the tenseness distinction is not preserved 

in the sense discussed by Van Rooy (2008) for the acrolect, but rather for 

the mesolect. This shows that the things are much more complicated that they 

may seem and that it is actually quite hard to make a clear-cut distinction be- 

6 

It may be actually longer, but I made the cut so as to avoid including part of the preceding 

nasal whose formant transitions may influence the formant onset of the vowel.


tween speakers in terms of their displaying acrolectal features, mesolectal or 

basilectal features exclusively. This claim is also supported by the findings of 

Rajend Mesthrie (2005) who analyzes the speech of three Xhosa L1 speakers 

whom he classifies as basilectal, mesolectal and acrolectal. I will review the 

features which prove to be significant for each speaker. The basilectal speaker 

has a five-vowel system but vowels like [ʌ], [æ] or [ə] occur occasionally in 

words like those in [1] (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 140): 

[1a] must 

[1b] mother 

[1c] man 

[1d] that 

[mʌs] 

[mʌdŒɐ] 

[mæn] 

[dŒæt / dŒət] 

The DRESS, TRAP and NURSE vowels 7 have merged into [e], which also has 

as an allophonic realization [ɛ] in nasal and rhotic contexts. The mesolectal 

speaker is, to quote Mesthrie (2005: 141), “surprisingly similar to the basilectal 

speaker”, in the sense that vowel length is again neutralized, and the merger 

DRESS / TRAP / NURSE is still stable, with [æ] occurring sporadically. Mesthrie 

(2005: 141) notices that [æ] displays an interesting split, being realized either as 

[e], [ɛ] or [a], as shown in [2a]–[2c] (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 141): 

[2a] [æ] > [ɛ] 

[2b] [æ] > [a] 

[2c] [æ] > [e] (rare) 

cannot, have, understand 

grammar, actually, emancipation 

happy, trap 

The acrolectal speaker shares the basic vowel system of BSAE, but he comes 

closer to the standard variety than the other speakers. Interestingly enough, the 

author notes that vowel length is still not contrastive but he refrains from making 

a strong claim by adding that more research needs to be carried out in this 

sense, i.e., whether vowel lengthening could be predicted on the basis of the 

phonetic environment. He points out that the TRAP vowel is much more frequent, 

but in word-initial position [a] is used instead [3b], and the STRUT vowel 

can be also heard, sometimes in variation with [a] (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 141): 

[3a] [æ] 

[3b] [æ] > [a] 

[3c] [ʌ] 

[3d] [ɜ:] > [eˑ] 

fact, have, that, hands, value 

Africa, access 

cup, done, one 

world, turned 

The NURSE vowel seems to be absent and it is realized as a half-long close-mid 

front vowel [3d]. 

7 

Mesthrie (2005) uses BED, BAD and BIRD, but for coherence of presentation I maintain Well’s 

(1982) convention, which I use throughout the paper.

52 


The data provided by Mesthrie (2005) show that some features are indeed 

prevalent in the speech of speakers depending on their level of proficiency 

and/or second language acquisition, but they are not exclusive and should not be 

treated as ultimate diagnostic features of one speaker or another across the lectal 

continuum. 

Leaving aside the cline of proficiency for a moment, a few more observations 

on the distinction in terms of quality and quantity regarding the BSAE 

monophthong system are still in order. Daan Wissing (2002) carried out a perception 

study on the vowel system of BSAE. 

The readings were performed by three speakers: one having as L1 English, 

one of them Zulu, and the other one Southern Sotho. The listeners included 21 

Zulu L1 speakers, 21 Southern Sotho L1 speakers, 41 Arabic L1 speakers and 

20 Afrikaans L1 speakers. I will focus here only on the results for Bantu L1- 

speaking listeners. The significant results regarding vowel length and vowel 

quality are expressed in percentages in the table below: 

Table 3. Perception results of vowel length and quality (adapted from Wissing 2002: 134, 

whereas only relevant results have been included) 

Reader(s) Correct responses Total possible cases 

English 

Length: 64% (293) Length: 460 

Quality: 49% (159) Quality: 326 

Bantu 

Length: 57% (553) Length: 976 

Quality: 43% (226) Quality: 522 

Total 2284 

The results in Table 3 point to at least two things: the speakers have greater 

difficulty in dealing with and distinguishing between vowel quality than between 

vowel length, and, secondly, the reading performance of a native speaker 

does not seem to improve significantly the recognition rate of the correct target 

words (i.e., only by 7% in terms of vowel length and by 6% in terms of vowel 

quality). The second assumption indicates that the vowel system of Bantu L1 

speakers of BSAE is deeply rooted so that even when exposed to a native model 

they map it onto their own in most of the cases. 

I will take a closer look at vowel quality in what follows by analyzing the 

results of the substitution patterns for the read words. The results for the Zulu 

and Southern Sotho listeners are summarized in Table 4. 

The substitutes actually represent the erroneously identified words for the 

word which are listed in the first column. I will conventionally assume that the 

words read by the speakers illustrate the expected renditions of the DRESS and 

TRAP vowels. First of all, it is worth mentioning that bird and turn are absent as 

input words, which, in light of the aforementioned convention, would translate 

in the absence of the NURSE vowel from the vocalic system of the Bantu speakers.


Table 4. Word substitution by Bantu L1 listeners (adapted from Wissing 2002: 136) 

Word 

Reader(s) 

Substitutes 

bed bad bat bird 

Totals 

bed 

bad 

head 

had 

ten 

tan 

English (34) 66 0 40 140 

Bantu (16) 28 2 16 62 

English 22 (114) 0 28 164 

Bantu 18 (82) − 26 126 

hat had head hurt 

English 28 28 (68) 22 146 

Bantu 26 24 (50) 22 122 

English 12 (18) 20 4 54 

Bantu 4 (4) 14 − 22 

ten tan turn 

English (98) 8 104 210 

Bantu (78) 6 86 170 

English 12 (6) 38 56 

Bantu 2 (6) 12 20 

Secondly, the numbers between brackets render the tokens when there was 

a perfect match between the word read by the English or Bantu speakers and the 

word heard by the Bantu speakers. 8 One can see that there was a higher recognition 

of the DRESS vowel in the context [h_d] and [t_n] rather than [b_d]. Conversely, 

the TRAP vowel was more readily recognized in the context of [b_d], 

rather than [h_d] 9 and [t_n]. The “erroneous” associations, on the other hand, 

are a further piece of evidence in favor of the DRESS / TRAP / NURSE merger: for 

290 tokens the listeners associated words from the NURSE set with the DRESS 

vowel, while for 160 tokens, words form the TRAP set were associated with the 

DRESS vowel. Not surprisingly, in only 74 cases words from the DRESS set were 

associated with the TRAP vowel. The findings in this study support previous 

claims that the DRESS, TRAP and NURSE vowel merge towards DRESS, and also 

that TRAP occurs sporadically. 

Let me turn now to the status of schwa and its relation to vowel reduction. 

Researchers (such as, e.g., Mesthrie 2005, Van Rooy 2008) note that the respective 

vowel reduction is largely absent in BSAE. Van Rooy (2008), via Van 

8 

9 

Wissing (2002) excludes them from the substitution results as he shows that they are absent 

only for Zulu and Southern Sotho L1 speakers and, hence, a direct matching would not have 

been possible for native and non-native speakers of English (a list of the realizations based 

on the background of the speaker clarifies the absence of the mentioned input, but it was not 

included here for reasons of space). 

For the English reader, the Bantu L1 listeners associated it almost equally with head.

54 


Rooy and Van Huyssteen (2000), suggests that the dominant substitute for 

schwa is [ɛ] in most syllabic positions, except for open final syllables. However, 

he wars us that the frequency of schwa might be actually higher than it is usually 

believed, but its distribution is slightly different from that of RP because of 

BSAE differences in stress placement. Van Rooy (2008: 180) writes that there 

also is a preference for spelling pronunciation so that [ɔ] will be heard in a word 

like opportunity. Apart from that, there is a tendency to have [ʊ] between a labial 

obstruent and a final lateral, in words such as double or careful. It clearly 

suggests a case of transcategorial progressive assimilation of the C-to-V type. 

That is, the [LABIAL] consonants, /b/ and /f/ impose the selection of a vowel 

which has the feature [LABIAL] in avoiding syllabic consonants. This phenomenon 

is also attested in Mesthrie (2005) where in labial contexts the vowel which 

surfaces instead of schwa is [u] [4a]. In non-labial contexts other vowels are 

employed, such as [ɐ] [4b] or [e] [4c] (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 144): 

[4a] [ə] > [u] 

[4b] [ə] > [ɐ] 

[4c] [ə] > [e] 

people, apple, table, syllable 

single, mingle 

handle, dangle 

Mesthrie (2005: 144) also notes that especially in words containing low 

vowels a harmonization rule seems to be applied, so that instead of schwa, the 

vowel which surfaces agrees in the specification of the [± low] feature with the 

preceding vowel (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 144): 

[5a] government 

[5b] adamant 

[5c] balance 

[5d] ambassador 

[5e] salad 

[gavɐmɛnt] 

[adɐmant] 

[balɐns] 

[ambasɐdɐ] 

[salɐd] 

Reverting to Mesthrie’s study (2005), the following tendencies can be observed. 

The basilectal speaker pronounces schwa only occasionally and in fast 

speech for that [1d], and even for articles its occurrence is very limited: the 

definite article the is pronounced with [ɐ] in ten tokens, and only in one with 

schwa, whereas for the indefinite article a schwa is never heard. In word-final 

suffixes a variety of vowels are used to replace a potential [ə] (cf. Mesthrie 

2005: 140): 

[6a] /ə/ > [i] -tion (education) [-ʃin] 

[6b] /ə/ > [ɐ] -ed (wanted, started) [ɐd] 

In the speech of the mesolectal user, schwa is still uncommon, while the 

acrolectal speaker produced schwa in words like other or the. However, [ɐ] is 

still preferred in words like tournament, victors, practical or sector.


The final -er, be it an agentive morphological affix or not, is regularly realized 

as [ɐ] [7a], and in a very few cases as [e] 10 or [ɛ]. 11 Moreover, the final 

sequence -or 12 is also systematically replaced by [ɐ], which demonstrates that 

[ɐ] is the preferred substitution choice regardless of the spelling (cf. Mesthrie 

2005: 140, 143): 

[7a] teacher 

[7b] Peter 

[7c] weather 

[7d] father 

[7e] actor 

[7f] creator 

[7g] auditors 

[titʃɐ] 

[pitɐ] 

[wedŒɐ] 

[fadɐ] 

[aktɐ] 

[krieɪtɐ] 

[ɔditɐz] 

In four-syllable words a schwa occurs systematically in the speech of the 

acrolectal user, but it is noteworthy to mention that a sort of constraint of the 

type “one-schwa-per-word” appears to be in force, as the words below can show 

in the BSAE and RP (cf. Mesthrie 2005: 142): 

[8a] necessary [nesəsari] [nesəsəri] 

[8b] immeasurable [imeʒerəbʊl] [ɪmɛʒərəb(ə)l] 

Finally, considering all the aforementioned restructuring patterns, the BSAE 

(mesolect) matrix feature of vocalic phonemes looks as summarized in Table 5. 

Table 5. Distinctive feature matrix for the BSAE monophthongs 

i ɛ u ɔ a (ə) e o 

High + − + − − − − − 

Low − − − − + − − − 

Back − − + + + + − + 

Tense + − + − − − + + 

Round − − + + − − − + 

The schwa vowel has been included, between brackets, to show that even if 

it occurs infrequently it is not absent (as I have pointed out, it may occur sporadically 

even in the speech of basilectal speakers). Vowels such as /ʌ/, /æ/, or 

/ɜ/ have not been included. Even though they might be heard occasionally, they 

are not produced systematically enough so as to regard them as established pho- 

10 

11 

12 

A single token of the word Mr. was recorded, but a transcription is not provided (Mesthrie 

2005: 141). 

For words like mother or borer. Again, no phonetic transcription is offered (Mesthrie 2005: 

141). 

Again, regardless of its morphological salience, if one also takes into consideration words 

like the aforementioned sector or victor.

56 


phonemes. Two additional tense monophthongs come from diphthongs which 

have undergone monophthongization (see the next section), namely, /e/ and /o/. 

2.2. Diphthongs 

It has been argued (Van Rooy and Van Huyssteen 2000) that diphthongs are 

very often realized as monophthongs in BSAE as there is too little tongue 

movement to warrant the transcription of the respective phones as diphthongs. 

However, Van Rooy (2008: 181) amends this argument by referring to alternative 

analyses of diphthongs in the African Speech Technology corpus which 

reveal that a number of diphthongs are identified, namely PRICE, CHOICE, FACE 

and MOUTH, and, to a smaller extent, GOAT. All these diphthongs are rising 

diphthongs. Falling diphthongs are discussed later. They are categorized either 

as “rising” or “falling” to describe whether the second vowel target is higher in 

the vowel space or lower or more central in the vowel space. This description of 

diphthongs is particularly relevant for my analysis as it captures the direction of 

the diphthong trajectory in the vocalic space. 

Consider next an acoustic analysis of the rising diphthongs of the same 

female speaker whose monophthongs have been represented in Figure 1. As the 

sound files matched the exact Lexical Set items which correspond to the targeted 

diphthongs, the words were analyzed one by one using Praat software 

(Boersma and Weenink (2010). The acoustic analysis consisted of three major 

steps: (1) the onset and offset of the vowels in these words were identified and 

marked as tier points; (2) the formant listings over the entire vocalic length were 

extracted using the corresponding function from the Formant tab in Praat and 

they were introduced in an Excel table; (3) formant tracking errors were 

checked and manually corrected. 13 

Diphthong trajectories were tracked by plotting the formant values obtained 

as a result of the three-step analysis between the first and the second target 

times. The onset of the first vowel target is marked as a black filled circle and 

the offset of the second vowel target is marked as a black square. Figure 2 presents 

the F1/F2 trajectories of the rising diphthongs for the BSAE speaker 

Mboniswa. 

13 

I have taken out from the formant listing the points in the formant tracking which pointed to 

aberrant positions in the vowel space (for instance, probably due to recording conditions or 

other factors, among the figures indicating a smoothly increasing line from a central position 

or a low back position to a higher back position, there appeared from time to time formant 

values which would place track point in the space characteristic of front high vowels).


2500 

2400 

2300 

Ǻ ~ i 

2200 

2100 

2000 

1900 

1800 

1700 

1600 

1500 

1400 

1300 

1200 

1100 

1000 

900 

800 

700 

PRICE 

FACE 

F2-Backness (Hz) 

ǫ 

CHOICE 

a 

Ȝ 

Ǥ 

o 

GOAT 

MOUTH 

u ~ Ț 

200 

300 

400 

500 

600 

700 

800 

900 

1000 


Figure 2. Formant trajectories of BSAE rising diphthongs (Mboniswa) 

As can be seen, the female speaker produces all the five rising diphthongs 

mentioned by Van Rooy: FACE, PRICE, CHOICE, MOUTH and GOAT. Starting with 

the diphthong PRICE, the first target is realized as an open low vowel, lower than 

[ʌ], it actually starts off more in the area of [a], and its trajectory terminates in 

the close-front region of the vowel space. The trajectory of the CHOICE diphthong 

also ends in the area of the front close vowels but its offset vowel target is 

rather tense as its mean F1 is of 431 Hz; the onset of its second vowel target is 

close to the mid-open back round vowel [ɔ]. The offset vowel target of the FACE 

diphthong is very similar to that of the PRICE diphthong, as they are very close 

to each other in the vowel space, whereas its first vowel target is still in the area 

of front vowels, more precisely, it is the mid-open front [ɛ]: remember that the 

F1 of mid-open front [ɛ] in Table 1 was 482 Hz and the F1 value at the first 

target time is 488 Hz. Moving on to the diphthongs whose trajectories’ offsets 

are represented by back vowels, one can notice that the MOUTH diphthong displays 

greater formant movement. 

However, the GOAT diphthong clearly involves some gliding from one vocalic 

position to another: it starts off in the area of the mid-close round back 

vowel and it rises towards a close back round vowel which is rather lax than 

tense if one maps the value of the F1 at the second target time (354 Hz) onto the 

mean F1 of the FOOT or GOOSE vowels in Table 1 (somewhere around 300 Hz). 

The trajectory of the MOUTH diphthong shows that it is a bit fronted at a certain 

point, to end up in about the same vocalic position as the preceding one. 

The falling diphthongs, not surprisingly, are commonly monophthongized. 

Since the vowel schwa is avoided in BSAE, the second target vowel of the 

original diphthong is usually lost and what remains behind is a monophthong.

58 


These monophthongs are either [e] or [o] depending on the original make-up of 

the diphthong. Following the same procedure as in the case of rising diphthongs, 

I have analyzed the behavior of the falling diphthongs of the same female 

speaker (Mboniswa). Only one of them was realized as a diphthong, while 

the other two were realized as monophthongs. Contrary to the expectations, the 

NEAR vowel was realized as a diphthong, with the first target vowel a bit raised 

than the corresponding monophthong of the same subject. Actually, a slightly 

different method was used to plot the gliding point of this diphthong: the values 

of the second formant were plot against the values of the first formant by deduction. 

As can be seen in Figure 3, the NEAR diphthong descends from the first 

target time (red dot), which is a close front high vowel, towards the second target 

time (blue dot), which is a mid-open front vowel. 

F2-Backness (Hz) 

2500 2400 2300 2200 2100 2000 1900 1800 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 

i 

NEAR 

e 

ǫ 

SQUARE 

o 

CURE 

900 

200 

300 

400 

500 

600 

700 

800 

900 

1000 


Figure 3. Realization of BSAE falling diphthongs (Mboniswa) 

The CURE vowel was clearly realized as a monophthong, more precisely as 

the mid back rounded tense vowel [o] because its F1 (397 Hz) is much lower 

than the F1 of the open-mid back rounded vowel identified among the monophthongs 

of the same female subject, whose mean value varies between 431 

Hz and 470 Hz. The SQUARE vowel was much more problematic. If one takes a 

look at the spectrogram in Figure 4, one can notice that in the area delimited by 

the white elliptical shape the second formant is missing. 

However, since diphthongs imply movement of both formants from the start 

vowel target position towards the final vowel target position, I have used the 

first formant alone to establish whether the sound at issue behaves as a monophthong 

or as a diphthong. The portion which delimits the targeted vowel on 

the spectrogram shows that there is a very sensitive gliding towards the end of 

the word but it is not significant, and a movement towards a more central vocalic 

position would have implied a raise of the first formant so that its higher


vowel could push the off-glide vowel towards the center of the vocalic spectrum. 

Figure 4. Square in BSAE (Mboniswa, CD accompanying Varieties of English textbook) 

Moreover, a closer look at the values of F1 in the formant listing shows that 

there is indeed little to almost no movement throughout the targeted vowel, and 

that a lot of errors should actually be corrected by hand if a real vocalic glide 

were involved. Hence, I can conclude that this speaker has five diphthongs and 

two monophthongs which add up to her inventory of monophthongs: /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, 

/ɛɪ/, /ʌʊ/, /oʊ/, /e/ and /o/. 


The analysis above has shown that BSAE displays a lot of variation along 

the basilect-acrolect continuum. Although there is a core vocalic system made 

up of five basic vowel phonemes, this may vary across the lectal continuum and 

from one speaker to another. Phonological processes such as assimilation and 

harmony can be also observed in this variety. Rising diphthongs seem to be 

better represented than falling diphthongs in BSAE, the latter undergoing monophthongization 

in most of the cases. Subsequent analyses of the vowels on 

the available corpora for different reading styles (reading passage style and 

interviews) will probably show that there is even more variation since other 

factors such as pace, connected speech effects, turn-taking and so on may interfere.

60 


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of English. 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 177–187. 

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ZUZANNA BUŁAT SILVA 

UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW 

PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN WROCŁAW 

Spanish pain, el dolor 

ABSTRACT. The present paper is dedicated to the analysis of the Spanish word dolor ‘pain’, 

in order to demonstrate its cultural specificity and uniqueness. On the basis of lexical and 

textual data I will explicate what the meaning of dolor is, and why I consider it very different 

from pain, its English counterpart. In order to free my considerations from an ethnocentric 

bias, I will rely here on the NSM, natural semantic metalanguage, a method of semantic 

analysis that enables us to describe culture specific concepts in a neutral way elaborated by 

Anna Wierzbicka (1996) and extended by Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka (2002). 

KEYWORDS. Emotion, culture, natural semantic metalanguage, dolor 

Different languages may have different preferences for 

what they emphasize in their emotion lexicon, or they may 

just differ in what they focus within a particular emotional 

subdomain (Frijda et al. 1995: 126). 

1. Introduction – language and emotions 

This study concerns the problem of the relation between language and emotion. 

The very fact of having a name for a certain emotional state is significant. 

If we, for example, do not have a name for saudade, a Portuguese emotion of 

absence, longing, and sweet melancholy, we are not able to distinguish that 

emotion, even if we feel it. We may say that the emotion terms of our native 

language help us recognize certain emotional states and even experience them 

accordingly. As Martha Nussbaum (2001: 149) says, “the fact that we label our 

emotions alters the emotions we may have” (quoted in Wierzbicka 2003: 578). 

The English language has a word grief, ‘pain after losing someone’, which is 

absent from the Polish lexicon. Of course, Polish people recognize ‘pain after 

a dear human being’s death’ and call it żałoba, ból, żal, all of them are, nonetheless, 

very different from English grief. Grief is rather a short-term emotion (cf. 

Wierzbicka 2003), in Polish culture żałoba lasts for at least a year – which is 

considered unusual, or even abnormal, in an English-speaking society. 

Here, I will discuss a Spanish kind of emotion, also associated with someone’s 

loss, the emotion of dolor, which I consider specific to Spanish culture 

and very different from its English counterpart, pain. I will base my considera- 


62 

Zuzanna Bułat Silva 

tions on lexicographical data and a corpus consisting of 100 tango lyrics. But 

before proceeding to the analysis of dolor, I would like to take a closer look at 

the NSM paradigm which constitutes a theoretical basis for my considerations. 

2. The methodology of natural semantic metalanguage 

The NSM, i.e., natural semantic metalanguage (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard 

& Wierzbicka 2002; Goddard 2008) is a decompositional approach to lexical 

meaning. It is based on a fixed set of symbols, called semantic primes, and 

combinatorial rules, which constitute the rules of text formation. The meaning 

of a given word is thus explicated by ascribing to it an equivalent expression 

composed of semantic primes – a metalinguistic explication. This method is 

called reductive paraphrase, because it is assumed that the meaning of a word 

can be paraphrased entirely via the combination of semantic primes and molecules. 

1 

The repertoire of semantic primes consists of 63 lexical units (not lexemes). 

A lexical unit is defined as a pairing of a single specifiable meaning with a lexical 

form (Goddard 2001: 2). It also must be noted here that the minilanguage is 

not based on universals of experience, environment or culture (cf. Swadesh 

1972), but on abstract, conceptual universals. It includes among others deictics 

I, YOU, NOW and HERE, mental predicates THINK, WANT and FEEL, evaluators 

GOOD and BAD and logical concepts such as NOT, IF and BECAUSE (cf. Table 1). 

The primes are universal. Hence, we may say that NSM corresponds to the 

intersection, the common core of all languages. In other words, every language 

– as tested on a representative group of world languages (Goddard & Wierzbicka 

1994, 2002; Wierzbicka 2009) – has its own version of NSM. If the 

primes exist in every language, they are intuitively intelligible to all people in 

the world. Thus the metalinguistic explication aims to be free from ethnocentric 

bias and culturally transparent. 

What NSM allows us to do is to describe fairly complicated concepts, e.g. 

emotion terms, without relying on Anglo categories such as happiness, sadness, 

loss and emotion. We are able then, as Wierzbicka (2009: 4) argues, to “explore 

human emotions from a universal point of view, independent of any particular 

languages and cultures”. And that is what I am going to do here – to describe 

the Spanish term dolor and to compare it with its English counterparts pain and 

grief, using the NSM primes. 

1 Semantic molecules are words that have proven to be useful in the explication of many other 

words, e.g., woman, sun, eat, kill (see also: Goddard & Wierzbicka 2002).

Spanish pain, el dolor 63 

Many cultural psychologists and anthropologists see emotions as scripts or 

scenarios (Fehr & Russell 1984; Kövecses 1995; Shweder & Haidt 2004). This 

view is shared by Wierzbicka and associates. 

Table 1. NSM – a list of semantic primitives (after Wierzbicka 2009: 5) 

Substantives 

Relational substantives 

Determiners 

Quantifiers 

Evaluators 

Descriptors 

Mental predicates 

Speech 

Actions, events, movement, contact 

Location, existence 

Possession, specification 

Life and death 

Time 

Space 

Logical concepts 

Intensifier, augmentor 

Similarity 

I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE, BODY 

KIND, PART 

THIS, THE SAME, OTHER/ELSE 

ONE, TWO, MUCH/MANY, SOME, ALL 

GOOD, BAD 

BIG, SMALL 

THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR 

SAY, WORDS, TRUE 

DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, TOUCH 

BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS 

HAVE, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) 

LIVE, DIE 

WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, FOR SOME TIME, 

MOMENT, A LONG TIME, SHORT TIME 

WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, 

SIDE, INSIDE 

NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF 

VERY, MORE 

LIKE 

In the NSM framework emotions are defined through a prototypical cognitive 

scenario (Goddard 1998: 95). It describes the meaning of an emotion via 

comparison with typical thoughts a person experiencing such an emotion may 

have. As Wierzbicka (1996: 180) writes: 

[T]o feel a certain emotion means to feel like a person does who has certain (specifiable) 

thoughts characteristic of that particular situation (and to undergo some internal process 

because of this). Typically, though not necessarily, these thoughts involve references to 

‘doing’ or ‘happening’, to something ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and to ‘wanting’ or ‘not wanting’. 

And, importantly, those prototypical scripts “are embedded in, and [are] dependent 

on, culture” (Paez & Vergara 1995: 415). They are the result of a society’s history. 

As a consequence, that is why we may view emotion terms as “a record of how 

earlier generations of speakers of a given language thought about their feelings” 

(Besemeres & Wierzbicka 2009: 2).

64 


3. The lexeme dolor in Spanish dictionaries 

On the basis of Spanish language dictionaries (Moliner 2007 /1966/; Seco 

1999) four meanings of the lexeme dolor may be visualized as in Figure 1). 

SOMETHING OR SOMEONE THAT CAUSES PAIN 

(1) physical sensation 

of suffering 

(2) emotion 

(spiritual pain) 

(3) regret, 

repentance 

Figure 1. Radial network of dolor 

The central meaning of dolor is ‘physical suffering’, that is, in terms of 

NSM primes, ‘something bad is happening in my body now, I feel something 

bad because of this’. Dolor as emotion, ‘spiritual pain’, is a metaphorical extension 

of this meaning (‘I am thinking about something bad that happened, I feel 

something bad because of this’). It can be further instantiated as ‘regret’ or ‘repentance’, 

or in other words, ‘I am thinking about something bad I did, I feel 

something bad because of this’. The fourth meaning, ‘something that causes 

pain’, is a metonymical extension of ‘emotional suffering’. 

The meaning, which I am talking about here, is meaning (2), ‘spiritual pain’. 

In Moliner (2007: 1076) it is defined as sentimiento causado por un desengaño 

o un mal trato moral recibido, o por ver padecer a una persona querida ‘feeling 

caused by disappointment or having been treated immorally or by having 

seen the suffering of someone we love’. And the example given by Moliner 

(2007) is el dolor por la muerte de su hijo, roughly, ‘grief after his son’s death’. 

As the above example demonstrates neatly, dolor in its emotional sense is 

rarely translated as ‘pain’ by the Spanish-English dictionaries. Its usual counterparts 

are ‘grief’ or ‘sorrow’. Dolor is also translated by means of verbs: con 

todo el dolor de mi corazón tuve que decirle que no, ‘it broke my heart, but 

I had to turn him down’ and no sabes el dolor que me causa su indiferencia, 

‘you have no idea how much his indifferent attitude hurts me’ (COSD 2009). 

There is a Spanish name Dolores, literally ‘Pains’. 2 It comes from a name 

given to the Virgin Mary, Virgen de los Dolores. Actually it is one of the feminine 

names referring to suffering, such as Angustias, ‘Sorrows’, Soledad, 

2 

The diminutives of Dolores are Lola and Loles, the former one slightly derogatory.


‘Loneliness’, Martirio, ‘Martyrdom’. It is also worth mentioning a word stemming 

from dolor, dolorosa, ‘painful-fem.’ which in Latin America means ‘a bill 

to be paid’. 

4. Analyzing the corpus of cultural data 

As noted earlier, there is a close relationship between the culture of a society 

and the language spoken by it. As Catherine E. Travis rightly points out, 

“Latin American culture has been described as one in which the person is construed 

as intrinsically linked to others, with personal identity being determined 

on the basis on one’s relationships” (Travis 2006: 200). That is why values such 

as calor humano, ‘human warmth’, being simpático or ‘nice’ to other people 

and constantly expressing one’s good feelings towards others by the use of diminutives 

and terms of endearment such as mamita, ’dear little mother’, papito 

‘dear little father’, or vidita, ‘dear little life’ are so important, as is close physical 

contact. 

As Darío Paez, José Luis Gonzales, Nancy Aguilera (1996) affirm: 

La conducta de los latinoamericanos se caracteriza por una mayor proximidad física, un 

mayor contacto táctil y una mayor gestualidad en comparación a las culturas más 

individualistas de Europa y EE.UU. … No se expresa lo que uno piensa, sino lo que el otro 

espera. [The Latin American way of being is characterized by a greater physical proximity, 

greater physical contact and more gestures, compared to the more individualist cultures of 

Europe and USA. … One does not say what he or she thinks, but what is expected from 

him.] (quoted in Zubieta et al. 1998: 71, trans. is mine: ZBS). 

One of the instances of this culturally embedded physical proximity is 

a musical genre and a dance that was born in Buenos Aires in the very beginning 

of the 20th century – tango argentino¸ Argentine tango. Tango is considered 

an urban folk music, just like Greek rebetika, Afro-American blues and 

Portuguese fado. Its lyrics revolve mostly around betrayed or lost love, nostalgia 

for the past, misery and loneliness. It is the sound of bandoneon, a classical 

tango instrument, which expresses this emotional blend. Enrique Santos Discépolo, 

one of its most famous poets, called tango un pensamiento triste que se 

baila, ‘a sad thought that is being danced’. 

4.1. Dolor y el tango 

The corpus I gathered for the purpose of this paper consists of 100 tangos, 

all of them containing at least one lexeme dolor. In tango lyrics dolor plays a 

very important part, and I believe, it is one of its key words together with amor , 

‘love’, pasado, ‘the past’ and muerte, ‘death’. In one of the texts, tango is defined 

as a canción que nació de tu dolor y mi dolor, ‘a song that was born out of

66 


your pain and my pain’. In Buenos Aires, as the other tango goes, el placer es el 

compañero del dolor, ‘pleasure goes hand in hand with pain’. It must be stated 

very clearly that I do not intend to say here that the linguistic picture of dolor 

emerging from tango lyrics is universal for all varieties of Spanish (or even for 

Spanish from Buenos Aires). But, as tangos are well known cultural texts in 

Spanish, they can certainly be considered an important reference point. 

I have 121 instances of the word dolor and 2 instances of dolores, the plural 

form of dolor, which I consider a representative sample to speculate on the 

meaning of dolor in tango. The majority of the examples refer to emotional 

pain, only in three cases is physical pain referred to. Dolor in my corpus is 

mostly related to amor, ‘love’, ‘passion’, it is caused by traición, ‘betrayal’, 

ausencia, ‘absence’ and falta, ‘lack’, of amor, ternura y caricias, ‘love, tenderness 

and caresses’. It is also often seen as an emotion that results from nostalgia, 

‘nostalgia’ and recuerdos, ‘memories’, from thinking about the past, el 

pasado. 

Sabes tú y Dios 

que no es posible el dolor 

de estar en la vida sin ti 

llorando tu adiós! 

[Only you and God know 

That the pain of being without you, 

Crying your farewell 

Is impossible!] 

Dolor is felt or carried in one’s alma, ‘soul’, corazón, ‘heart’ and pecho, 

‘chest’. It is viewed as an essential component of life and, as I have already 

said, it is a compañero del placer, ‘goes hand in hand with pleasure’. 

Dolor is compared to a BEAST, 3 as in el dolor clavó en mi carne viva sus 

garras, ‘the pain sunk its claws into my flesh’. It can also morder, ‘bite’ and 

consumir, ‘consume’ someone. It is cruento, ‘bloody’ and fatal ‘fatal’. Dolor is 

something very heavy (a BURDEN) that has to be arrastrado, ‘dragged behind’. 

Dolor can also agobiarte, ’bend you down’. 

Dolor is seen as a PRISON, one can be condenado al dolor, ‘condemned to 

pain’ or presa del dolor, ‘seized with dolor’ and one’s heart can be closed with 

candado del dolor, ‘padlock of pain’. 

Dolor is associated with OSCURIDAD, ‘darkness’, noche, ‘night’ and sombra, 

‘shadow’. One reads about ojos nublados de dolor, ‘eyes clouded with grief’ 

and máscara terrible del dolor, ‘a terrible mask of sorrow’. The word often 

appears in collocations with gris, ‘grey’ and VIENTO, WIND, as in viento feroz de 

3 

The capital letters I use here express conceptual metaphors, following the notation of Lakoff 

& Johnson (1980).


dolor, ‘a violent wind of pain’. Dolor te azota, ‘whips you’ or ‘lashes you’ like 

a vendaval, ‘gale’. 

Viejo barrio de mi ensueño, 

el de ranchitos iguales, 

como a vos los vendavales 

a mí me azotó el dolor. 

[Old quarter of my dreams 

Where all houses are the same 

You were whipped by the winds 

I was whipped by pain.] 

Summing up, the dolor invoked in tangos, although mostly an emotional 

pain, is so strong and intense that it is experienced physically. It is caused by the 

lack of love and by loneliness, and is metaphorically associated with being imprisoned, 

with darkness, strong wind and burden. It is as cruel and violent as 

a BEAST. 

4.2. NSM definition of dolor 

The prototypical situation related to the emotion of dolor is that of the separation 

from someone we love (c–e). This separation is caused by an unspecified 

past event, either the person’s death or betrayal or the simple fact that this person 

is gone (f). This event is perceived as inexorable (g). When we suffer from 

dolor, we are forced to think about what happened (h). Because of those 

thoughts about the past, we feel something very bad (i). Maybe a component ‘in 

his or her body’ should be added here to give account of the fact that dolor is so 

intense, that it can be experienced physically. 

The definition below is based on a prototypical cognitive scenario (see Section 

2) – someone who feels dolor feels something like a person does, who has 

certain specifiable thoughts and is feeling something very bad because of them 

(i–j). 

dolor 

(a) X feels something; 

(b) sometimes a person thinks like this: 

(c) something very bad happened to me some time before now, 

(d) someone was like a part of me, 

(e) when I was with this someone I felt something very good, 

(f) something bad happened to this someone, 

(g) I can’t be with this someone anymore, 

(h) I can’t not think about it now; 

(i) when this someone thinks like this this someone feels something very bad (in his body); 

(j) X feels something like this.

68 


4.3. Dolor and pain 

I agree with Wierzbicka’s observation that “it is a mistake to think of emotion 

words in particular languages, such as English, as being universal” (quoted 

in Kövecses 1995: 6). Apparently equivalent words such as dolor and pain (or 

love and amor) can have widely differing meanings with different cultural resonance. 

To quote Shweder: 

Emotions have meanings and those meanings play a part in how we feel. What it means to 

feel angry … is not quite the same for the Ilongot, who believe that anger is so dangerous it 

can destroy society; for the Eskimo, who view anger as something that only children 

experience; and for a working class Americans, who believe that anger helps us overcome 

fear and attain independence. (Shweder 1991: 245, after Kövecses 1995: 8) 

In a similar way, the pain of unanswered or betrayed love is not the same for an 

Englishman who places value on reserve and an apasionado, ‘passionate’ Latin 

American. 

In my earlier work on Portuguese fado key words I argued that dor, Portuguese 

equivalent of Spanish dolor, is an umbrella term for all the negative emotions 

(Bułat Silva 2008). Wierzbicka for her part, argues that “something close 

to pain” is a constituent element of negative emotions in general: 

The only commonality that we do find in the conceptualization of “bad things happening to 

me” is expressed, cross-culturally, through crying; and the universal message of crying is 

neither one of “sadness” nor one of “grief”, but rather, one of something closer to “pain”. 

More precisely, this message can be expressed as follows: 

something bad is happening to me now 

I don’t want this to be happening 

I feel something bad now (Wierzbicka 2003: 590). 

Now, I think that in Romance cultures the status of dolor must be somewhat 

different. It is not just a part of the negative emotions, nor the umbrella term for 

them, it is more a kind of negative emotion, salient in Spanish language and 

culture. My observation is confirmed by Nico H. Frijda’s words who says: 

Some languages use one and the same word for different experiences, on the basis of shared 

components, that other languages separate on the basis of varying components, like the 

Dutch smart, the Italian dolore and the French douleur, that all refer to mental and physical 

pain (English may do likewise, with pain, but its double usage appears less current than that 

of dolore; and smart has during the last 100 years lost its physical meaning) (Frijda et al. 

1995: 125). 

According to Wierzbicka, pain is not a thought-based feeling. Giving it an 

appropriate NSM frame, we may rewrite its NSM definition (after Wierzbicka 

2003: 590) as follows:


pain 

(a) X feels something; 


(c) something bad is happening to me now, 

(d) I don’t want this to be happening; 

(e) at the same time this person feels something very bad; 

(f) X feels something like this. 

Grief, on the other hand, is much more culture specific, and has a more 

elaborate definition (adapted from Wierzbicka 2003: 586–587): 

grief 

(a) X felt something because X thought something; 


(c) “something very bad happened to me a short time before now, 

(d) someone was like a part of me, 

(e) something happened to this person (this person died), 

(f) because of this this person cannot be like a part of me any more, 

(g) I want to think about this now, 

(h) I can’t think about other things now”; 

(i) when this person thinks like this this person feels something very bad; 

(j) X felt something like this; 

(k) because X thought like this. 

When we compare these definitions with the definition of dolor, we may 

see that dolor is a much more elaborate concept than pain, and is actually closer 

to grief. In the definition of pain we may read in line d) ‘I don’t want this to be 

happening’, and this component is absent from the definition of dolor, because 

as I have already said, dolor, although being a negative emotion, is perceived as 

a necessary and even positive component of life, as is attested by collocations 

such as dulce dolor, ‘sweet pain’, mariposa del dolor, ‘butterfly of pain’ and by 

its close relationship with amor, ‘love’ and ternura, ‘tenderness’. 4 With grief, 

dolor shares the component of loss of a loved one and the fact that both of them 

are overwhelming feelings. 


The present inquiry into the meaning of the Spanish concept dolor supports 

the contention of Clifford Geertz (1973: 81) that emotions are cultural artefacts. 

There is no one universal human pain. Different people experience their suffering 

differently, and the language they speak, and the culture they live in, play 

a key role in their emotional experience (cf. Shweder 2008). 

4 

In one of the songs one may read about ternura que perfuma el dolor, ‘tenderness that perfumes 

the pain’.

70 


Dolor as invoked in tangos cannot be simply translated as pain. It may be 

closer to the English concept of despair with its desire to undo an event combined 

with a certainty that it is impossible (Frijda et al. 1995: 130) and to grief 

with its component of separation from the loved one. 

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DOROTA BUSZYŃSKA 

UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW 

Laughing at or with? Humor as no laughing (cultural) 

matter 

ABSTRACT. The present paper addresses the question of humor and proposes its position in 

language among other discourses. The aim is to introduce a study perspective that would 

contest the approach to humor as a “poor relation of a serious language.” 1 To the best of my 

knowledge, no study of the unserious has so far been conducted, accounting for its crosscultural 

significance from the ethnolinguistic perspective. The outcome of the above is 

assumed to form a gap in the ethnic profiles and inter-ethnic relations, lacking in data from 

this complete and powerful sector of culture. Therefore, the new approach to humor 

proposed herein and the described exemplary analysis, its main points and conclusions, are 

believed to provide a contribution to the filling-in of the above-named gap. The central 

argument on which the subsequent observations are based, is rooted in the findings of 

discourse studies and anthropological linguistics with reference to the dialogue between 

language and culture. The paper proposes situating humorous discourse on a position even 

with other discourse genres, and regarding it as an equally important and abundant source of 

cultural data for a specific speech community. Otherwise stated, the construed approach to 

humor treats it as a self-contained discourse genre, grounded in language, and henceforth – 

as a culture-specific, culture-defining, and culture-transmitting device. 

KEYWORDS. Verbal humor, ethnicity, linguistics, discourse, culture, communication 


The paper is concerned with the presentation of conclusions derived from 

the preliminary research aimed at developing a new, ethnolinguistic study of 

humor. The initial stage of the study, carried out in the years 2009–2011, was 

primarily concerned with selecting the areas of research indispensable for 

achieving the mentioned future study goal. The perspective arrived at and proposed 

herein views humorous discourse 2 as both a carrier and a source of cultural 

traits and, by the same token, as a subdomain of both linguistics and ethnology. 

Thus, the present paper situates the study subject within the scope of 

discourse studies, and understands humorous discourse as an entity encompass- 

1 

2 

Ritchie (2005: 22) 

A proviso needs be made that the introduced term humorous discourse, used as default in the 

present paper, follows the way in which, among others, Chłopicki (2006), Davies (1990) or 

Cristina Larkin Galiñanas (2000) perceive and refer to it, that is, as a full-bodied and complete 

discourse genre, on pair with political or religious discourses. It should be noted, however, 

that not all discourse researchers recognize its independent position. 


74 

Dorota Buszyńska 

ing not only verbal contents of messages, but also non-verbal modes of communication 

(paralanguage, body language), and contextual embedding. All of the 

mentioned variables impose restrictions and regulations on the communicating 

parties, demanding that they construe their messages with consideration for the 

relations between them, their individual backgrounds, the communication event, 

and the appropriateness rules foreseen by the cultural patterns and linguistic 

norms inculcated by them as members of a speech community. The perspective 

emphasizes the role of context in any verbal interaction, humor included, if the 

language performance is to be satisfactory, i.e. if it should perform the assumed 

function. The question is addressed, among others, by Dell Hymes (1972), who 

introduces the notion of a communicative competence, i.e., the combination of 

the speaker’s knowledge of abstract rules of language (grammar) and the socioculturally 

sanctioned regulations concerning language use. Thus, the communicative 

competence is required from any language user, both speaker and hearer, 

who is expected to select not only those elements which are relevant, but also 

the ones appropriate for a specified time and place (for avoidance of confusion, 

embarrassment, offence, etc.). Language, as it is viewed herein, significantly 

relies on ritualized interactions defined by recognizable linguistic elements and 

extralinguistic contexts of various scope (textual, situational, social, cultural 

contexts), and these interactions are called discourses. Humorous discourse is 

therefore postulated as a term for such a culturally systematized verbal behavior 

involving an unserious surface content (while remaining a serious bearer of 

cultural markers). Humor competence, in turn, might be proposed as a working 

term for the respective ethnolinguistic knowledge of humor rules, adhered to by 

jokers and comics. 3 

2. The subject matter of study on humor 

What follows below is a brief description of the assumed hypotheses, design 

and initial outcomes of the conducted analysis. Thus, the subsections successively 

introduce the grounding theories and areas of research referred to in 

the study, as well as they describe the selected materials and the analysis procedure. 

Finally, they discuss the obtained results. 

2.1. Main assumptions of the study 

By excluding those linguistic approaches whose scope of study appeared to 

be too restricted for the intended purpose, the research was eventually grounded 

3 

The term humor competence is also proposed by Victor Raskin (1985), however, in a much 

narrower sense, modeled substantially on the Cooperative Principle (Grice’s 1991 /1975/), 

and therefore more focused on the linguistic context.

Laughing at or with? Humor as no laughing (cultural) matter 75 

within two broad areas of study: ethnolinguistics and discourse. The choice was 

based on the central assumption that humor, in its verbal variety, constitutes 

a part of language and, by the same token, that it has a culture-bearing function. 

The findings of discourse studies, especially with respect to context (situational, 

social, and cultural) and its salience in meaning creation and recovery, 

proved most useful in supporting the position of humor as an equal of other 

discourse genres. It has been already mentioned in Section 1 that context plays 

a crucial role in the production and reception of messages. It has also been said 

that the cultures from which given conversation participants originate significantly 

influence their verbal behavior. And since the possibilities for cultural 

and ethnic identification are multifold, 4 ranging from the most general spheres 

(e.g., Western culture, European culture) to the most specific ones (such as subcultures 

or anti-societies), the frequency with which speakers taking part in 

communicative events misunderstand one another should not be surprising. 

Furthermore, communication breakdowns are also augmented by the impossibility 

of accessing all the contexts of particular language uses, 5 which would 

enable an ultimately accurate interpretation. However, owing to the mentioned 

ritualization of language in the form of discourses, speakers may predict certain 

contents in certain contexts. More specifically, they may do so, provided that 

their interlocutors adhere to the linguistic and cultural rules. Unfortunately, in 

humor these rules are transgressed, either consciously (e.g. canned jokes) or 

unconsciously (situation jokes). This is the reason for frequent rejection of humor 

as a source of cultural data. What seems to be overlooked is that this violation 

is oftentimes also systematic. Victor Raskin (1985: 103) refers to these 

rules as the cooperative principle for the non-bona fide communication, whereas 

Helga Kotthoff (2006: 279) after Salvatore Attardo calls for a Non-Cooperative 

Principle (NCP) regulated non-cooperation, or Least-Disruption Principle. 6 

What could perhaps be added to the scholars’ propositions is also the extralinguistic 

milieu of a humor act, amounting together to the introduced humor competence. 

Therefore, it appears pragmatically and scientifically useful to get access 

to as many context details concerning a given communicative event (serious 

or unserious) as possible, because, firstly, its interpretation depends on the 

knowledge of underlying culture; and secondly, it is a form in which this culture 

is expressed. The study perspective combining language and culture, and trac- 

4 

5 

6 

Cultural self-identification may shift in time and space, for closer discussion see, i.e., Siân 

Jones (1997: 64) who defines ethnic groups not only as characterized by “a consciousness 

vis-à-vis other groups,” but also as “self-defining systems (…) with fluid or situational nature 

of both group boundaries and individual identification”. 

Brown & Yule (1987: 38–40) advise the readers to see, for example, the elements of context 

proposed by Dell Hymes in 1964. 

Original capitalization of letters has been retained.

76 


ing their mutual dependencies is ethnolinguistics, and hence the choice of this 

linguistic branch for the study of humorous discourse. 

What is worth mentioning at this point is the way ethnolinguistics 7 approaches 

language, since it is this perspective that forms the grounding for research 

presented in the paper. It needs to be remembered that language for ethnolinguists 

acts not only as a vehicle for culture, but it is culture in the purest 

sense. Alessandro Duranti (2009 /1997/: 10) assumes that culture in order to be 

lived must be communicated and, as the basic tool for communication is language, 

the adoption of this tool is parallel with culture expression: “… language 

is the most sophisticated cultural system available to human societies and to 

their members, and, therefore, there can be no anthropology without the study 

of language.” In the present paper, humor is by no means excluded from this 

culture-bearing function, successfully serving the reflection of traits of both its 

originator and its object, due to the simple fact that it derives from and is being 

expressed by language. In this, an argument might be seen for the assertion that 

a nation’s culture may well be read from its humorous discourse, the same way 

as it can be read from the works of its playwrights and writers, or from everyday 

verbal interactions of language users. Thus, the line of reasoning followed 

in the present study is grounded in the views of Clyde Kluckhohn (1967 /1949/: 

33) who argues that “[language is] pure culture.” In other words, language is not 

separated from culture, but is yet another form of its manifestation, and humorous 

discourse should not be deprived of this status in that it reveals and shapes 

inter-human relations, and expresses cultural assumptions, though it does so in 

an indirect manner. Ethnolinguistic approach, therefore, accounting for the mutual 

influences between culture and language, as well as providing a wide array 

of ethnolinguistic markers, enabled a set of variables on which the reading of 

verbal humor in cultural terms might be executed. 

Apart from the areas mentioned, the new theory of humor was also obviously 

aided by the already existing humor theories, rooted in philosophy, physiology 

or linguistics (see below), with the last of which serving as the primary 

resource, because of the assumed study perspective. For illustration of the discussion 

so far, the preliminary selection of study areas useful for the development 

of ethnolinguistic theory of humor might be summarized as follows: 8 

(1) Discourse studies – with special regard to the constitutive parts of discourse 

and context, background knowledge features (van Dijk 2007), as well as 

to the performative, indexical and participatory aspects of language (Schiffrin 

1990 /1988/; Duranti 1990 /1988/); 

7 

8 

Referred to also as anthropological linguistics or linguistic anthropology (see, e.g., Duranti 

1990 /1988/, 2009 /1997/; Foley 1997). 

Some of the most relevant positions are cited inter alia by Władysław Chłopicki (1999 

/1995/, 2004, and 2006) and Robert Lew (2000).:


(2) Ethnolinguistics and findings on the language-culture relations, as well 

as a choice of ethnolinguistic markers (Anderson & Trudgill 1990; Duranti 

1990 /1988/; Goddard 2006; Hymes 1972; Kluckhohn 1967 /1949/; Tabakowska 

2001, and others) 

(3) Humor theories, and most significantly: 

– Superiority Theory, approaching jokes as results of hatred, hostility, disregard 

(Hobbes 1651; Bergson 2008 [1900]) or an attack performed by the teller on the 

target (Zillmann & Cantor 1976); 

– Release Theory, treating humor as a way of releasing the tension accumulated 

due to abiding by socio-cultural bans (Freud 1963 [1905]; Mindess 1971); 

– Incongruity Theory, arguing for the contrast between the expected and the 

actually encountered situation to be a trigger of laughter (Kant 2008 [1790]); 

this theory is also crucial, because it lies at the foundations of the addressed 

linguistic theories, based on script opposition (Raskin 1985), frame-shifting 

(Ritchie 2005), the Isotopy-Disjunction Model (Attardo 1994, 2001), ambiguity 

(Lew 2000), the relevance theory (Yus 2003, 2008), or narrative studies 

(Chłopicki 2004). 

The future study shall be based on two main assumptions. First, whether 

reflecting real or invented features ascribed to the butts of jokes, ethnic humor 

does reveal inter-cultural relations and attitudes, being in this way no different 

from any other discourse type. The statement is supported with Blake’s (2007: 

22) observation that the majority of jokes require a shared culture so that the 

joker may take certain knowledge for granted and be certain that a particular 

subject is appropriate for ridicule. The second assumption is associated with the 

very nature of language. Language reflects emotions and values at all its levels, 

and, at the same time, it acts as both their source and a safety lifebelt. And, in 

line of my argument, humor is no different in this respect. If humor is linguistic, 

then it simultaneously has a culture-bearing function. Hence, it accounts for the 

ethnic features of the analysed group. The ethnolinguistic approach to humor, 

therefore, predicts developing a method of analysis, exploiting the unserious as 

both a source and a product of culture, equal in this respect to other forms of 

discourse. The following figure (Figure 1) depicts the proposed position of humor 

in relation to discourse, language, and culture. 

The process of creating the draft version of the method demanded that the 

study material be narrowed down to the verbal 9 variety of ethnic humor, 10 and 

9 

10 

The term denotes humor expressed by means of linguistic system (and not pantomime or 

drawings, for example). Graeme Ritchie (2004: 13) substitutes it with VEH (Verbally Expressed 

Humor), while Attardo (1994: 96) refers to it as verbalized humor. 

Ethnic humor is understood throughout the study in the way Victor Raskin (1985: 207) 

defines it, that is – as a humor including at least one truly ethnic script.

78 


more specifically, to ethnic jokes based on LANGUAGE DISTORTION script. 11 The 

model analysis based on ethnolinguistics was thus applied to a selection of 10 

verbal ethnic jokes 12 from Polish, English, 13 German, and Czech languages, the 

conclusions from which are briefly illustrated below. 

Figure 1. Positioning of humor as an independent discourse genre. 

2.2. Presenting samples of ethnolinguistic analysis and the research results 

To make the analysis more systematic, the ten selected jokes were divided into 

four categories, referring to particular areas of language study (phonetics and 

phonology, lexicon, discourse, language system). The jokes were allocated into 

the respective categories on the basis of the area, from which the dominating 

number of ethnolinguistic markers was found in their content. A proviso must 

be made, however, that the categories should by no means be viewed as absolute 

or exclusive, and that the analyzed jokes included markers from more than 

one level, or even from all of them. Table 1 presents the proposed typology, as 

well as the brief characteristics and jokes belonging in each category. 

11 

12 

13 

Jokes based on LANGUAGE DISTORTION poke fun at target ethnic groups on the account of 

their imperfect use of language (cf. Raskin 1985). 

All the jokes referred to are available at my e-mail address (d.buszynska@gmail.com). 

British English and American English were treated separately, due to diverse humor and 

ethnic scripts. The question of their discrepant nature have been discussed by myself separately 

(Buszyńska 2010).


Table 1. The proposed distribution of jokes according to the dominating ethnolinguistic 

markers 

Name of the 

category 

Phonetics and 

phonology 

Lexicon 

Discourse 

patterns 

Language for 

value 

Characteristics of the category 

Humor relying on differences in phonological 

rules and phonetic features between members of 

distinct linguistic families, members of the same 

family, or even the same language, usually 

employs amusing misspellings and 

mispronunciations. 

The analysis at this level allows for inferring the 

jokers’ assumptions on the socio-cultural 

backgrounds of their targets, which are drawn on 

the basis of the latter’s phonetic features. 

In humor based on this highly culture-specific 

language area, the target group is disparaged on 

the grounds of their unfamiliarity with the source 

culture’s key terms, culture-specific referents, as 

well as the emotional bearing of linguistic 

expressions. 

The analysis exposes the humor target’s lack of 

background knowledge concerning the source 

culture, resulting in his/her unsuccessful 

participation in the life of the source speech 

community. 

A category especially susceptible to humor, 

inviting polysemy on the grounds of its highly 

formulaic character and frequently involved 

abbreviations, which possibility is exploited both 

on the part of foreigners (involuntarily) and 

natives (often on purpose, but not always). 

The analysis indicates the position of the 

disparaged ethnic group as ill-adapted in the 

source culture due to their violation of cultural 

and contextual rules of appropriateness. 

Jokes based on the exaggerated opinions that the 

natives have on their own language, usually 

coupled with a disregard to the other group’s 

language, believed to be of lower sort. 14 usually 

a source of NATIONAL SUPERIORITY script 15 

Jokes 

the Łot joke, the 

Supplies joke, the 

Washington joke, 

the Wosfirana 

joke 

the Lift joke, the 

Marlboro joke, 

the Shakespeare 

joke 

The Divorce joke, 

the Camel joke 

The Clanford 

joke 

The analysis confirmed that ethnic humor strongly relies on stereotypes, ethnic 

scripts and ethnic humor scripts (the three of which need not necessarily overlap), 

and combines them with proper mechanisms of raising laughter, which 

14 

15 

Jeremy Paxman (1999 /1997/: 25–26) has noticed, for instance, that the British associate the 

French language on the grounds of historical reasons with something negative. 

For the definition of script, see Raskin (1985).

80 


procedure might be aimed at ascertaining the positions of the selves and of the 

others in the society. 16 The mechanisms may be based predominantly on surprise 

and dashing the addressee’s expectations, as postulated by Incongruity 

Theory (Kant 2008 [1790]), and result mainly from violating appropriateness 

rules (e.g., the Camel joke). It may also employ a form of disparagement, argued 

for by Superiority Theory (Hobbes 1651; Bergson 2008 [1900]; Zillmann 

& Cantor 1976), either directed at oneself (the Shakespeare joke) or at the other 

group (the Clanford joke). This type of humor may also refer to both ways of 

raising laugher in an equal manner (the Supplies joke). The above mechanisms 

cause a tension in the addressee, which, according to Release Theory (Freud 

1963 [1905]; Mindess 1971) is being relieved along with grasping the punch 

line (e.g., the Supplies joke), or the whole sequence of jab lines in the case of 

longer humorous stories (e.g., the Divorce joke). 

Furthermore, the analysis based on the above classification indicated that 

humor, despite being a non-bona fide mode of communication, is no different 

from other discourses with respect to the necessity of obtaining proper communicative 

competence (humor competence – see Introduction) for retrieving the 

intended message. Both the joke originator and its receiver, if they should assign 

the same referential value to verbal expressions, need to share the knowledge 

of cultural cues, for which ambiguity, intertextuality, or puns provide a 

vehicle. In other words, humor transmits the elements of culture in disguise of 

unserious statements. 

What additionally emerged in the analyzing process were the three functions 

of humor, performed in connection with its ethnic significance: the descriptive 

function on the textual level, and on the extratextual level: the phatic 

function and the group-identifying function. The first function is inherent to 

language and relies on transmitting the elements of culture on the level of phonemes 

to texts purely via their referential value (explicit culture expression). 

The descriptive function, thus, is connected with the meaning-bearing power of 

words and their function as ethnolinguistic markers, ranging from single phonemes 

and words to whole texts and contexts. Ritchie (2005: 11) believes that 

“a good joke should express … at least partially suppressed social truth,” which 

in turn may be subversive – contradicting the ordinary everyday social conduct. 

It needs to be remembered that, as rightly pointed out by Raskin (1985: 180), 

the actual deprecatory or disparaging element of ethnic humor may not (and, in 

fact, frequently does not) have a real-life counterpart, and it might simply derive 

from a stereotypical image held for a given group. Even though the image 

and/or situation may be entirely invented, the choice and the way of presenting 

the disparaged ethnic group are evidence for the attitudes and assumptions operating 

in the joke originator’s group. 

16 

To be verified in the future study.


The functions operating on the extratextual level, in turn, are less dependent 

on the meaning content, and rather operate in a more general way. The phatic 

function refers to humor as a prop for establishing and maintaining contact with 

other people, in this respect resembling weather talk. Thus, such formulaic expressions 

such as “Have you heard the one about…” or “Knock, knock…” 17 

perform a similar role to the one of “Nice weather, isn’t it?” or “How do you 

do?” The group-identifying function implies humor as a tool for reassessing 

solidarity or separateness, indicated by the when, with whom and about what 

people are willing to, or allowed to, joke. In this respect it is similar to the function 

performed by anti-languages, slang or jargon, that is, the unserious is a tool 

for assigning the roles in a given communicative event, dividing the humor act 

participants into allies (those who enjoy the joke, and therefore, share our beliefs 

pertaining to culture), and the opponents (either objecting to the introduced 

perspective or being the actual objects of a joke). 18 

3. Concluding remarks and the prospects for future studies 

As is clear from the above, I stand in opposition to such scholars, as, e.g., 

Christie Davies (1990), who object to finding hidden motifs underlying ethnic 

jokes. According to Davies, jokes provide an end in themselves and perhaps are 

“insights into how societies work – … [they are] social thermometers that 

measure, record, and indicate what is going on” (1990: 9), but have no regulatory 

or problem-solving function of their own. In my view, the scholar seems to 

lack consistency inasmuch as he states that humor acts contain more information 

about the speaker’s expectations, fears or hopes than about the really occurring 

or observed situations (Davies 1990: 319). Relying on the above, it might 

be concluded that a clear boundary may be found between a certain group’s 

behavior and their expectations and fears, and that the areas of culture on which 

they draw are unrelated. Beliefs, attitudes and fears are being inculcated in the 

process of enculturation, and after becoming a part of our subconscious, exert 

an impact on our actions. The mechanism operates in the opposite direction as 

well, with the actual forms of behavior influencing our convictions. What follows, 

arguing that humor exemplifies certain beliefs, and simultaneously is an 

17 

18 

Examples of markers introducing humorous discourse (see, e.g., Blake 2007). 

For example, on a Web forum starting with a number of Polish jokes on Germans as a response 

to German Polenwitze, the fervent discussions that follows moves as far as to make 

references to the Polish Penal Code. The fact that the forum participants are obviously not of 

legal profession, but ordinary receivers of humor is an even better proof for the seriousness 

with which the “unserious” offence is taken. For reference, the reader may see, for example, 

www.newsweek.pl/artykuly/sekcje/spoleczenstwo/niemieckie-zarty-z-polakow,38995,1 or 

http://ptcmoney.republika.pl/kawaly+o+niemcach+w+odpowiedzi+ na+polenwitze.shtml.

82 


end in itself, absolutely detached from the real-life situations, does appear inconsequential. 

Perhaps what should be understood by Davies’ (1990) remarks is 

that jokes not so much provide an image of the target group, as they depict the 

source group and their attitudes towards their deprecated targets. The mechanism 

of ethnic joke creation is based on selecting a particularly deterred or tabooed 

feature by a given ethnic group, and “transplanting” it to the butt of the 

joke, regardless whether the object actually displays such behavior or not. As 

was argued in the section above, even if the feature is invented, then again the 

choice of the group to which it is attributed is not a random process. Therefore, 

Davies’ (1990) observation that the assumed hostility is likely to be directed 

more at a certain flaw rather than at a particular group is not unfounded, but it 

fails to discount the aggression- or superiority-based reasons for disparaging 

that particular, and no other, ethnic group. 

Summarizing briefly, I would re-define Davies’ situations in a way that 

would include both physical and mental states. Furthermore, without denying 

the supposition for a culturally deterred feature as the source of ethnic jokes, 

I would also propose shifting the focus of attention to the reasons driving the 

adoption of particular objects of ridicule. In their study, Zillman & Cantor 

(1976) concluded not unfoundedly that jokes might be seen as an attack performed 

by the teller on the target. Even if this postulate might appear as too 

sweeping an overgeneralization, if we consider the dialogue on a web forum 

that I came across in my study, there seems to be a grain of truth in it. 19 

As it was mentioned at the beginning, I intend first to apply the working 

version of the ethnolinguistic approach to humor analysis into the English sense 

of humor for the purpose of construing an anthroposemiotic profile of the British 

Isles. Obviously, the research shall not be narrowed down exclusively to the 

English, but it is planned to make reference to humorous discourses of other 

British nations as well (the Irish, the Welsh, and the Scottish), the way they 

perceive and differ from the English humor. Thus, the latter shall serve as 

a template against which other humorous discourses of the Isles shall be examined 

in order to establish if a notion of British humor, so often referred to, e.g., 

in Poland, supported with any ethnolinguistic data. 

The initial assumption is that it is the strongly ethnic ring to the English 

sense of humor 20 that makes it immediately recognizable, largely incomprehensible, 

and oftentimes referred to as absurd by those from outside the English 

culture. This fact may also drive the foreigners’ impression of being constantly 

19 

20 

The comments following the analyzed Wosfirana joke, included, among other, such opinions 

as: “lol naja amerikana sind ja nwirklich [sic!] zu doof für diese welt!!” – “Americans are 

really too dumb for this world!!” (http://lustich.de). 

Understood as an unpaired frequency of occurrence both of ethnolinguistic markers in humor 

and of humor itself.


mocked by the English. 21 What this specific character might be augmented by is 

that, unlike is the case in other cultures, humor among the English is everpresent, 

not only in defined humor acts (see, e.g., Fox 2005; Paxman 1999 

/1997/). As Fox (2005) asserts, perhaps the English are not joking all the time, 

but are constantly ready for a joke. Therefore, the first difficulty encountered by 

the non-English speakers in understanding English jokes and sketches lies in 

recognizing a particular communicative act as humor, and in differentiating it 

from other, more bona-fide everyday discourses. My supposition is that English 

humorous discourse is the more difficult to foreigners, because of this different 

status with respect to culture. In the research intended for the British Isles, 

therefore, humor in Figure 1 22 would have to be re-positioned in order to correspond 

better to the English culture. The assumed direction of change can be 

depicted as in Figure 2. 

Figure 2. The re-positioning of humor for the English culture 

To briefly recap the assumptions for the future study, humor in the English 

culture is dammed for posing difficulties for foreigners from both perspectives 

proposed by the ethnolinguistic approach to humor, i.e., linguistics and ethnology. 

From the ethnological perspective, the problem is viewed as the result of 

the English culture being a culture of humor, with the “tongue-in-cheek” approach 

as a default mode of communication. This is the first stage at which the 

joke reception might be impeded. The second difficulty for the non-English 

might be explained from the linguistic perspective. English humor, the same 

way as any other humor, is viewed as a culture-bearing and shaping device (see 

the functions of humor in Section 2.2), thus it carries a selection of ethnolin- 

21 

22 

This statement is based on the opinions a number of my Polish informants, as well as on my 

own experience. 

See Section 2.1.

84 


guistic markers, immediately recognizable to the natives and oftentimes ambiguous 

to the foreigners. 

The intended research study, accounting for the nature and distribution of 

humor on the British Isles, appears to be an appealing and intriguing task and, 

simultaneously – since the specificity of English humor is so well recognized – 

it constitutes a good starting point for developing a thesis applicable to the humor 

of any other possible cultural background. To achieve the future goal, the 

research described in the present paper has been designed to establish the foundations 

of the upcoming study, though for the time being, it has fulfilled the 

task in a still very cursory way. Nonetheless, the draft model of methodology 

aimed at herein allows itself for further elaboration into a whole-scale humor 

theory. 

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Raskin, Victor 1985: Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht; Boston; Lancaster: D. Reidel 

Publishing Company.

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Ritchie, David 2005: Frame-shifting in humor and irony. Metaphor and Symbol 20 (4): 275–294. 

In: http://amr.obook.org/library/metametaphors.pdf ED 11/2009. 

Ritchie, Graeme 2004: The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. London: Routledge. 

Schiffrin, Deborah 1990 /1988/: Conversation analysis. In: Frederick J. Newmeyer (ed.) 1990 

/1988/: Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey. IV: Language: The Socio-cultural Context. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 251–276. 

Tabakowska, Elżbieta (ed.) 2001: Kognitywne podstawy języka i językoznawstwa [Cognitive 

foundations of language and linguistics]. Kraków: Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac 

Naukowych Universitas. 

Yus, Francisco 2003: Humor and the search for relevance. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (9): 1295– 

1331. Special issue on the pragmatics of humor (Salvatore Attardo, ed.). 

Yus, Francisco 2008: A relevance-theoretic classification of jokes. Łódz Papers in Pragmatics 4 

(1): 131–157. In: http://versita.metapress.com/content/w56g438136921uxu/ fulltext.pdf ED 

11/2009. 

Zillmann, Dolf, Joanne R. Cantor 1976: A disposition theory of humour and mirth. In: Anthony J. 

Chapman, Hugh C. Foot (eds.) 1976: Humour and Laughter. Theory, Research and Application. 

London: Wiley, 93–116. 

References to Internet websites 

www.gbritain.net/humor ED 01/2011. 

hwww.producent.swidnica.pl/59_etniczne_kawalki_dlugie.html ED 01/2011. 

www.funny.com/ ED 01/2011. 

www.cleanshortfunnyjokes.com/lift-or-elevator.html ED 01/2011. 

http://kawaly.tja.pl ED 01/2011. 

www.ivtipy.cz ED 01/2011. 

www.okazyjny.pl/dowcipy,rosja_i_rosjanie,76.html ED 01/2011. 

www.duzohumoru.pl/ ED 01/2011. 

www.chinesejokes.net/jokes.php?action=read&joke=1160 ED 01/2011. 

http://lustich.de ED 01/2011. 

www.newsweek.pl/artykuly/sekcje/spoleczenstwo/niemieckie-zarty-z-polakow,38995,1 

ED 03/2011. 

http://ptcmoney.republika.pl/kawaly+o+niemcach+w+odpowiedzi+na+polenwitze.shtml ED 

03/2011. 

Alphabetical list of analyzed jokes 

The Camel joke 

– Name? 

– Abu Dalah Sarafi. 

Sex? 

Four times a week. 

No, no, no … male or female? 

– Male, female … sometimes camel … 

In: http://www.gbritain.net/humor ED 01/2011.


The Clanford joke 

Wilk morski Clanford był wypytywany przez francuskiego żeglarza, 

dlaczego Brytyjska Marynarka Wojenna zawsze była zwycięska. 

– Łatwo na to odpowiedzieć – odpowiedział Brytyjczyk – zawsze modlimy 

się, zanim zaczniemy walczyć. 

– Ale my też to robimy – odparł Francuz. 

– Tak – powiedział żeglarz – ale my modlimy się po angielsku. 

[A sea dog Clanford was asked by a French sailor about why the British Navy had always 

been victorious. 

– The answer is simple – responded the British. – We always pray before we start the battle. 

– But so do we – objected the French. 

– Yes – replied the sailor. – But we pray in English.] 

In: www.producent.swidnica.pl/59_etniczne_kawalki_dlugie.html ED 01/2011 

The Divorce joke 

Polish man moved to the USA and married an American girl. Although his English was far 

from perfect, they got along very well until one day he rushed into a lawyer's office and 

asked him if he could arrange a divorce for him – “very quick”. 

The lawyer said that the speed for getting a divorce would depend on the circumstances, and 

asked him the following questions: 

LAWYER: “Have you any grounds?” 

POLE: “JA, JA, acre and half and nice little home.” 

LAWYER: “No," I mean what is the foundation of this case?” 

POLE: “It made of concrete.” 

LAWYER: “Does either of you have a real grudge?” 

POLE: “No, we have carport, and not need one.” 

LAWYER: “I mean, what are your relations like?” 

POLE: “All my relations still in Poland.” 

LAWYER: “Is there any infidelity in your marriage?” 

POLE: “Ja, we have hi- fidelity stereo set and good DVD player.” 

LAWYER: “Does your wife beat you up?” 

POLE: “No, I always up before her.” 

LAWYER: “Is your wife a nagger?” 

POLE: “No, she white.” 

LAWYER: “WHY do you want this divorce?” 

POLE: “She going to kill me.” 

LAWYER: “What makes you think that?” 

POLE: “I got proof.” 

LAWYER: “What kind of proof?” 

POLE: “She going to poison me. She buy a bottle at drugstore and put on shelf in bathroom. 

I can read, and it say, 'Polish Remover'.” 

In: http://www.funny.com/ ED 01/2011 

The Lift joke 

An American visiting in England asked at the hotel for the elevator. The portiere looked a bit 

confused but smiled when he realized what the man wanted. “You must mean the lift”, he 

said. ”No”, the American responded. “If I ask for the elevator I mean the elevator”. “Well”,

88 


the portiere answered, “over here we call them lifts”. “Now you listen”, the American said 

rather irritated, “someone in America invented the elevator”. “Oh, right you are sir”, the 

portiere said in a polite tone, “but someone here in England invented the language”. 

In: http://www.cleanshortfunnyjokes.com/lift-or-elevator.html ED 01/2011. 

The Łot joke 

Przyjeżdża Amerykanin na wieś i gospodarz do niego mówi: 

– Idź do chlewa i wyciepej gnój. 

Amerykanin mówi do gospodarza: 

– What? 

– Łot krowy i łot konia. 

[An American visits the countryside and the husbandman tells him: 

– Go to the pigsty and do away with the dung. 

The American says to the husbandman: 

– What? 

– From (in Polish, “łot” /wɒt/]) the cow and from the horse.] 

In: kawaly.tja.pl ED 01/2011. 

The Marlboro joke 

Přijde Američan do trafiky: „Do you speak English?” 

„Ehm, hmh, yes.” 

„Marlboro! 

[An American comes to a newsagent’s: “Do you speak English?” 

“Ehm, hmh, yes” 

“Marlboro!”] 

In: www.ivtipy.cz ED 01/2011. 

The Russian joke 

Radziecki statek podpływa do afrykańskiego portu. Marynarz rzuca linę cumowniczą na 

brzeg, krzycząc do Murzyna stojącego na nabrzeżu: 

– Dierżi linu! 

Murzyn nie rozumie. Rosjanin znów rzuca linę, krzycząc: "Dierżi linu!". Murzyn stoi bez 

ruchu. Rosjanin pyta: 

– Gawari pa ruski? 

Cisza. 

– Parlez vous francais? 

Cisza. 

– Sprechen Sie Deutsch? 

Cisza. 

– Do you speak English? 

– Yes, I do! 

– No to dierżi linu!!! 

[A Soviet ship approaches an African port. The sailor throws the mooring line, and yells to 

an African standing on the pier: 

– Держи лину! [Russian: “Grab the line!”]


The African doesn’t understand. The Russian throws the line again, and yells: “Держи 

лину!” 

The African doesn’t move. The Russian asks: 

– Говори́ [sic! popr. говори́шь] по русский? [“Do you speak Russian?”] 

Silence. 

– Parlez vous francais? [French: “Do you speak French?”] 

Silence. 

– Sprechen Sie Deutsch?[German: “Do you speak German?”] 

Silence. 

– Do you speak English? 

– Yes, I do! 

– Но, то держи лину! [Russian: “Then grab the line!”] 

In: http://www.okazyjny.pl/dowcipy,rosja_i_rosjanie,76.html ED 01/2011. 

The Shakespeare joke 

Anglik udowadnia Polakowi, że jego język [sic] jest najtrudniejszy. 

– Na przyklad u nas pisze się Shakespeare, a czyta Szekspir 

– To jeszcze nic. W Polsce pisze się Boleslaw Prus, a czyta Aleksander Głowacki.] 

[An Englishman tries to prove to the Pole that it is his language which is the most difficult: 

– For example, we write Shakespeare, and read [ʹʃekspɪə]. 

– That’s but nothing. In Poland, we write Bolesław Prus, and read Aleksander Głowacki.] 

In: http://www.duzohumoru.pl/ ED 01/2011. 

The Supplies joke 

An Italian, a Scotsman, and a Chinese fellow were hired at a construction site. The foreman 

pointed out a huge pile of sand and told the Italian guy, "You're in charge of sweeping." To 

the Scotsman he said, “You're in charge of shoveling.” And to the Chinese guy, "You're in 

charge of supplies.” 

He then said, “Now, I have to leave for a little while. I expect you guys to make a dent in that 

there pile." 

The foreman went away for a of couple hours, and, when he returned, the pile of sand was 

untouched. He asked the Italian, “Why didn't you sweep any of it?" The Italian replied, “I no 

hava no broom. You said to the Chinese fella that he a wasa in a charge of supplies, but he 

hasa disappeared and I no coulda finda him nowhere.” Then the foreman turned to the 

Scotsman and said, “And you, I thought I told you to shovel this pile.’ 

The Scotsman replied, “Aye, ye did lad, boot ah couldnay get meself a shoovel! Ye left th' 

Chinese gadgie in chairge of supplies, boot ah couldnay fin' him either.” The foreman was 

really angry by now and stormed off toward the pile of sand to look for the Chinese guy. 

Just then, the Chinese guy jumped out from behind the pile of sand and yelled... 

“SUPPLIES!!” 

In: http://www.chinesejokes.net/jokes.php?action=read&joke=1160 ED 01/2011. 

The Washington joke 

An American: “A lie never passed through the lips of George Washington.” 

A British: “No, because he spoke through the nose, like the rest of you.” 

In: Davies 1990, 57.

90 


The Wosfirana joke 

Ein Amerikaner steigt am Münchner Flughafen in ein Taxi und läßt sich in die Alpen fahren. 

“Sage Sie, my good man, was hat diese Berrg dorrt furr eine Name?” 

“Wosfirana...”[Bavarian “Was für einer…”]“Ah...cool...”] 

[An American gets into a cab on the Munich Aiport and wants to driven into the Alps. 

“Tell me, my good man, what is the name of this mountain?” 

“Which one…”] 

“Ah, cool…” In: http://lustich.de ED 01/2011.

MICHAEL HORNSBY 

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LUBLIN 

A posthumous life for Yiddish? The presence of 

Yiddish in American comedy 

ABSTRACT. The subject matter of this paper constitutes the present situation of Yiddish 

which was spoken before the World War II by the majority of Jews in Poland functioning at 

the same time as a language of literature, theatre, cinema and political life. Today, a few 

native speakers of the Polish vernacular of Yiddish remain in Poland but are more likely to 

be found in centers of Jewish culture around the world, such as London or New York. Other 

varieties of Yiddish continue to be spoken, but in highly specialized (i.e., ethno-religious) 

contexts. Given the imminent danger of extinction that the language appears to be facing in 

the twenty-first century, its use in a tokenistic way in American comedy sitcoms might 

appear counterproductive. This paper explores such use in the face of language 

endangerment while suggesting that such a development is a natural one, given the 

language’s cultural history and traditional status in Jewish societies. It further argues that, 

from a critical sociolinguistic perspective, that the status of Yiddish as an endangered 

language worldwide is well established. The strong presence of the language in the domain 

of comedy is actually a creative response to language endangerment, which challenges in 

many ways the assertion that Yiddish is “dying”. 

KEYWORDS. Yiddish, language death, posthumous life, symbolic use, media, comedy 


At a time of heightened awareness of language endangerment, against the 

background of recent academic publications on the subject as, e.g., of David 

Crystal (2000), Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine (2000), Joshua A. Fishman 

(2001), Andrew Dalby (2002), Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley 

(2006), K. David Harrison (2007), and more populist works, such as of Helena 

Drysdale (2001) and Mark Abley (2005 /2003/)), as well as collections of papers 

edited by Peter K. Austin, Andrew Simpson (2007), and Matthias 

Brenzinger (2007), the view prevails that Yiddish is the most “dying” language. 

In the estimation of Solomon A. Birnbaum (1979: 41), Yiddish was spoken 

in pre-war Poland by just under 3 million people and thrived as a literary, theatrical, 

cinematic and political language in addition to being the daily vernacular 

of the majority of Polish Jewry. However, “in a period of six years, between 

1939 and 1945, Yiddish was dealt a near mortal blow”, as David Shyovitz 

2010) writes. This has resulted in the confinement of the language to a highly 

specialized setting, characterized by Yaron Matras, as follows: 


92 

Michael Hornsby 

“In the secular sector, Yiddish is a highly endangered language and has no longer been 

passed on to children for almost fifty years … In the Orthodox sector, by contrast, sizeable 

families are likely to guarantee a gradual growth in the number of speakers … [but] no 

concentrated effort can be expected in these communities to safeguard the future of the 

language …” (Matras 2010). 

The Yiddish language is thus polarized between at least two camps: The 

religious and the secular. The secular argument for the preservation of Yiddish 

draws on a rich nineteenth-century literary tradition, allied with leftist politics 

and, to a certain extent, anti-Zionism. The religious aspect of the language – and 

the reason for its continued use – is that current attempts in Israel to use Hebrew 

as a vernacular are profane, since Hebrew is the loshn-koydesh, or “holy language” 

and not appropriate for everyday use; thus Yiddish as a vernacular language 

is continuing a thousand-year-old Jewish tradition. 

How endangered is Yiddish, though? The following table is an attempt to 

ascertain the demographics of the language, though this has proved difficult to 

establish: 

Table 1. Trends in the age profile and number of Yiddish speakers 

Age of speakers 

Yiddish 

60–75+ 40% (1) 

School age population 22% (1) 

Number of speakers ? (2) 

Shift –15% (3) 

2000 USA Census (n = 178, 945) 

137,078 (USA; MLA 2006); 11,000,000 (Council of Europe 1996; October 2006); 1,762,320 

(Ethnologue September 2011) 

Factfinder.census.gov (American Community Survey 2006) 

Several points need noting from Table 1. First, the estimation of 40% of all 

Yiddish speakers being aged 60 or over is taken from a USA setting, but does 

indicate the ageing nature of the Yiddish speaking population, which is 

a general trend of the remaining Yiddish speakers, wherever they are to be 

found. Secondly, if 22% of all Yiddish speakers (again, in a USA setting) are of 

school age, this cohort is massively confined to Ultra-Orthodox communities. 

This is from where the next generation of adult native Yiddish speakers will 

appear, but hardly any of them will be secular or otherwise non-orthodox Jews. 

The situation appears more hopeful than for other languages in situations of 

endangerment, however. If we take the case of Breton, for instance, where the 

number of speakers over 60 and older is 70% and the school age population is 

just 4% (cf. Broudic 2009). 

The third point that needs to be made is that it seems impossible to arrive at 

the number of Yiddish speakers. Dovid Katz (2004: 387) suggests three reasons

A posthumous life for Yiddish? The presence of Yiddish in American comedy 93 

for this. First, the traditional resistance to census taking and counting people has 

its roots in a Biblical injunction: “And the number of the children of Israel shall 

be as the sand of the sea, which shall neither be measured or counted” (Talmud. 

Yoma 22b). Secondly, a suspicion of “official lists of Jews” is an understandable 

post-Holocaust reaction. And thirdly, more mundane reasons for people’s 

reluctance to be counted include tax evasion and draft dodging, among others. 

Thus the picture of a typical Yiddish speaker emerges as someone in or 

approaching retirement age (if secular or non-Orthodox) or as a member of one 

of the various Hasidic movements found in western Europe, the USA and Israel 

and, where the speaker is of child-bearing age or younger, the likelihood of this 

speaker being, again, Ultra-Orthodox is extremely high. To this picture we 

might add evidence accrued by Ayala Fader (2009: 119) that the average Yiddish 

speaker is male: “The Hasidic girls I observed gradually stopped speaking 

Yiddish and began to speak English as their everyday language – in contrast to 

Hasidic boys whose vernacular is Yiddish and who often have limited competence 

in English”. 

2. The endangerment of Yiddish 

There are two general responses that can be discerned in the literature to the 

current state of endangerment of the Yiddish language. The first response is that 

“Yiddish is doomed” and is fated to disappear. As far secular attempts to maintain 

Yiddish is concerned, the doyen of reversing language shift (RLS) and expert 

on the language, Joshua Fishman (2001: 86), considers that there is little 

that can be done: “Progressive and secular Yiddish culture per se is … a great 

handicap for RLS and, therefore, a decided minus for the future of secular Yiddishism”. 

He adds that the way forward might be the marrying of secular and 

religious approaches: “Yiddish secularism plus Jewish traditions” might be 

viewed as an enrichment, whereas “secular Yiddishism” is now often seen as an 

impoverishment of a thousand-year-old Great Tradition” (Fishman 2001: 87), 

though it is difficult to see how this formula would prove acceptable for both 

non-religious and religious parties alike. 

Though the Ultra-Orthodox are often seen as the last bastion of hope for the 

language, some commentators (such as Matras, mentioned above) do not feel 

that Yiddish’s future is safe in their hands: “No concentrated effort can be expected 

in these communities to safeguard the future of the language …” (Matras 

2010). 

A closer examination of sociolinguistic practices among some Ultra- 

Orthodox groups reveals that a language shift towards English is occurring, 

especially among those Hasidic groups that have policies of accepting “outsiders”: 

“Yiddish is not often spoken among Lubavitchers, partly because of the

94 


many baley-tshuves [returnees to Judaism] who do not know it” (Fader 2009: 

11). Another point made by other commentators centres on the fact that Yiddish, 

like many other endangered languages, is in contact situation with a much 

more powerful and prestigious language in the United States (and elsewhere) 

and this can lead to mixed linguistic practices, particularly among male speakers 

who attend yeshivas (schools of advanced Jewish study), further diminishing 

its use as a vernacular: “A new dialect of English sometimes called Yeshivish is 

taking over as the vernacular in everyday life in some [ultra-orthodox] circles in 

America and elsewhere” (Katz 2004: 384). 

The second response to this situation of endangerment is to claim that Yiddish 

is very much “alive” (cf. the Polish-based cultural movement “Yidish 

Lebt” (jidysz.net) who proclaim in their very title the (imagined) vitality of the 

language, “imagined” in a Polish context since there is no significant body of 

speakers of the language left anywhere in Poland). 

Commentators such as Katz see the future of Yiddish as secure in particular 

settings: “Yiddish, as fate would have it, is 100 percent safe for centuries to 

come as a virile spoken and written language among the southern Hasidim … 

The vast majority speak … Póylish … And this is the majority Yiddish of the 

future” (Katz 2004: 385). And indeed, the language, according to this discourse, 

will actually increase its demographic base of speakers: “The future millions of 

Yiddish speakers … will come from the rapidly expanding Hasidic communities 

around the world … while the next major chapter in the unfinished history 

of Yiddish is created by the Hasidim, we [secularists] can muster the collective 

energy needed for efforts to write our own much smaller chapter” (Katz 2004: 

397–398). If the attested 5% annual increase among the Hasidim results in the 

doubling of the Hasidic population every 15 years, then there will be, according 

to Robert Eisenberg (1995) 10 million Yiddish speakers by 2075. 

Assuming that Yiddish is in the state of a “dying” language, it is also a language 

which is subjected to predictions of imminent “death”. However, predictions 

do not always come true and do not always reflect the current situation of 

a language. They can however influence current attitudes towards a language 

and end up causing speakers to question the validity of continuing to transmit or 

even speak the language in question. In other words, these attitudes can create 

a self-fulfilling prophecy. In this context, Jefrrey Shandler (2006: 177–178) lists 

a discourse of language “death” in relation to Yiddish, which has been underway 

for over a century now and yet Yiddish as a spoken language is still with 

us: 

1897: “Within twenty-five years … even the best works in this language will only be literary 

curiosities” (Rosenfeld). 

1899: “In America [Yiddish] is certainly doomed to extinction” (Wiener).


1928: “[It is] “difficult to view the future of Yiddish in America optimistically” (Jewish 

Tribune). 

He further points out that the predicted demise of Yiddish is a “trope” 

which “has served … as a discursive frame for addressing the shifting stature 

and significance of Yiddish in modern Jewish life” (Shandler 2006: 180). Undoubtedly, 

this “death” trope is psychologically related in the popular consciousness 

to the mass murder of the majority of Yiddish speakers by the Nazi 

regime during World War II. 

3. The use of Yiddish in comedy 

I now come to the focus of the title of this article, the use of Yiddish in 

American television series. Why is the use of the language in such a context 

significant? I argue that it is one of the sites where the trope of Yiddish as 

a “dying” language is played out, provoking acrimonious debates on the appropriateness 

of such linguistic practices. In order to examine this use of Yiddish, 

I employ a critical sociolinguistic perspective borrowed from Monica Heller 

(2002), which is a framework capable of taking into account power relations 

and stakes underlying language use, issues of collective and individual identity, 

and the link between representations and social behaviour. Critical sociolinguistics 

adds to traditional questions on language use: “Where? Why and how? Who 

stands to gain or lose? What are the stakes?” 

3.1. When and how? 

The use of Yiddish in comic routines (especially insults) has a wellestablished 

history, as we may learn from the description of Kenneth Libo 

(2007). It is visible especially in the work of the Marx Brothers, Henry Youngman, 

Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Totie Fields, Rodney Dangerfield, Fredy Roman 

and Woody Allen. Vincent Brook (2003: 4) enumerates a number of television 

shows where this language been inherited, such as The Goldbergs (1949– 

1956), Rhoda (1974–1979), Seinfeld (1989–1998) and Will and Grace (1998– 

2006). It is from the last series that examples will be used in the present article. 

This use has been characterized as “isolated Yiddishisms embedded in another 

language” Shandler (2006: 129). 

3.2. What are the stakes? 

In one commentator’s view, Helen Beer (2009), such embedding is detrimental 

to the survival of the language, since its very basis is that of a symbolic 

cultural identification. As she states (Beer 2009: 15): “There exists the phe-

96 


nomenon of a ‘virtual’ Yiddish world, an identification with Yiddish, but without 

Yiddish. Should this take hold as the ‘new Yiddish’, then we must truthfully 

acknowledge that Yiddish culture, research and translation will be irreversibly 

undermined.” This is problematic, according to Beer (2009: 16), since “both 

superficiality and ignorance are guaranteed outcomes”. However, Beer does not 

expand on exactly how this symbolic identification with the language effectively 

undermines Yiddish, nor does she question how certain is the “guaranteed 

outcome” of “superficiality and ignorance”. Her commentary does reveal, 

however, a train of thought shared by many (native) speakers of endangered 

languages, namely that the diminishing in the number of domains of use for 

many languages has to be fought against, and not worked with. Shandler (2006: 

26) offers an alternative view, however, and asks additional critical sociolinguistic 

questions: 

When a language no longer seems inevitable, rooted, indigenous, but appears instead to be 

fading, moribund, or even dead, what are the implications for its attendant culture? 

Conversely, when they perceive their culture as being in crisis, neglected, or vanquished, 

what do they see as the consequences for the culture’s relationship to language? … How are 

the people in question affected by these pronouncements of loss, by the undoing of the 

definitional ties that bind them to a certain language and culture? As a result of this 

disruption, how do these people reconceptualise language and culture, so that they might still 

be meaningful in relation to one another and meaningful to this people’s collective sense of 

self? 

In the context of the embedding of Yiddishisms in comedy shows, I believe 

Shandler’s (2006) last question is the most relevant: Instead of surrendering to 

the “inevitable” demise of the language, what are the new and mixed practices 

which Yiddish speakers employ to signify their changing linguistic identities 

and how is this reflected by script writers in their work? 

3.3. Will and Grace (1998–2006) 

I have taken three representative excerpts [1], [2] and [3] from the show 

(cited by Brook 2003: 4) to show the myriad of ways that Yiddish is introduced 

into the dialogue of the characters and the implications this has for the status of 

the language, the acceptability (or not) of mixed language practices and the 

appeal to a wider non-Yiddish-speaking and non-Jewish audience. 

[1] 

Grace: “Who loves you? Grace Adler does, because she stopped by Mendel’s kosher bakery 

and picked you up three different things with ‘khukh’ in them. And one fat-free ‘khukh’ for 

me.” 

Will: “My favorite. Phlegm cakes.”


From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, extract 1 quoted above, as well 

as extracts [2] and [3] quoted below demonstrate a number of features. 

Exoticism 

Yiddish phonology is used as an “in-joke”, i.e., the “exotic” sound of Yiddish 

is accepted as comic, because of its guttural quality, unlike Standard 

American English. 

Comic effect 

The sound of Yiddish needs no explanation for other New Yorkers (and by 

extension, other Americans) because of the general awareness in American 

society of the existence of the language. 

“Kosher” 

On another level, “kosher” needs no explanation either, because of the generally 

assimilated (and accepted) position the majority of Jews in the USA hold 

in modern times. 

Comic effects and the expressions like “kosher” are further reinforced by 

who says what to whom in the scene: a Jewish woman is talking to a non-Jewish 

man, with no impediment in communication. Note the contrast with another 

character in a much later episode (season 6, episode 3), where Karen (a mildly 

anti-Semitic, mildly racist friend) tells Grace at an exclusive country club: 

“Yeah, honey, feel free to keep the Jew talk down to a whisper”. The highlighting 

of power relationships in the two contrasting scenes (an equal footing in the 

first instance, and a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) dominant environment 

in the second) are as much part of the technique of creating comic effect 

as the actual words used. 

[2] 

Jack: “I just shlepped all the way over here from the East Side and you know how much 

Guapo hates riding in a taxi.” 

“Shlepp” 

The use of the word “shlepp” with no explanation (it in fact means ‘to drag 

around’) marks the speakers as New Yorkers, who freely use Yiddishisms in 

their speech. 

New York urban identity 

That it is two non-Jewish New Yorkers speaking to each other is also significant 

– the use of Yiddish by non-Jewish inhabitants of the “Big Apple” is an 

indication of an emerging urban identity, in which the token use of Yiddish 

lexicon and Yiddish-influenced syntax plays an important part.

98 


[3] 

Will: “Thank you. That was perfect timing.” 

Grace: “I don’t have to be doing this.” 

Will: “Oh really? Really, well, you know, I didn’t have to spend Labor Day with your aunt 

Marsha in Boca Ratón, not that I didn’t love the yarn fayre. But I could have done without 

half the the condo complex pointing at me and whispering, ‘So that’s the faygeleh’.” 

“Faygele” 

The use of the Yiddish word for a gay man (faygele, lit. ‘little bird’), said in 

an exaggerated ‘Jewish’ accent can be used by one New Yorker to another with 

no offence intended or taken (depending on the context, obviously) because the 

use of Yiddish crosses ethnic lines, in very much the same way described by 

Carmen Fought (2006: 197) as “language crossing”, i.e., using a speech variety 

associated with a group other than the one you belong to. 

Particularly from a power differential perspective, the use of a term in a language 

that traditionally was not viewed prestigiously to denote a member of 

society who was also not viewed prestigiously (i.e., a faygele, or gay man) 

denotes, I would suggest, an attempt at solidarity between two (formerly) oppressed 

groups: the Jews and the gay community. It is used here, obviously, for 

comic effect, but a very different effect might be imagined should the term have 

been used directly toward the character in question by a Yiddish speaker. 

Again, context is all. 

3.4. Who stands to gain or lose? 

The extracts, from [1] to [3], though brief, reveal much about the use of 

Yiddish for comic effect, particularly from a power differential viewpoint, as 

pointed out in 3b. When answering the critical sociolinguistic question who 

stands to gain or lose, we can see that using Yiddish in such a way is not haphazard 

– a deliberate effect is aimed at. These include the continuation of a historical 

tradition of Jewish/Yiddish comedy or, as Neal Karlen reveals, the inheritance 

of “old-world Yiddish badchen, the funniest wise men of the shetl” 

(2008: 286). However, this tradition has not been pursued solely in Jewish circles 

in America, and gains also include a greater inclusivity – the use of Yiddish 

by and for the entertainment of non-Jews in particular recalls one comedian’s 

statement that humour is universal. What is more, Karlen 2008: 287) cites one 

of the Jewish comic saying: “We [Jewish comics in America] expand it to include 

the whole society”. From a specific linguistic point of view, the use of 

Yiddish does not impede the flow of the comic routine or script but in fact adds 

to it, even though the vast majority of audience members and viewers are in fact 

non-Yiddish speakers. As Shandler (2006: 141) points out, it draws audiences 

together, particularly “at the symbolic level, invoking an erstwhile shared ethnic


knowledge base and sensibility in an effort to makes this accessible, despite the 

lack of linguistic fluency and cultural literacy in the audience”. 

The use of Yiddish in this way also has its critics of course, as mentioned 

above when the “stakes” of such linguistic practices were discussed. First of all, 

we do need to recognize that the promotion of the language at this level is limited, 

if we have as our goal the recreation of pre-war Yiddish-speaking communities, 

when the language was spoken by millions of Jews (and others) in 

a secular setting. The big drawback, from this point of view, is that it does not 

guarantee intergenerational transmission, as pointed out by Fishman (2001: 85): 

“Every successive generation of secular Yiddishists must acquire Yiddish as 

a second language, ultimately acquiring it imperfectly from a prior generation 

that had also acquired it imperfectly”. 

The inclusive nature of the use of Yiddish in this way further challenges 

current “ownership” of the language, as pointed out above, where Beer (2009: 

15) considers it a threat to Yiddish culture, research and translation. Here we 

can draw a distinction between linguistic “ownership” and “usership”. The two 

stances very often have different goals. 

Ownership implies a discourse of authenticity and the position of the native 

speaker as dominant, whereas usership suggests that others from outside the 

community can come along and appropriate a language for their own ends. The 

two stances very often do not sit comfortably together and the appropriation of 

Yiddish, whether for comic purposes, or as a L2, whereby “for Hasidim … 

emaciated, artificial, and sterile Yiddish elicits some hilarity” (Katz 2004: 380). 


A language is not divorced from its speakers nor from society. As the world 

changes, people adapt, and adapt their linguistic practices. That Yiddish and 

many, many other “small” languages have been adapted by their speakers during 

the unprecedented changes, which have occurred during the twentieth century, 

comes as no surprise – and there is no room for recriminations here. People 

did what they thought was best. If secular Yiddish speakers chose not to 

transmit the language to their offspring, it was done with the best of intentions – 

to give their children a better life than they had had. 

If we look at Abraham Harold Maslow’s (1943, 1970 /1954/) hierarchy of 

needs, the question arises: Was Yiddish (or indeed any other currently endangered 

language) able to provide the basic requirements for physiological and 

safety needs? Clearly not. It is only when these lower needs have been met that 

higher needs can be addressed effectively. Thus, at the beginning of the twentyfirst 

century, when for most small communities (certainly in North America and

100 


most of Europe) the lower echelons of Maslow’s pyramid are stable, 1 people are 

able to address the higher needs once again. It is perhaps regrettable that for 

many language communities, the demographics and the vitality of the languages 

in question are not what they once were. But that they have a presence at all is, 

by many measures, quite remarkable. The presence of Yiddish as a comic language, 

though highly symbolic and restricted, is still a presence, one that is not 

afforded to many other endangered languages. It raises the prestige of the language, 

albeit in a limited fashion and more importantly, it reminds people that 

the language is still around and has not disappeared quite yet. 

References 

Abley, Mark 2005 /2003/: Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Boston, New 

York: A Mariner Book. Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Austin, Peter K., Andrew Simpson (eds.) 2007: Endangered Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske 

Verlag (Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 14). 

Beer, Helen 2009: Yiddish without Yiddish? European Judaism 42 (2), 10–18. 

Birnbaum, Solomon A. 1979: Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar. Manchester: Manchester University 

Press. 

Brenzinger, Matthias 2007: Language endangerment throughout the world. In: Matthias 

Brenzinger (ed.) 2007: Language Diversity Endangered. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Trends 

in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 181), ix–xvi. 

Brook, Vincent 2003. Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the ‘Jewish’ Sitcom. New 

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 

Broudic, Fañch 2009: Parler breton au XXIe siècle. Le nouveau sondage de TMO Régions. 

Brest: Emgleo Breiz. 

Crystal, David 2000: Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Dalby, Andrew 2002: Language in Danger: How Language Loss Threatens Our Future. Allen 

Lane: The Penguin Press. 

Drysdale, Helena 2001: Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe. London: Picador. 

Eisenberg, Robert 1996: Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground. New York: 

HarperCollins. 

Fader, Ayala 2009: Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 

1 

The fundamental five-stage model, including: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and selfactualization 

needs, was presented by Maslow (1943) in his article “A theory of human motivation” 

of 1943 and then repeted in his book Motivation and Personality of 1954. However, 

in the second edition, which appeared after Maslow death in 1970, two other higher order 

needs had been added, the cognitive and aesthetic needs. In fact, these sixth and seventh 

types of needs have to be considered rather as value-oriented since they depend on subjective 

choices. Assuming that the cognitive needs imply the motivation how to acquire and systematize 

the knowledge of the surrounding world, they coincide with the safety and selfactualization 

needs. As far as the aesthetic needs are concerned, their close relation to culture 

is evident with respect to the need for order, structure, symmetry, and the like (cf. Maslow 

1987 /1954/: 25–27) – the editor’s note: ZW.


Fishman, Joshua A. 2001: Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Reversing Language Shift, 

Revisited: A 21st Century Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 

Fought, Carmen 2006: Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

Grenoble, Lenore A., Lindsay J. Whaley 2006: Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language 

Revitalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

Harrison, K. David 2007: When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the 

Erosion of Human Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Heller, Monica 2002: Éléments d’une sociolinguistique critique. Paris: Éditions Didier (Collection 

Langues et Apprentissage des Langues). 

Karlen, Neal 2008: The Story of Yiddish – How A Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews. New 

York: William Morrow & Co. 

Katz, Dovid 2004: Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. New York: Basic Books. 

Libo, Kenneth 2007: From Yiddish to English: The humor of it all. Midstream 53 (4), 9–11. 

Maslow, Abraham H(arold) 1970 /1954/: Motivation and Personality. 2nd ed. New York, NY: 

Harper & Row /Harper & Bros/. 

Maslow, Abraham H(arold). 1987 /1954/: Motivation and Personality. With new material by Ruth 

Cox and Robert Frager. 3rd ed. rev. by Robert Frager et al. New York, NY: Harper & Row. 

Maslow, Abraham Harold 1943: A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review 50, 370–369. 

Nettle, Daniel, Suzanne Romaine 2000: Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the Worldʹs Languages. 

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Princeton University Press. 

Shandler, Jefrrey 2006: Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture. 

Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. 

Websites consulted 

2000 USA census. In: www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html) ED 09/2011 

Council of Europe. In: http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc96/EDOC7489.htm 

ED 09/2011. 

Diplo Governance Internet Community. In: www.diplointernetgovernance.org/profiles/blogs/amaslow-internet-governance) 

ED 09/2011. 

Ethnologue. In: www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ydd) ED 09/2011. 

Factfinder Census 2006: In: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=D&- 

ds_name=D&-_lang=en&-mt_name=ACS_2006_EST_G2000_B16001) ED 09/2011. 

Jidysz.net. In: http://jidysz.net/) ED 09/2011. 

Modern Language Association 2005: In: www.mla.org/cgishl/docstudio/docs.pl?map_data_results ED 

09/2011. 

Shyovitz, David. The History and Development of Yiddish. Jewish Virtual Library. A Division of the 

American Israeli Enterprise. In: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/yiddish.html ED 

09/2011. 

Talmud. Yona 22b In: www.halakhah.com/pdf/moed/Yoma.pdf) ED 09/2011 

Matras, Yaron 2010: Archive of Endangered and Smaller Languages. In: http://languagecontact.- 

humanities.-manchester.ac.uk/ELA/languages/Yiddish.html ED 09/2011.

PABLO IRIZARRI VAN SUCHTELEN 

RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN 

Dative constructions in the Spanish of heritage speakers 

in the Netherlands 1 

ABSTRACT. Spanish can use dative as well as non-dative strategies to encode Possessors, 

Human Sources, Interestees (datives of interest) and Experiencers. In Dutch this optionality 

is virtually absent, restricting dative encoding mainly to the Recipient of a ditransitive. The 

present study examines whether this may lead to instability of the non-prototypical dative 

constructions in the Spanish of Dutch-Spanish bilinguals. Elicited data of 12 Chilean 

heritage informants from the Netherlands were analyzed. Whereas the evidence on the 

stability of dative Experiencers was not conclusive, the results indicate that the use of 

prototypical datives, dative External Possessors, dative Human Sources and datives of 

interest is fairly stable in bilinguals, except for those with limited childhood exposure to 

Spanish. It is argued that the consistent preference for non-dative strategies of this group was 

primarily attributable to instability of the dative clitic, which affected all constructions, even 

the encoding of prototypical indirect objects. 

KEYWORDS. Spanish, bilingualism, language contact, heritage linguistics, dative construction 


A central concern in the study of language contact is the question of stability: 

which aspects of language are more or less stable, or, in other words, resilient 

to change, in the face of contact? Work on diachronic language contact has 

shown that languages can undergo all sorts of changes when in contact. Sometimes 

the impact can be profound, causing a language to adopt a whole new 

typological profile, such as the example, discussed by Yaron Matras (2009), of 

an Asia Minor variety of Greek changing its Indo-European type flectional case 

marking for Turkish type agglutinative case marking. From the curiosities reviewed 

in the literature the impression may arise that, under contact, anything is 

possible. However, linguists have sought to unveil the order in this apparent 

chaos. 

As it became clear that the concept of borrowability of features does not 

depend solely on the linguistic structures involved, scholars such as Pieter 

Muysken (2010) advocate a scenario approach: by taking into account the sociolinguistic 

context of the contact situation – e.g., demographic factors and the 

1 

This study was conducted with support from ERC Project #230310 “Traces of Contact”. 

I would also like to thank Viviana Ávila and Mitchel Lazzús for their assistance in collecting, 

transcribing and coding data. 


104 

Pablo Irizarri van Suchtelen 

relative dominance of the languages involved – one can uncover global patterns 

of what are more or less probable paths of structural development. Thus, for 

instance, a scenario of language shift leads to other types of linguistic change 

than a scenario of language maintenance, as Sarah Grey Thomason Terrence 

Kaufman, (1988) point out in their work on Language Contact, Creolization, 

and Genetic Linguistics. 

Synchronic research has made important contributions to understanding 

contact-induced change. One of them is making clear that the curiosities found 

in the diachronic literature do not arise overnight. Structural change in a bilingual 

setting often starts as subtle shifts in the distribution of existing forms 

across the repertoire of speakers and eventually speech communities, rather than 

the immediate introduction of alien forms. An example is the increase in use of 

overt subject pronouns in heritage Spanish. 

While in monolingual Spanish overt subject pronouns are only permitted 

under specific pragmatic constraints, bilinguals tend to violate these constraints, 

as their use of overt subject pronouns starts to resemble more that of English, in 

which it is the norm; worth considering are here the studies of Ricardo Otheguy, 

Ana Cella Zentella and David Livert (2007) on language and dialect contact in 

Spanish in New York. Instead of borrowability, What is more, Carmen Silva- 

Corvalán (1993) speaks, for example, in favor of the permeability of grammar 

emphasizing the gradual nature of cross-linguistic influence. 

An important issue in synchronic contact research concerns the acquisition 

setting. Some bilinguals acquire a minority language as their mother tongue and 

use it as a home language throughout their childhood, while increasingly using 

a majority language from the moment they start going to school. These bilinguals 

are often referred to as heritage speakers and are subject of an emerging 

field of linguistic research, which has been summarized recently by Elabbas 

Benmamoun, Silvina Montrul, Maria Polinsky (2010) under the label of heritage 

linguistics. 

Heritage speakers are an interesting category, because their mother tongue 

not only becomes increasingly prone to instability and permeation of crosslinguistic 

influence as the majority language becomes more dominant, but in 

many cases they acquire it incompletely. It is particularly challenging in synchronic 

contact research to disentangle contributions of convergence, incomplete 

acquisition and attrition to contact-induced change. 

The research project Traces of Contact funded by the European Research 

Council, 2 brings together linguists working on diachronic and synchronic issues, 

adopting a scenario approach. The present study is part of the subproject Multilingual 

Netherlands, which studies ongoing language contact in heritage language 

communities. The situation in the Netherlands, presented in the studies 

2 

Available at: http://www.ru.nl/linc/projects/erc-traces-contact

Dative constructions in the Spanish of heritage speakers in the Netherlands 105 

Babylon aan de Noordzee. Nieuwe Talen in Nederland edited by Guus Extra, 

Jan Jaap De Ruijter (2001) provides ample opportunities for discussing this 

particular type of bilingualism – presumably a common one throughout history 

– to be studied in real time. Immigrant languages such as Turkish, Moroccan 

Arabic, Tarifit Berber, Sranantongo (among others) are spoken in large, dynamic 

communities, consisting of several generations of bilinguals. Spanish, the 

language examined also by one of the authors in this collective book, is a little 

studied heritage language in the Netherlands. The language of the group chosen 

here had – to my knowledge – not been studied before: Chilean immigrants in 

the Netherlands. 

The first generation of Chileans arrived in the Netherlands in the 1970s 

from a monolingual, monodialectal environment and were exposed to Dutch 

and other varieties of Spanish. Their children, the second generation, grew up in 

a multilingual environment and now use Chilean Spanish as a heritage language 

to varying degrees. 

The present study is an exploration into the stability of dative constructions 

in the Spanish of bilinguals with different acquisition histories. First, I will present 

the research problem: the bilingual’s confrontation with dative constructions 

in Spanish and Dutch. Then I will discuss relevant previous research. Finally, 

I will present the method, results and a discussion of my findings. 

2. Research problem 

2.1. Datives in contact 

In Spanish, indirect object marking can take different forms: 

[1a] El niño da un libro a la niña 

PP 

[1b] El niño le da un libro a la niña 

cl 

PP 

[1c] El niño le da un libro 

cl 

‘The boy gives a book to the girl’ 

‘The boy gives a book to the girl’ 

‘The boy gives her a book’ 

The indirect object can be marked with the preposition a (often translatable 

as “to”), as in [1 0], indexed by a dative clitic, as in [1c], or both, as in [1b]. The 

latter construction is usually called clitic doubling. The semantic roles that can 

(or must) be encoded with a dative construction are diverse, as examples [2a– 

2e] show. 

[2a] Le da una mochila al chico 

RECIPIENT 

‘He gives a backpack to the boy’ 

[2b] El ratón le quita el bombo 

HUMAN SOURCE 

Literally: ‘The mouse takes him away the drum’

106 


[2c] Le agarra el brazo a la chica 

Literally: ‘He grabs the arm to the girl’ 

[2d] Le cae una fruta 

Literally: ‘A fruit falls him’ 

[2e] Se te olvidaron las llaves 

Literally: ‘The keys forgot-themselves to you’ 

POSSESSOR 

INTERESTEE 

EXPERIENCER 

Apart from the Recipient in a ditransitive construction, the dative can also 

be used to mark quite the opposite, the person from which something is taken 

away, stolen, etc. [2b]. The so called (dative) External Possession Construction 

[2c] is a feature of most Indo-European languages, although not of English 

(Haspelmath 1999). It involves turning the Possessor into an indirect object, 

instead of using possessive marking on the Possessum. Spanish also has the 

possibility to express an “interested bystander” of a non-accusative predicate, 

a construction which is often called ethical dative or dative of interest [2d]. For 

ease of reference I will term the semantic role which is somehow affected (positively 

or negatively) in his/her interest, the Interestee (following Draye 1998). 

Finally, Spanish has many psychological predicates which take a dative Experiencer 

[2e]. 

In Dutch the use of datives is virtually restricted to the Recipient [3a]. Semantic 

roles other than Recipient encoded as dative do occur (Experiencer: Dit 

bevalt mij ‘This pleases me’) but are much more rare than in Spanish. As the 

Dutch examples in [3a–3e] show, Human Sources are typically encoded in PP’s 

[3b], Possessors are usually represented in PP’s or possessive markings accompanying 

the Possessum [3c], Interestees are most often not expressed at all [3d], 

and most psychological predicates take subject Experiencers [3e]. 

[3a] Hij geeft een rugzak aan de jongen 

‘He gives a backpack to the boy’ 

[3b] De muis pakt de trommel van hem af 

‘The mouse takes away the drum from him’ 

[3c] Hij pakt de arm van het meisje/Hij pakt haar arm 

‘He grabs the arm of the girl/He grabs her arm’ 

[3d] Er valt (*hem) een vrucht 

‘A fruit falls (*him)’ 

[3e] Jij bent de sleutels vergeten 

‘You forgot the keys’ 

RECIPIENT 

HUMAN SOURCE 

POSSESSOR 

INTERESTEE 

EXPERIENCER 

The non-dative strategies of Dutch are also possible in Spanish. In Spanish, 

then, there is variability, contrary to Dutch. Such a situation seems ideal for 

convergence to take place. Research has shown that if a form is available in the 

heritage language as one of several alternatives to express a certain semantic 

content, and for that same content a similar form is available in the majority 

language, but without alternatives, this form can increase in frequency in the 

repertoire of the heritage language, which in turn leads to an erosion of the con-


straints that originally regulated the form’s use. Worth seeing, in this particular 

contexts, are the research results Silva-Corvalán (2008) and Barbara E. Bullock 

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (2004). Because Spanish has both the dative and 

the non-dative strategies, heritage speakers, as a consequence of activating 

Dutch non-dative strategies all the time, may conceivably develop an increased 

preference for non-dative strategies for encoding Possessors, Human Sources, 

Experiencers and Interestees, in comparison to monolinguals. Let us consider 

findings on dative constructions from the literature on heritage Spanish in the 

US. 

2.2. Previous findings in heritage language research 

Silva-Corvalán (1994) has observed that many US born bilinguals, though 

not frequently, use structures of the type given in example [4b], an example of 

the possessor externally marked with a dative, whereas the standard Spanish 

form would be [4a]: 

[4a] ... y me dieron en la cara, y me quebraron la mandíbula 

and me hit-3pl in the face, and me broke-3pl the jaw 

[4b] ... y me dieron en la cara, y ø quebraron mi, mi jaw 

and me hit-3pl in the face, and ø broke-3pl my, my jaw 

... and they hit me in the face, and broke my, my jaw 

(Silva-Corvalán, 1994: 139) 

Silva-Corvalán points to the fact that a construction like [4b], without a dative, 

would indeed be possible in standard Spanish, but only when the possessor has 

a relatively low degree of involvement in the situation. Thus, she argues that 

a sentence like Lavó mi pelo ‘He washed my hair’ would give rise to an interpretation 

whereby the hair is washed separate from the head, while the owner is 

not involved, e.g., after being cut. Rather odd of course, let alone the situation 

of a jaw being broken without it being attached to the person. 

The use of this type of construction, even though there is a high degree of 

involvement of the possessor, is a violation of a semantic-pragmatic constraint. 

Because English has only the construction without the dative, Silva-Corvalán 

(1994) argues that there is cross-linguistic influence: the loss of the constraint is 

triggered by the bilingual’s preference for equivalent structures in the two languages 

and the fact that the English equivalent is not subject to the same semantic-pragmatic 

constraints. However, it is important to note that she does not 

consider to be dealing with a permeation by a foreign syntactic structure per se, 

but rather a process of lexical change: it affects the constraints on possible arguments 

of a set of verbs (cf. Silva-Corvalán 1994: 141). 

Silvina Montrul (2004), in a story elicitation task with 24 heritage speakers 

(i.e., not including first generation late bilinguals), found that those with low

108 


proficiency had a tendency (though non-significant) to use less External Possessor 

Constructions (EPC) with doubled dative clitics. Instead, they used more 

possessive constructions (like example [4b]), and “dative clitic only” strategies 

than the monolinguals. The latter result seems unexpected, as it still would constitute 

dative EPC. Montrul does not address this observation, however. 

Using a grammatical judgment task, Silvina Montrul and Melissa Bowles 

(2009) found that heritage speakers had unstable knowledge of Experiencer 

datives with psychological verbs. They showed subjects grammatical sentences 

in which the Experiencer NP was a-marked, and ungrammatical sentences 

without a-marking. Heritage speakers had a relatively high acceptance of (ungrammatical) 

Experiencer NPs without a. 

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio and Carlos Nye (2006) also let their subjects 

judge grammatical and ungrammatical sentences with dative Experiencers, and 

additionally administered a sentence-completion task. They found that heritage 

speakers, with their high rates of acceptance and production of ungrammatical 

constructions, displayed two main tendencies: (1) mapping of subject properties, 

such as control of verb agreement and no a-marking, to the Experiencer 

and object properties to the Theme (including a-marking and accusative pronominalization) 

and (2) SVO order: Subject-Experiencer in preverbal position. 

Montrul (2004), Montrul & Bowles (2009) and Toribio & Nye (2006), 

working within a generative framework, interpreted the heritage speakers’ tendencies 

to restructure Experiencer datives and to produce less clitic doubled 

EPC’s (although recall that clitic-only EPC’s remain unexplained) as evidence 

for the vulnerability of the syntax-semantic and syntax-pragmatic interfaces, in 

line with other research conducted, for example Antonella Sorace (2004), Ianthi 

Maria Tsimpli (2001). Precisely these aspects are affected because they are 

expressions of inherent (marked) case, regulated by interpretable (semantic and 

pragmatic) features, as opposed to structural case, which is a purely syntactic 

phenomenon. Thus, with the erosion of the semantic and pragmatic features, 

convergence to English can take over. Furthermore, Montrul (2004) argues that 

this process occurs during the acquisition period in childhood. 

Important is that the other side of the hypothesis, namely the robustness of 

uninterpretable features, is indeed confirmed. When the dative case is structural, 

as in ditransitive Recipient-Theme constructions, the devices for marking dative 

remain stable. Montrul (2004) found that with typical indirect objects, production 

rates of “clitic only” and “clitic doubling” were very similar between 

monolinguals and heritage speakers. Silva-Corvalán (1994) did not find evidence 

either for contact-induced change in the realization of dative clitics in 

typical contexts. She found that in a total of 2822 required contexts for clitics, 

including dative constructions, heritage speakers only omitted 71, constituting 

2,5%.


2.3. Hypotheses 

On the basis of the literature review, we can hypothesize that nonprototypical 

dative constructions, i.e., those involving dative encoding of other 

roles than Recipients, are unstable because they are dependent on pragmatic and 

semantic constraints, unlike prototypical datives (involving Recipients), which 

we can hypothesize as stable. In the particular bilingual context presented here 

(Dutch-Spanish), I expect the instability of non-prototypical dative constructions 

to lead to a decrease in their use, in favor of the use of alternative (nondative, 

more Dutch-like) constructions for expressing the same semantic content. 

I will examine this in a group of Spanish-Dutch bilinguals – heritage speakers 

as well as first generation immigrants – taking into account their acquisition 

profiles. In addition to dative External Possessors and dative Experiencers, 

I will look at two types of constructions which, to my knowledge, have not been 

mentioned before in Spanish heritage research, namely dative Human Sources 

and the dative of interest. 

3. Method 

3.1. Participants 

Twelve bilinguals – six women and six men – were included in the study. 

When referring to them individually, I will use pseudonyms. Ages ranged between 

21 and 59. There was a balanced spread of socioeconomic backgrounds. 

The heritage speakers all spent most of their life in either Amsterdam, in other 

urban areas in the West of the Netherlands or in the urban area of Nijmegen (in 

the East) and were also raised in those areas, if not in Chile. 

The first generation (G1) informants all spent their childhood in the Central 

Valley of Chile (roughly the area between La Serena in the north, and Concepción 

in the south). Some additionally spent some time in other parts of Chile, 

other Spanish speaking countries, or other parts of the world. Of the second 

generation (G2), six were born and raised entirely in the Netherlands, two arrived 

at age 5. Four of the second generation had a Dutch and a Chilean parent, 

with home languages accordingly. The other four had two Spanish speaking 

parents. 

As a control group 16 monolingual informants – seven women and nine 

men – were recorded in Chile. All of them had lived their entire lives in Chile 

and grew up monolingually, with two Chilean parents. Socioeconomic backgrounds 

were balanced out. Half of the informants were between 20 and 35 

years old, and the other half between 39 and 88. All had spent most of their life 

in Santiago or Valparaíso, the main urban centers in the Central Valley.

110 


3.2. Material 

The data under study here were obtained as part of a larger procedure aiming 

at eliciting a wide range of linguistic phenomena. The procedure was designed 

within the Traces of Contact project for explorative study of several heritage 

languages in the Netherlands. For this analysis, descriptions of video 

scenes were selected which contained a semantic role that can be encoded as 

a dative in Spanish, but not in Dutch: 

– typical dative scenes, with a Recipient and a Theme, 

– scenes in which something happens to a person’s (Possessor’s) body part, 

– scenes in which something is taken away or stolen from a person (Human 

Source), 

– scenes in which a person’s (Interestee’s) interest is affected by some event 

that happens to an object, without that person being responsible for the 

event, 

– scenes in which a person (Experiencer) forgets or leaves something, has an 

idea or feels pain. 

The stimuli which elicited these descriptions were video’s (animations or 

live recordings), played on a laptop in front of the informant. All participants 

viewed the same set of stimuli, but not all participants had the same number of 

responses, either because they did not describe an event (this happened particularly 

if it was part of a story with many events going on) or because their description 

was not considered adequate enough for inclusion. 

The only criterion for including an utterance for analysis was that it contained 

an adequate description of the Event + Theme involved (a physical object 

or an abstractum, such as ‘an idea’ or ‘pain’). The exact phrasing or choice of 

predicate was variable: it did not matter if the same video scene was described 

as “Man showing a box to a woman” or “This guy offers her some cereals”. 

However, if the same video were described as, say, “The guy flirts with a 

woman”. it was not an adequate description for analysis. The Recipient, Possessor, 

Human Source, Interestee or Experiencer could either appear as an indirect 

object, in some other encoding, or even not be mentioned. 

In short then, the analysis focused on the formal encoding of constellations 

of Events and semantic roles: was the encoding such that the Recipient, Possessor, 

Interestee or Experiencer was an indirect object, or something else? 

3.3. Results 

A total of 698 scene descriptions was analyzed. Those described in section 

2.1 were indeed the major encoding strategies. If a dative construction, like 

examples [2] in section 2.1, was not used, the alternatives were as expected and


equivalent to the Dutch examples under [3]. Some additional forms were found 

(all with equivalent Dutch constructions), which were not mentioned in section 

2.1, such as the representation of the Possessor as a direct object [5] or the 

omission of a Possessor or Human Source [6]. Only one construction was found 

which was ungrammatical/unclassifiable [7]. It could be a speech error. 

[5] … la agarra del brazo (monolingual) 

Cl.Acc.3sf takes off-the arm 

‘He takes her by the arm.’ 

[6] … cortando el pelo (Enrico) 

‘Cutting the hair.’ 

[7] … la está tocando el brazo la chica (Carola) 

*Cl.Acc.3sf is touching the arm the girl 

‘He is touching her, the arm, the girl.’ 

Table 1 shows that monolinguals as well as bilinguals use a dative virtually 

always for referring to the Recipient in a ditransitive scene. The only two examples 

of non-dative were descriptions of a man throwing a ball to another man 

[8 and 9]. Carola’s utterance is strange, perhaps a speech error. 

[8a] … tiraba una pelota, hacia el otro (Iván) 

‘He threw a ball toward the other.’ 

[8b] …tira la pelota con otro chico (Carola) 

‘He throws the ball with another boy.’ 

For describing Non-Recipients, the first generation as a group uses more 

datives than the second generation. However, for both groups of bilinguals the 

rate of datives for referring to Non-Recipients is significantly lower than for the 

monolinguals (p < .05). 

For Recipient encoding (Table 2), the bilinguals’ behavior generally resembles 

that of the monolinguals: clitic doubling (example [1b] in section 2.1) is 

predominant, with a few instances of clitics used to pronominalize the referent 

(example [1c]), and sporadic cases of bare a-NP’s [1a]. 

However, Carola, Dennis, Iván and Gabriel, who also showed quite low 

dative rates for Non-Recipients, deviate strikingly from this pattern. They seem 

to have a preference for only a-marking. 

Contrary to the rest of the second generation, these four have one Dutch 

parent, and report they used Spanish little in childhood. For ease of reference, 

I labeled these the “low input” G2. Their peers with two Hispanophone parents, 

who use consistently more dative encoding for Non-Recipients and do not exhibit 

this preference for a-marking on Recipients, will be labeled “high input” 

G2.

112 


Table 1. Datives used to encode Recipients and Non-Recipients; individual scores and group 

scores 

Recipients Non-Recipients 

5/6 1/20 

Carola 83,3% 5% 

6/6 3/19 

Dennis 100% 16% 

6/7 4/19 

Iván 85,7% 21,1% 

6/6 7/19 

Gabriel 100% 37% 

7/7 10/18 

Alejandra 100% 56% 

5/5 16/24 

Lorena 100% 66,7% 

7/7 13/19 

Luz 100% 68,4% 

7/7 15/19 

Fabiano 100% 78,9% 

49/51 66/157 

TOTAL G2 96% 42% 

6/6 7/16 

Enrico 100% 43,8% 

7/7 11/19 

Eduardo 100% 57,9% 

7/7 12/17 

Soledad 100% 70,6% 

7/7 18/21 

Inés 100% 85,7% 

27/27 48/73 

TOTAL G1 100% 65,7% 

94/94 225/296 

MONOLINGUALS 100% 76%


For Non-Recipients, no cases were found of “only a-marking”, except for one 

[9]. 

[9] ... un joven cortando el pelo a una niña (monolingual) 

a youngster cutting the hair to a girl 

‘A young man cutting a girl’s hair.’ 

Table 2. Forms used for encoding Recipients: Individual scores vs. monolingual group score 

Low input G2 

High input G2 

First generation 

Only 

clitic 

Clitic 

doubling 

Only a-PP Other PP Total 

Carola 0 1 4 1 6 

16,70% 66,70% 16,70% 

Dennis 0 1 5 0 6 

16,70% 83,30% 

Iván 0 0 6 1 7 

85,70% 14,30% 

Gabriel 0 4 2 0 6 

66,70% 33,30% 

Alejandra 0 7 0 0 7 

100,00% 

Lorena 0 5 0 0 5 

0.00% 100,00% 

Luz 1 6 0 0 7 

14.30% 85,70% 

Fabiano 1 6 0 0 7 

14.30% 85,70% 

Enrico 1 4 1 0 6 

16.7% 66,7% 16,7% 

Eduardo 0 7 0 0 7 

100,00% 

Soledad 0 6 1 0 7 

85,70% 14,30% 

Inés 0 7 0 0 7 

MONOLINGUALS 

100,00% 

12 76 6 0 94 

12.80% 80,90% 6,40%

114 


So, if a Non-Recipient was coded as dative, it always involved a clitic, either 

alone, or doubled. Sometimes, the clitic was doubled with a non-dative 

encoding, resulting in something I will label “hybrid doubling” [10[. This strategy 

was used two times by Lorena (“high input” G2), two times by Inés (G1), 

once by Eduardo (G1) and once by a monolingual. 

[10] ... le toma su brazo (Inés) 

Cl.Dat.3s takes POSS.3sg arm 

‘He takes her arm.’ 

Table 3 represents the rates of “clitic only”, “clitic doubling” or “hybrid 

doubling”. In other words, the table investigates differential stability of the only 

form of dative encoding found for Recipients as well as Non-Recipients: clitic 

indexing. The use of clitics is higher for Recipients than for other roles, in all 

groups, except for the “low input” G2, who have low rates of clitic use overall. 

Only they have a significant difference with the monolinguals, for all semantic 

roles (p < .05). 

In the “high input” G2 and the G1, clitic indexing seems quite stable for 

Possessors, Human Sources and Interestees, but less so for Experiencers (although 

the rate of the monolinguals there is also lower). The difference between 

monolinguals and the G1 in encoding Experiencers is significant (p < .01). The 

difference between the “high input” G2 and the monolinguals is non-significant 

for all roles, even if we remove Fabiano (who has higher dative rates than the 

average of the monolinguals). 

Table 3. Dative clitics used for encoding all roles: Group scores 

Recipients External Human Interestees Experiencers 

Possessors Sources 

6/25 2/13 4/23 4/25 5/16 

Low input G2 24% 15,4% 17,4% 16% 31,3% 

26/26 10/14 15/24 18/25 8/17 

High input G2 100% 89,5% 62,5% 73,3% 47,1% 

25/27 10/15 14/17 19/28 3/13 

First generation 92,2% 66,7% 82,4% 67,9% 23,1% 

88/94 54/63 58/76 79/106 34/51 

Monolinguals 93,6% 87,3% 76,30% 74,50% 66,7% 

How is it possible that in Table 1 we found the G1 and the “average” G2 to 

use significantly less dative strategies (= clitic indexing) for encoding Non- 

Recipient roles compared to the monolinguals, but not in Table 3? Experiencers 

seem to contribute most to the overall non-dative rates, because if we remove 

them from Table 1, the G1 and the “high input” G2 go up to a level of nonsignificant 

difference with the monolinguals.


4. Discussion and conclusion 

The first table may lead to the impression that indeed, the bilinguals’ use of 

protoypical dative constructions is stable, whereas that of non-prototypical ones 

is not. And that this is probably a convergent change not solely caused by incomplete 

acquisition, as it affects not only the heritage speakers (the G2) but 

also late bilinguals (the G1). 

However, a closer look at the data revealed that much depends on what kind 

of “dative” one considers, what kind of “heritage speaker” and what kind of 

“non-prototypical”. 

To start with the latter, when considering the non-prototypical roles separately, 

it turned out that the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals 

was small and non-significant, except for Experiencers. This category accounted 

for the significant differences in overall non-protoypical dative rates of 

the high input G2 and the G1 with the monolinguals. This could suggest that 

dative encoding of Experiencers may indeed be unstable, regardless of acquisition 

profile. However, this label contained a small and linguistically heterogeneous 

sample. A closer and perhaps theoretically better grounded investigation 

of these bilinguals’ dative Experiencers could be interesting for the future. 

Those who did use much less non-prototypical datives than the monolinguals 

were Carola, Dennis, Iván and Gabriel. Although, similar to the others, 

they were fairly proficient and used Spanish regularly, they shared the characteristic 

that they reported low childhood exposure. One could argue then, that 

only in the case of low exposure, non-prototypical dative constructions become 

unstable, while the prototypical ones remain intact. 

However, this would still be a too broad conclusion, as the data showed that 

this group also deviated within the encoding strategies for Recipients. The “low 

input” G2 seemed to prefer clitic-less a-marking here. The literature also provides 

some indications that a-marking is a more stable aspect of (typical) dative 

constructions than the clitic. Montrul & Bowles (2010), showed that the bare a-NP 

was accepted slightly more by heritage speakers than the clitic doubled a-NP in 

a grammatical judgment task, whereas this was the other way round for monolinguals. 

Montrul (2004) found that her lowest proficiency heritage speaker 

group had a higher production rate of clitic-less a-marking (14,6% of indirect 

objects) than advanced heritage speakers (0%) and monolinguals (2,5%). 

I hypothesize that the “low input” group’s deviation in the encoding of all 

semantic roles has to do with a more general instability of clitic indexing, caused 

by incomplete acquisition. Studies on the L1 acquisition of Spanish 

(Domínguez 2003; Montrul, 2004; Reglero & Ticio, 2003) provide evidence 

that clitics appear rather suddenly in children’s speech around age 2. The “high 

input” G2 did not go to preschool or kindergarten before the age of 2, meaning 

that they predominantly heard Spanish, and thus were exposed to lots of clitics,

116 


or at least enough to acquire them normally. The “low input” group, however, 

had limited exposure to Spanish and competition with Dutch right from birth, 

which might have impeded their normal acquisition of clitics. 

In that respect, the “low input” group resembles the type of subjects labeled 

overhearers by Terry Kit-fong Au et al. (2002). They repeatedly found that 

people who “passively” acquired Spanish during childhood through overhearing 

their parents, without really speaking it much, had a benefit later in life acquiring 

their heritage language in an L2-classroom setting, but only in the domain 

of phonology (Au et al., 2008; Knightly et al., 2003). Their knowledge of Spanish 

morphosyntax was similar to that of those who had not had any early exposure 

to Spanish. Montrul (2010), rightly arguing that Au et al.’s measure of 

morphosyntax was too coarse, provided counterevidence: “low proficiency” 

heritage speakers did show an advantage over L2-learners. She argued that the 

heritage speakers’ knowledge of clitics was more target-like overall. However, 

in the same study, precisely dative clitic use did not seem at all target-like: in 

a story-telling task, the 24 low proficiency heritage speakers realized 51,3% of 

dative clitics in indirect object contexts, against 24 native speakers’ 92% 

(Montrul, 2010: 181). Nevertheless, she does not address this result at all. 

We have seen contrasting evidence in the literature regarding clitic use for 

prototypical datives: on the one hand Silva-Corvalán (1994) and Montrul (2004) 

showed it to be robust and target-like (recall section 2.2), and on the other hand 

Montrul (2010) who provides evidence for it to be non-target like. However, 

they may well all be right, if we assume that the difference lies in acquisition 

history. In Montrul’s (2010) subjects, who were (assumably) comparable to Au 

et al.’s “overhearers”, insufficient exposure led to considerable instability in the 

use of dative clitics. The instability in my “low input” group corroborates these 

results. Silva-Corvalán (1994) and Montrul (2004) do not provide detailed accounts 

of the acquisition history of the subjects, but they did include higher 

proficiency heritage speakers. Their “stable” results may be comparable to those 

of my “high input” G2. 

Whether the observed shifts in preferences are due to cross-linguistic influence 

and/or some “universal” process of contact-induced change, is hard to tell 

on the basis of these data (and not an aim of this study). It is true that Dutch has 

no equivalent of clitic indexing, and that the “low input” group move away 

from it and prefer marking with “a”, which is similar to Dutch “aan” (to). If we 

simply assume convergence to Dutch to be responsible, however, it poses 

a problem why the “low input” group do not use pronouns when referring to 

Recipients, only full NP’s (Table 2). Choosing a strategy of “a + pronoun” 

(“?Da un libro a ella” ‘He gives a book to her’) would be highly marked in 

Spanish, and moreover, in Dutch too (“Hij geeft een boek aan haar” ‘He gives 

a book to her’). The less marked alternative in both languages would be to pro-


nominalize using a “clitic only” strategy (“Le da un libro” ‘He gives her a book’), 

which resembles very much the Dutch pronoun in a Double Object Construction 

(“Hij geeft haar een boek” ‘He gives her a book’). The “low input” bilinguals 

do neither. Therefore, it seems more probable to me that these speakers have 

some structural problem with clitics per se; they might have acquired them 

incompletely and are insecure about how to use them, but on the other hand also 

feel that the “a + pronoun” strategy is highly marked. Perhaps, that makes them 

avoid pronominalization altogether. 

In summary then, whereas the evidence on the stability of dative Experiencers 

was not conclusive, the study presented here suggests that the use of 

prototypical datives, dative External Possessors, dative Human Sources and 

datives of interest is fairly stable in bilinguals, except for those with limited 

childhood exposure to Spanish. I argued that the consistent preference for nondative 

strategies of this group, was primarily attributable to instability of the 

dative clitic, which affected even the encoding of prototypical indirect objects. 

The population under study consisted of only proficient and regular users of 

a heritage language, with close participation in a speech community, but nevertheless 

on closer examination revealed a division between a group with fairly 

stable structures and one with drastically different patterns relatable to incompleteness. 

I would argue that it is important to carefully tease apart acquisition 

profiles when studying heritage populations. At the same time, “overhearers”, 

whose striking features can tell us about effects of reduced exposure, should be 

considered very relevant for heritage language research. And, as they become 

proficient participants in bilingual communities, for studying stability in scenario’s 

of language contact. 

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KATARZYNA JAWORSKA-BISKUP 

UNIVERSITY OF SZCZECIN 

English-Polish language contact in the translation 

of EU law 

ABSTRACT. The article addresses the issue of translating EU legislation with an emphasis 

placed on the difficulties English terminology may pose for a Polish translator. The examples 

collected from the Consolidated Versions of the Treaty on the European Union and the 

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union show that language contact in the 

translation process might be a source of many terminological inconsistencies and 

ambiguities. In addition, it can be observed that the Polish translations of EU documents 

become more and more infused with the features of the English language, which only 

supports the thesis of the rapid expansion of this language in the world. 

KEYWORDS. European Union, translation, globalisation, interference, equivalence, borrowings 


Considering the issue of language contact it is probably nowhere more apparent 

than in the EU, the organization that is entirely based on the principle of 

linguistic diversity according to which the languages of all Member States shall 

enjoy the equal status, the right vested in many legal instruments such as, for 

instance, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969. 

Pushing for a moment legal deliberations aside, one cannot escape the observation 

that a multitude of language versions of primary and secondary legislation, 

or to put it differently, the “encounter of languages in translation” triggers 

many linguistic phenomena that can be put under the umbrella term of 

language interference. Particularly, it is visible when comparing the original and 

translated documents. This is also the case in the Polish and English languages 

since Polish accession to the EU in 2004. 

2. The notion of English-Polish language contact 

It is an obvious fact that due to recent changes, such as globalization, the 

fall of communism in the east European countries and the introduction of democracy 

therein as well as hegemony of west culture, especially the American 

and British culture, the Polish language has undergone a considerable evolution 

visible in everyday communication. This phenomenon did not escape the attention 

of linguists who combine more and more data of new lexical items that are 


120 

Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup 

persistently encroaching on the Polish terrain. An extensive number of publications 

on English-Polish language contact have been produced, inter alia, by 

such authors as Jacek Fisiak (1969), Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1992, 1994), 

Marcin Zabawa (2008) who give many examples of loans and borrowings providing 

at the same time evidence that the Polish language is under constant 

transformation. Although the process of language change encompasses all language 

domains, the most flagrant examples are displayed in the realm of lexis. 

The process of lexical change concerns three phenomena: a lexical item that 

exists in the target language is given a new meaning or sense, a new lexical item 

is constructed to fill the gap in the lexicon of the target language, or simply 

through the borrowing of a lexical item from the source language (Mańczak- 

Wohlfeld 1992: 5). Following Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1992), the method of borrowing 

serves dual function; on the one hand, it enriches language by adding 

new elements to it, and on the other hand, it leads to its impoverishment, as 

certain mother tongue elements become less attractive and hence obsolete, 

which affects many present-day Polish words or expressions no longer used by 

the native speakers. 

According to Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1992: 5), there are two major sources of 

borrowings: first, the need to designate the newly formed concepts, primarily in 

the expanding fields such as law or business (e.g., company law or EU law) and 

second the popularity of certain cultures such as the English language culture. 

The very process of borrowing can be marked by two phases; at the initial phase 

a particular word is used by a bilingual speaker or a monolingual speaker, very 

often out of a sheer self-assurance and drive to upgrade one’s social standing, 

and at the final stage the word is steadily assimilated by other speakers who 

start using it naturally, or rather follow the common trend (Mańczak-Wohlfeld 

1992). In her research, Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1992, 1994) noted as many as 1600 

English borrowings in the Polish language, in a majority of cases nouns (about 

94 per cent). Many of such borrowings belong to law, such as, for example, 

copyright, franchising, holding, impeachment, to mention but a few. According 

to Fisiak (1969), the most prevalent are exotics – the words that refer to “the 

typical products of English culture, politics, and social structure” (Fisiak 1969: 

42). 

Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2000: 37) divides borrowings into 

several categories, such as loanwords (items directly assimilated by a target 

language), loan blends (items that share both a loan and a target language form) 

and loan-shifts (calque and semantic loan). The process of borrowing does not 

only concern semantics but is also more and more distinguishable on the level 

of syntax, which can be demonstrated by a preference to use attributive adjectival 

construction rather than postpositive one, nouns attributively and the adverb 

generalnie in the function of the discourse marker.

English-Polish language contact in the translation of EU law 121 

3. Language contact in translation 

As far as the origin of loan words is concerned, it is contested (cf. Zabawa 

2008a) that most loanwords invade the Polish language in the process of translation, 

unfortunately very often inappropriate or sloppy translation disregarding 

the stylistics of the Polish language. This is most visible within the translation 

of EU legislation where the provisions of law in their translated form become 

a part of domestic law. Unquestionably, the very process of translation is always 

burned by the presence of linguistic and cultural distance and a deviation of the 

terminological concordance. Eugene Nida (2001: 130) writes about three levels 

of relatedness, that is when languages and cultures are closely related, when 

languages are not related but cultures are closely related or parallel, and when 

both languages and cultures are not related. 

After Snell-Hornby (1995), a scale of translatability can be used as a point 

of reference. On this scale, there are languages that share conceptual congruence 

due to common historical roots, tradition, and culture to mention but a few. 

It has a special meaning when a comparison is conducted between the original 

text and the translated text: “the extent to which a text is translatable varies with 

the degree to which it is embedded in its own specific culture, also with the 

distance that separates the cultural background of source text and target audience 

in terms of time and place” (Snell-Hornby 1995: 41). 

According to Hanna Dierżanowska (1990), there are two major types of 

interference, namely, external and internal interference. Each of these types can 

further be subdivided into various categories. As far as external interference is 

concerned, its basic source is a polysemic character of lexicon. Homonyms, 

which are the words that sound the same or are spelled the same but have a different 

origin or meaning, constitute an immense barrier in the process of translation 

when two various languages are at stake. Dierżanowska (1990: 91–92) lists 

among others some examples of this phenomenon: winny – “vine” (dotyczący 

winorośli, wina) versus winny – “guilty” (the one who takes responsibility for 

a certain act), audycja – “broadcast” (audycja radiowa) versus przesłuchanie 

(audition); “die” – umierać (human beings) versus zdychać (animals). External 

interference is also represented by the so called false friends or faux-amis, to 

put it differently words of the same origin and form but of a different meaning, 

for example (Dierżanowska 1990: 93–94) “actual” – rzeczywisty versus aktualny; 

“eventual” – końcowy versus ewentualny; “lunatic” – obłąkany versus 

lunatyk; “trivial” – błahy, małoznaczący versus trywialny. Subsequently, Dierżanowska 

(1990: 95) mentions modified equivalents that she characterizes as 

the words that share the root and the meaning but have a different form, for 

instance, arbiter or arbitrator and dokumentalny or documentary, as well as 

diversified equivalents that occur when English equivalents to Polish words 

have different origin, such as analfabeta and “alphabet” and/or “illiterate”. Fi-

122 


nally, external interference embraces incongruent terms – the terms that are 

used in a different context in SL and TL. The example of this last category also 

provided by Dierżanowska (1990: 96) can be a word nekrolog that is wrongly 

translated as “obituary” instead of “death notice”, “funeral notice” or “in memorial”. 

To continue, internal interference encompasses morphological or semantic 

similarities between words, such as “near” and “nearly”, “direct” and “directly”, 

“hard” and “hardly”. 

In the light of the above, a translator always makes a decision as to what 

equivalent to choose in order to best convey the message. As Jiří Levý ascertains 

(2001), in an attempt to find the best lexical item a translator makes 

a number of choices being at the same time limited by such factors as style, 

context, connotative extension of meaning, all of which Levý describes as “selective 

instructions”, subjective or objective and linguistic material-bound: 

“translating is a decision process: a series of a certain number of consecutive 

situations – moves, as in a game – situations imposing on the translator the necessity 

of choosing among a certain (and very often exactly definable) number 

of alternatives” (Levý 2001: 148). The inappropriate choice of the translator 

may result in the so-called “otherness” or “strangeness” (obcość) – a term 

coined by Roman Lewicki (2000). In other words, a translated text is somehow 

linguistically (the choice of inappropriate equivalents) or culturally (different 

interpretation of the facts described in the translated text by a source and a target 

reader) distant. Otherness can also take the denotative and connotative form, 

the first being the case when the SL term refers to a different denotate in TL, 

and the second when the SL term conjures up different connotations than the TL 

term. 

Today, legal translation is perceived not as a mere process of transcoding 

but as a process of communication on a text level (Šarcevic 2000: 12–14). 

There exist three primary levels of difficulty when translating a given source 

text into its target text, namely the textual, the morpho-syntactic and the lexical 

level, the last of which seems to trigger most difficulties (Taylor 2006: 30 referring 

to Scarpa 2001). Thus, in plainest terms, bearing the rarely clear-cut semantic 

borderlines between words in mind, lexical total equivalence is always 

hard to achieve. One of the most prevailing dilemmas making a translator lose 

sleep is whether a text should be more “foreign” or “domestic”, in other words 

embedded in mother or foreign culture. Taylor (2006: 40) proposes the “Translator’s 

Creativity Cline” that reflects what strategies a translator should adopt 

when dealing with a particular text type. Taylor divides texts into four categories 

ranging from highly creative texts (basically scientific texts that have some 

literary value such as newspaper articles) to fairly non-creative texts (technical 

texts, such as instructions, manuals, medical abstract, rules and regulations that 

require maximum of standardization and can be fully assisted by technological


tools). According to this approach, legal texts belong to the group of texts that 

entail a relatively low level of creativity. The next point worth mentioning is 

that present day law texts are often times hybrid texts, that is they constitute a mixture 

of legal systems: “A legal text, be it a source or a target text in the translation 

process, can be rooted in a national legal system, but can also be rotted in 

a regional or international legal framework” (Sandrini 2006: 117). According to 

Peter Sandrini (2006: 117), law constitutes three major info-spheres such as 

local (national legal systems that are nation and culture bound), regional on 

international level (EU legislation) and global on transnational level (the UN 

legislation). 

A translator has a wide range of strategies at his or her disposal. Most 

scholars identify two major translation strategies: a direct translation and an 

oblique translation. A direct translation embraces three techniques (Munday 

2001; Kielar 1988; Varo and Hughes 2002; Hrehovčik 2006): borrowing, calque 

and literal translation. An oblique translation includes transposition, modulation, 

equivalence and adaptation. Apart from the techniques just mentioned, 

others list compensation, paraphrase, simplification, translator’s notes, and 

transliteration (Hrehovčik 2006: 46–48). 

4. Translating EU law – basic considerations 

As far as the classification of the sources of the EU law is concerned, it 

depends on the body that issues the law (the sources of law formed by Member 

States and the institutions of EU; that is unilateral and bilateral acts), the medium 

(written or spoken) and the legal status (binding acts such as regulations, 

directives, decisions or non-binding acts such as recommendations or opinions). 

Further, EU legislation may be divided into sui generis acts of no specific legal 

status (some are legally binding and some are not) such as resolutions, declarations, 

explanations, communications, reports, memoranda, schedules and “soft 

law” embracing non-binding law, in other words, the law that is formally not 

binding but of practical application. Generally, the sources of EU law fall into 

primary and secondary sources of law, the former being treaties, the acts issued 

by Council of the European Union, European Council and general rules of law 

and the latter being the acts and agreements issued by EU institutions or Member 

States. When it comes to primary sources of law, all treaties are classified 

into “founding treaties” and “accession treaties” (Biernat 2006) or into “founding 

treaties” (traktaty ustanawiające podstawę Unii), “revision treaties” (traktaty 

rewizyjne) and “accession treaties” (traktaty akcesyjne) (Barcz 2011). After 

the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon two treaties: the Treaty on European 

Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union of 2010 constitute 

the legal basis of the EU (cf. Barcz 2011).

124 


When constructing EU terminology in a new language one should remember 

that, it must stand in congruence with the already existing terminology, 

which means that EU terminology can neither exclude/contradict the target 

tongue terminology, nor replace it. When translating it is necessary to check 

whether a certain term exists in a target language or whether it was/is used in 

another legal system. All this aims at avoiding terminological collision. It boils 

down to the premise that a translator cannot show ignorance to the historically 

determined phraseology of the target language (Kierzkowska 2002). A translator 

should also be equipped with the knowledge of the legal system of one’s 

own country and the legal system of the country whose legislation is under 

translation, in simplest terms the knowledge of civil and common law culture. 

The real craft of the legal translation is, according to Jerzy Pieńkoś (2003), the 

ability to compare legal systems, which pertains to the comparative law knowledge. 

Nevertheless, in reference to the EU it is no longer certain whether one 

should talk about one legal system or maybe separate legal systems of Member 

States; two opposite standpoints in legal theory dominate, namely the view that 

EU law comprises distinct and coexistent legal systems and the view that there 

exists a single legal system (Viola 2007: 106–108). 

One of the priorities of multilingual translation is a concordance of parallel 

versions of one treaty. The disregard for congruence can spark problems with 

the application of the law provisions. Two notions are put forward such as concordance 

and harmonization. As stated above, concordance refers to all language 

versions and harmonization means that a terminology used in one text 

should be consistent within run-on sentences. Of course, absolute symmetry is 

not possible to achieve. The challenge of translating EU treaties is how to preserve 

the intended meaning congruent in all language versions together with the 

purity of one’s language. As Susan Šarcevic (2000) ascertains, the task becomes 

even more difficult with each new language added to the family of EU languages. 

From a translator’s point of view, it is important to mention the division 

of a treaty into restricted and non-restricted parts. The restricted parts contain 

technical vocabulary, whilst non-restricted or free ones do not deviate from the 

ordinary discourse. A certain creativity is allowed only in the non-restricted part 

(Šarcevic 2000: 224–226). 

5. The analysis of sample translations 

In the following section, the notion of language contact in the EU context is 

elaborated on in detail. Some examples taken from the treaty on European Union 

and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union will serve as an 

illustration. The goal of the study is not to evaluate translator’s skills but rather 

to exhibit what the manifestations of language contact are, particularly how


difficult it is to convey the same message expressed in a SL into the TL. Because 

the scope of the study is limited, no reference to other language versions 

is given, and the focus is mainly on the Polish language phraseology. Several 

dictionaries were analyzed such as Uniwersalny Słownik Języka Polskiego (Dubisz 

2003), Słownik Frazeologiczny Języka Polskiego (Skorupka 1974), Słownik 

Wyrazów Obcych (Tokarski 1980), Słownik Poprawnej Polszczyzny (Doroszewski 

1980), Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Angielsko-Polski 

Słownik Terminologii Prawniczej (Łozińska-Małkiewicz & Małkiewicz 2005), 

Słownik Terminologii Prawniczej i Ekonomicznej (Jaślan 2005), Słownik Prawniczy 

Polsko-Angielski (Polska Akademia Nauk 1986), Słownik Prawniczy Polsko-Angielski 

(Pieńkoś 2002), Euromowa. Słownik Unii Europejskiej (Misztal- 

Kania 2005). 

The most desired situation is the existence of a clear one-to-one correspondence 

between SL items and TL items labeled as a direct or exact equivalence, 

which as it was touched upon by many scholars is hard to arrive at. Very often 

terminological consistency is achieved by borrowing, which is documented by 

the examples such as “convergence of economies” – konwergencja gospodarki, 

“subsidies” – subsydia, “dumping” – dumping, “allocation of resources” – alokacja 

zasobów. These legal terms have gained public recognition and are commonly 

used by lawyers. In the process of borrowing, such lexical items underwent 

a slight transformation, especially in terms of spelling as in Polish konwergencja; 

subsydia or they were simply accepted without any changes as in 

dumping. Certain terms, due to a lack of common agreement of which equivalent 

is most faithful one, exist in both English and Polish form, for instance 

Barcz (2011: 275) uses the term zasada pre-empcji from “pre-emption principle” 

including in brackets other items such as zasada pierwszeństwa and doktryna 

zajętego pola. In addition, there are many phrases and terms formulated 

from their English equivalents and formally accepted as part and parcel of EU 

communication, for instance the names of “institutions” – instytucje and “bodies” 

– organy or the names of “principles” such as “the principle of conferral” – 

zasada przyznania kompetencji, “the principle of subsidiarity” – zasada pomocniczości 

/ subsydiarności, “the principle of proportionality” – zasada proporcionalności 

and “the principle of sincere cooperation” – zasada lojalnej współpracy. 

The same applies to many concepts that are difficult to translate such as 

for instance the phrase footbridge that in Polish law is used under the term procedura 

kładki, klazula pomostowa, klauzula przejścia, procedura dynamizująca 

that all stand for the procedure regulating the modification of the provisions 

stipulated in the treaty (cf. Barcz 2011: 309). Another example worth mentioning 

is the phrase monopole delegowane, the English equivalent of which is the 

phrase “monopolies delegated”. A special example is the phrase originating 

from the French language acquis communatuaire that refers to the legal heritage

126 


of the EU and that in the opinion of most scholars should not be translated into 

any language but simply left in its original version as its full and direct meaning 

is hard to convey in all languages. Nevertheless, in some Polish publications 

one can find the phrase dorobek wspólnotowy as the proposed equivalent. 

Very often new phrases or words that do not correspond to the Polish linguistic 

rules are coined, probably as a remedy to non-translatability of a certain 

phrase, or as some language purists would say the carelessness of the translator. 

In the treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the phrase “prudential 

supervision” – nadzór ostrożnościowy can be mentioned. 

According to the article 127.5, “The ESCB shall contribute to the smooth 

conduct of policies pursued by the competent authorities relating to the prudential 

supervision of credit institutions and the stability of the financial system”. In 

the Polish version, the phrase “prudential supervision” is translated as nadzoru 

ostrożnościowego nad instytucjami kredytowymi. Strikingly, the word ostrożnościowy 

is not listed in any of the Polish referential dictionaries; the only 

existent Polish word that matches the meaning of the English word “prudential” 

is ostrożny. To make matters even more complicated, the phrase normy prudencyjne 

from English “prudential norms” or wskaźnik prudencyjny from English 

“prudential ratio” are more and more common, especially in banking, finance 

and communication sectors, which is only one-step to nadzór prudencyjny. 

Which of the equivalents are better remains in the speculations of linguists? 

Another example worth quoting is the phrase to transpose translated into 

przetransponować. The sentence “no later than the date on which a directive or 

a decision must be transposed or implemented” (art. 153.3, Consolidated Versions 

of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) is translated as 

najpóźniej w dniu, w którym dyrektywa lub decyzja powinna być przetransponowana 

lub wykonana. According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary 

English, a definition of “transpose” means to “reverse, transfer, move or change 

something to a different place, environment or a different form”. In the Polish 

language, there exist two words transponować and przetransponować meaning 

respectively ‘przystosować, przystosować coś do innego użytku niż pierwotny 

lub planowany, przenieść, przenieść coś z jednej dziedziny do drugiej’ and 

‘nadać czemuś inną formę, postać, przenieść coś z jednej dziedziny do drugiej, 

dokonać transpozycji, przekształcić, przystosować: przetransponować romantyczną 

tragedię na musical, przetransponować obcojęzyczne treści utworu na 

język tłumaczenia, zdarzenia autentyczne przetransponowane na film fabularny’ 

(Uniwersalny Słownik Języka Polskiego). At a first glance, it seems that both 

words are synonymous. In the legal context, however, more common are such 

phrases as okres transpozycji, transpozycja dyrektywy, transponować do prawa 

krajowego, transpozycja i implementacja dyrektywy (in Barcz 2011; interestingly 

the word implementacja from “to implement” is used) rather than


przetransponować. Ewa Łozińska-Małkiewicz, Joanna Małkiewicz (2005) define 

the word “transpose” as przenieść do prawa krajowego, przeniesiony, “directive 

must be transposed” – dyrektywa winna zostać wprowadzona do prawa 

krajowego, “regulations transposing the directive into national law – przepisy 

transponujące dyrektywę do prawa wewnętrznego. Thus, best equivalents to the 

word “transpose” in the legal contexts are transponować or przenieść do prawa 

krajowego. 

The notion of faux-amis can be documented in many instances. The first 

example note consideration is the word arbitrary used in the phrase arbitrary 

discrimination in a sentence “The Commission shall, within six months of the 

notifications as referred to in paragraphs 4 and 5, approve or reject the national 

provisions involved after having verified whether or not they are a means of 

arbitrary discrimination or a disguised restriction on trade between Member 

States and whether or not they shall constitute an obstacle to the functioning of 

the internal market” (art. 114.6, Consolidated versions of the Treaty on the 

Functioning of the European Union). The word “arbitrary” refers to something 

that is unfounded, unfair or unjustified. In other words, “arbitrary discrimination” 

has no grounds and is done prematurely without any consultation: “decided 

or arranged without any reason or plan, often unfairly, e.g., arbitrary law, 

punishment – happening or decided by chance rather than a plan” (Longman 

Dictionary of Contemporary English). In the Polish language, there exists the 

same word arbitralny of Latin etymology that has a different meaning, the English 

equivalent of which shall rather be close to the word “dictatorial” or “despotic” 

in such collocations as “dictatorial decision” or “dictatorial emperor”. 

The Polish meaning of the word arbitralny is ‘niedopuszczający sprzeciwu – 

arbitralne decyzje, arbitralny ton, arbitralne rozstrzygnięcie; narzucający komuś 

swoje zdanie, apodyktyczny, nieznoszący sprzeciwu’ (Uniwersalny Słownik 

Języka Polskiego). The equivalent of the mentioned above phrase in this context 

can be samowolna dyskryminacja that would directly relate to the English 

meaning. The same translation to this term is suggested by Łozińska- 

Małkiewicz & Małkiewicz (2005). In Jaślan’ dictionary (2005) one can find 

more collocations with the word arbitrary such as “arbitrary act” – czyn samowolny, 

“arbitrary behavior” – samowola, “arbitrary rejection” – samowolne 

odrzucenie. 

The next example is taken from the opening lines of the Treaty on the Functioning 

of the European Union. In Article 1 the word “organizes” from a sentence 

“This Treaty organises the functioning of the Union and determines the 

areas of, delimitation of, and arrangements for exercising its competences” was 

replaced by the Polish organizuje funkcjonowanie Unii i określa dziedziny, 

granice i warunki wykonywania jej kompetencji”. Uniwersalny Słownik Języka 

Polskiego explains the meaning of the word organizować as ‘układać coś

128 


w pewną formę, podporządkowywać regułom, normom, wprowadzać do czegoś 

ład, organizację, urządzać, układać coś; organizować bal, wycieczkę, wyprawę, 

przedsiębiorstwo, spółkę’, whereas the English word “to organize” has a very 

extensive meaning, among many of its denotations there is the meaning ‘to 

regulate’ and ‘to codify’. In the context, most natural equivalent would be 

reguluje or określa. Other similar examples may include as well “to specify 

definitions” (art. 125.2, the Treaty on European Union) translated as sprecyzować 

definicje rather than określać definicje. 

More to the point, one can find the examples of phraseological problems, in 

a nutshell, the use of incorrect clusters of two words that cannot be combined 

together. Such examples include podjąć kroki and ponieść wydatki. Article 3 of 

the Declaration on Article 16 (9) of the Treaty on European Union Concerning 

the European Council Decision on the Exercise of the Presidency of the Council 

stipulates that “The Member States holding the Presidency shall take all necessary 

measures for the organization and smooth operation of the Council’s work 

with the assistance of the General Secretariat of the Council” that is translated 

as Państwa Członkowskie sprawujące prezydencję podejmują przy wsparciu 

Sekretariatu Generalnego Rady, wszelkie niezbędne kroki w celu zapewnienia 

organizacji i płynnego przebiegu prac Rady. The same mistake is in the Protocol 

(No 4) On the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and the 

European Central Bank, article 14.3 where the English phrase “take the necessary 

steps” in translated as podejmuje kroki niezbędne w celu. The correct 

phrase should be poczynić kroki or podjąć działania as suggested and exemplified 

by Hanna Jadacka (2006: 105–107). The phrase podejmować kroki is not 

correct. The same applies to ponieść wydatki, the phrase that breaks the Polish 

phraseology (Jadacka 2006; Słownik Poprawnej Polszczyzny); the only correct 

phrase is mieć wydatki (which is even emphasized by an exclamation mark in 

Słownik Poprawnej Polszczyzny). Nevertheless, the sentence “Operating expenditure 

to which the implementation of this Chapter gives rise shall also be 

charged to the Union budget”(art. 41, the Treaty on European Union) was translated 

into Wydatki administracyjne ponoszone przez instytucje w związku z wykonywaniem 

niniejszego rozdziału są pokrywane z budżetu Unii. 

Sometimes the phrase in the Polish language has a slightly different connotation, 

such as in the example: “The Commission shall monitor the development 

of the budgetary situation and of the stock of government debt in the Member 

States with a view to identifying gross errors” (art. 126.2, the Treaty on the 

European Union) where gross errors is translated as oczywiste błędy. The 

meaning of the English word gross errors is translated as poważne błędy or 

rażące uchybienia (Łozińska-Małkiewicz & Małkiewicz 2005) rather than apparent 

mistakes.


One of the vague things is the polysemic nature of most words (both in 

English and Polish), which may trigger problems and can be nicely presented by 

the translation of the word open into otwarty in a phrase “decisions shall be 

taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen” (art. 10.3, the Treaty 

on the European Union) into decyzje są podejmowane w sposób jak najbardziej 

otwarty i zbliżony do obywatela. In the Polish language, there are two words 

that are closely related, that is otwarty and jawny, the former more general and 

the second strictly bound with the legal context, such as in the examples of 

jawne obrady or jawne głosowanie. In addition, in Polish there exists a phrase 

jawność podejmowania decyzji. Quoting after Uniwersalny Słownik Języka Polskiego, 

otwarty means ‘jawny, nieukrywany, oczywisty, wyraźny; jawny – dokonywany 

lub odbywający się w sposób dla wszystkich widoczny; powszechnie 

znany, jawne głosowanie, obrady”. An interesting example is also the phrase 

final decision in a sentence “The Member State concerned shall not put its proposed 

measures into effect until this procedure has resulted in a final decision” 

(art. 108.3) that in the Polish version is rendered as decyzja końcowa. When 

referring to the dictionaries the phrase final decision is translated as decyzja 

ostateczna rather than końcowa in Łozińska-Małkiewicz & Małkiewicz (2005) 

and in Słownik Prawniczy Polsko-Angielski (1986), but both as decyzja końcowa 

in Jaślan (2005), Pieńkoś (2002) and Misztal-Kania (2004). In Uniwersalny 

Słownik Języka Polskiego, among the collocations possible with the word 

decyzja there is the following list: ‘decyzja nagła, natychmiastowa, nieodwołalna, 

ostateczna, pochopna, stanowcza, szybka’, the word końcowy denotes 

a spatial meaning ‘znajdujący się na końcu czegoś, kończący coś, ostatni’, for 

example ‘końcowy egzamin, końcowy epizod filmu, końcowy przystanek autobusu, 

końcowe kartki’ and/or ‘uwagi końcowe’. Nevertheless, it is possible to 

find some subtle differences in the meaning of both phrases, decyzja ostateczna 

(also definitive decision) is the decision than cannot be revoked and it bears 

more consequences, while decyzja końcowa may denote the decision reached at 

the end of a meeting etc. Therefore, these words cannot be confused and used 

interchangeably. 

A word that seems to be incorporated more and more into the Polish language 

when talking about education (especially in job offers) is the word instruktor 

in the context of vocational training that sometimes replaces other 

words such as nauczyciel, nauczyciel zawodu, nauczyciel kształcenia zawodowego, 

nauczyciel praktycznej nauki zawodu. In many sources, one can find 

such phrases as instruktor praktycznej nauki zawodu (the term coined in legal 

acts issued by the Polish Ministry of Education) nauczyciel zawodu – instruktor. 

According to Uniwersalny Słownik Języka Polskiego, intruktor refers to ‘osoba 

instruująca kogoś, ucząca jakiś prawideł, udzielająca wskazówek objaśnień; 

instructor narciarski, pływacki etc.’; in most contexts this word refers to train-

130 


ings, courses, sport and military (Słownik Wyrazów Obcych), and is always used 

in a phrase instructor czegoś (Słownik Poprawnej Polszczyzny). The English 

word “instructor” is “a person who teaches something”, the Polish equivalent of 

which is the word instruktor, nauczyciel, wykładowca. In the Treaty on the 

Functioning of the European Union, in the article 166 considering vocational 

training the phrase “mobility of instructors and trainees” was translated as mobilności 

instruktorów i kształcących się. The same phenomenon takes place in 

English; a good example from the Treaty on the Functioning of the European 

Union is the phrase used in the protocol section, article 20 “point of law” in 

a sentence “Where it considers that the case raises no new point of law, the 

Court may decide, after hearing the Advocate-General, that the case shall be 

determined without a submission from the Advocate-General”. In the Polish 

version, it is translated as nowe zagadnienie prawne. However, the phrase can 

also be translated as kwestia prawna (Słownik Prawniczy Polsko-Angielski 

1986, Pieńkoś 2002, Łozińska-Małkiewicz & Małkiewicz 2005). Kwestia 

prawna and synonymous zagadnienie prawne in the dictionaries mentioned is 

also translated as “issue of law”, “legal issue”, “question of law”, “legal question”. 

It is very confusing with another term, pytanie prawne that stands for the 

question that basic goal is to get the answer pertaining to some legal issue, it is 

the question about the law rather than the fact (Wilbrandt-Gotowicz 2010: 23–24). 

Wilbrandt-Gotowicz states in her monograph that the meaning of this term is 

very often problematic and not well specified. In the dictionaries, the term pytanie 

prawne is translated as question on a point of law (Pieńkoś 2002; Słownik 

Prawniczy Polsko-Angielski 1986) and as “juridicial question” in Pieńkoś (2002). 

Another tendency more and more visible in English-Polish language contact 

is the overuse of certain English expressions that can be replaced by other lexical 

items, not necessarily calqued from English. Even so, many common language 

users and translators prefer to transmit the English word to the Polish 

language. For instance, the words specific or specyficzny in a phrase “a problem 

specific to that Member State” – “specyficzny problem tego Państwa” (art. 

114.5, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), “adopt specific 

measures” – przyjmuje specyficzne środki” (art. 349, the Treaty on the Functioning 

of the European Union), “specific provisions” – specyficznych postanowień 

(art. 204, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). The word 

“specific” can be translated as wlaściwy dla or określony rather than specyficzny 

that denotes something unusual, peculiar for a certain thing as in such examples 

like specyficzna atmosfera, specyficzny smak, specyficzny character.


6. Final remarks 

Looking at the selected examples, it can be concluded that the Polish language 

is becoming more and more strewn with English-based lexicology. This 

phenomenon comes as no surprise taking into account the ongoing process of 

globalization and popularization of English as a lingua franca of the word. Legal 

communication on a European level is no exception to the global rule. Legal 

texts, especially the EU legislation, are most susceptible to such influence 

where many concepts are simply difficult to convey in various languages. It is 

very interesting what the future may hold. Judging by the fast pace of linguistic 

changes it may be predicted that the direction is more towards the foreignization 

of Polish texts. 

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and the law of European Union]. Warszawa: Lexis Nexis. 

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RHIDIAN JONES 

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LUBLIN 

Welsh language – survival against the odds 

ABSTRACT. Welsh (Cymraeg) is an old Celtic language that has tenaciously survived into 

the 21st century to the extent that the decline in the number of its speakers has been halted 

and the demand for Welsh-medium education for children in Wales is rising. Welsh has lived 

cheek by jowl with English for centuries and the relationship between both languages has not 

always been easy or equal, however Wales today seems to be more at ease with the idea of 

a bilingual future, particularly as it attains more political autonomy. 

Welsh remains a minority language in Wales and the presentation will look at some of 

the challenges that currently face it, in particular status, fluency, language transferral in the 

home, migration, and maintaining the heartlands. The pressures upon the other Celtic 

languages have been almost identical but for reasons that will be addressed, Welsh has 

managed to survive as a language of daily life to a greater extent than the other Celtic 

tongues. 

The presenter is himself a native Welsh speaker who will draw upon his personal 

experience of working in the field of the language. 

KEYWORDS. Welsh, Wales, Celtic, Britain, minority language 


I have described the survival of Welsh as a living language as being “against 

the odds” due to Wales’s historical exposure to the English language and culture. 

Such a proximity to England and the language that it has exported around 

the world would not be regarded as conducive to the survival of a minority 

tongue, however Welsh has survived and it is still the main language of daily 

life in some parts of Wales. 

Welsh (Cymraeg) is a minority language and approximately 20% of the 

inhabitants of Wales – 600,000 people – speak it and this percentage has steadied 

after a constant decline throughout the 20th century. The most recent population 

Census which, among other things, asks people in Wales to note their 

knowledge of Welsh, was held in 2011 and we await the publication of the 

numbers and percentages of Welsh speakers that were registered. 

Before describing the current state of Welsh, it is worth looking at the historical 

background of the language that has shaped its current state. 


136 

Rhidian Jones 

2. Knowledge about the past and current state of Welsh 

2.1. Historical background 

The representative knowledge about the history of the inhabitants of Wales 

and their language is obtainable from Geraint Huw Jenkins (2007), Siôn T. Jobbins 

(2011). To sum up, we can state that Welsh Welsh (Cymraeg) developed 

from the Brythonic language that was spoken throughout Britain before the 

Anglo-Saxons began to settle in the east of the island in the 5th century. It is 

a Celtic language that is closely related to the other Brythonic tongues – Cornish 

and Breton – and it is a linguistic cousin of Irish Gaelic. 

Welsh was to enjoy a high status in the Middle Ages when it was the language 

of the courts of the native princes, the language of law, and was the medium 

for poetry and story-telling that were such established parts of the culture 

of Wales. The oldest surviving poem in Welsh comes from the early 7th century. 

In 1536 Wales was incorporated into England by a Law that became known 

as the Act of Union, and although the Act stated the desire to “extirpe alle and 

singular the sinister usages and customs of Wales” (Jobbins 2011: 87), that did 

not come about, nor was it feasible. Wales was almost entirely Welsh-speaking 

and the advent of a Welsh printing press gave added sustenance to the language 

in the 16th century. In 1588 the Bible in its entirety was translated into Welsh in 

order to convert the people to the new Protestantism in their own language, and 

so the Welsh people had the Bible in the vernacular at a relatively early date, 

which partly explains the language’s later robustness. Much like the influence 

of the 1611 King James Bible on the English language, the 1588 Welsh Bible 

standardized the written language and gave it a solid literary base. Welsh became 

the language of religion in Wales and the people later became literate in it 

due to the Sunday schools and circulating schools of the 18th century. 

The industrial revolution in the 19th century changed many parts of Wales, 

in particular the coal-rich south. Industry attracted thousands of incomers to 

south Wales, not only from the rural west and north of Wales but also from 

England and Ireland. Many incomers from outside Wales were assimilated and 

learnt Welsh, but by the turn of the 20th century the pressure on the language 

became too great and there was a gradual shift to English throughout populous 

south Wales. Welsh ceased to be transferred in the home, a fact that was demonstrated 

in the family of the writer from the Rhondda, Gwyn Thomas, who 

said of his upbringing in the 1920s that “the death of Welsh ran through our 

family of 12 children like a geological fault” (Jenkins 2001: 62). The eldest six 

children spoke Welsh, the youngest six did not. 

A world authority on economy and migration, Brinley Thomas (1959), argued 

that the industrial revolution had been a blessing to the language because

Welsh language – survival against the odds 137 

Welsh people did not have to emigrate to seek work – as the Irish did – rather 

they could migrate to another part of Wales. Thus the country kept its Welsh 

speakers, although eventually many of their descendants in south Wales were to 

switch to English. The transferal and status of Welsh was not helped by the 

absence of Welsh teaching in schools in the first half of the 20th century. 

Table 1. Inhabitants of Wales who stated they could speak Welsh in the population censuses, 

in percentage (statistics courtesy of the Welsh Language Board) 

Year 

Welsh-speaking 

1901 50% (15% only Welsh) 

1921 37% 

1951 29% 

1971 21% 

1981 19% 

1991 19% 

2001 21% 

The 1960s were a time of cultural and political change in many countries 

and Wales was no different, and the changes had an effect on the fortunes of the 

Welsh language. Young Welsh people became politicized and began campaigning 

for official recognition for the language – on road-signs, in courts, on public 

documents, and in education. The campaigns were very effective and were to 

lead to an arrest in the decline of the language and better provision of Welshmedium 

education for children. 

In 1993 a Language Act made it obligatory for public bodies, such as local 

authorities and government agencies, to provide a service in Welsh and English. 

In this period Welsh became more visible on signs and was more audible in 

media, such as BBC Radio Cymru and the Welsh-language television channel 

S4C, established in 1982. Welsh’s status had grown and so had the acceptance 

of bilingualism in Wales. 

As for the 2011 Census, we await the results. I predict a slight increase of 

1 or 2 percentage points in the percentage of people who can speak the language, 

based on the fact that 1/3 of children attend Welsh-medium schools. 

A detailed survey commissioned in 2004 by a Welsh Government-sponsored 

body, the Welsh Language Board, indicated that the number of Welsh speakers 

was slightly higher than was registered by the Census (Use of Welsh Survey 2006: 

46). On face level the current state of the language therefore appears healthy; 

however, there are worrying issues which I will outline below. 

2.2. Welsh-speaking communities 

The traditional heartlands of the language, where a majority of inhabitants 

speak it as their first language, have been in gradual retreat for over a century

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Rhidian Jones 

and that retreat continues today. Below are two maps of Wales based on the 

Census results of 1991 and 2001. In the dark-colored areas over 70% of inhabitants 

were noted as Welsh-speaking and the decline in the size and number of 

these communities over the 10 years is evident. The communities where Welsh 

is the natural medium of daily life, in the north and west of Wales, are being 

eroded, and the 2011 Census is likely to report the disappearance of any areas in 

the south that are more than 70% Welsh-speaking. 

There are various reasons for this process. We live in a mobile world and 

many young Welsh speakers leave their native areas to study or to find work. 

Wales’s Gross Domestic Product is lower than in other parts of the UK, and in 

south and west Wales it is 71% of the UK average (BBC News, 25 February 

2011). Such an economic situation does not help in arresting the brain-drain out 

of the Welsh-speaking heartlands, and a statistician for the Welsh Language 

Board has estimated that there are 110 thousand Welsh speakers in England 

alone (Jones 2007: 10). 

An equally significant factor is in-migration, especially from England. The 

Welsh-speaking communities have stayed Welsh-speaking largely because of 

their isolation, and that isolation is now what is drawing people in – green hills, 

relatively cheap property, and a low crime rate. For each year between 1981 and 

2005 Wales experienced a net inflow of migrants from the rest of the UK (National 

Statistics report 2006: 40) and this was particularly pronounced in areas 

such as Ceredigion and Conwy that have traditionally been strongholds of 

Welsh. These in-migrants were mainly from older age brackets, while those 

who left Wales tended to be younger. 

There is no necessity or compulsion for incomers to learn Welsh since the 

bilingual nature of the area means they can use English only. Thus, the English 

language invades domains where Welsh was the main language, for example in 

the yard of the local school or in the pub, and poses a grave threat to the future 

of Welsh locally. 

Professors John Aitchison and Harold Carter (1994) encapsulated the effects 

of immigration on the Welsh heartlands in their study of the geography of 

the language: 

Cultural and linguistic continuity clearly depends on the relation between the strength of the 

host population and numbers of incomers. There is a level where immigrants can be 

integrated, and indeed fall under pressure to integrate, and where they can add vitality to a 

community. But there is also a level where, because of the relatively high numbers, 

absorption does not take place, nor is it seen as necessary. There is a ‘tipping point’ where 

the domains of language use become restricted, the supporting cultural environment becomes 

attenuated and Anglicization intensifies (Aitchison and Carter 1994: 77–78).


Figure 1. Areas where 70% or over spoke Welsh. 1991 (left) and 2001 (Maps reproduced 

with the permission of the Welsh Language Board) 

The waning of the heartlands is worrying for Welsh because the language is 

losing geographical areas where it can be said to be a majority tongue, where 

one may confidently approach a stranger and initiate the conversation in Welsh. 

The symbolic worth of such areas to a minority language like Welsh is high and 

their loss would have a negative effect on the language throughout Wales. 

Without the geographical heartlands Welsh would lose its association with territory 

and would rather become a network language, as is already the case in the 

east of Wales and in cities such as Cardiff and Swansea. The Welsh-speaking 

network in these cities is nourished by people from the traditional heartlands 

who move there to work and study, hence if the heartlands were to become

140 

Rhidian Jones 

more anglicized the language would lose a rich repository of fluent and natural 

speakers, not to mention the loss of domains. 

Wales does not have demarcated communities where the language is officially 

maintained, similar to the Gaeltachtaí in Ireland, and there is little political 

support for such a policy in Wales. However, in local authority areas in the 

north and west, Welsh is the main medium of education in primary schools and 

Welsh is given precedence on road signs and place names which has the semantic 

effect of emphasizing the Welshness of the areas. 

2.3. Fluency 

The numbers of Welsh speakers increased by 74 thousand between 1991 

and 2001 according to the Census results, and the 2011 results will in all likelihood 

indicate another slight increase due to the growth of Welsh language education 

for children in the last 10 years. However, the ability to speak Welsh 

fluently and naturally seems to have decreased. 

An extensive survey by the Welsh Language Board, entitled 2004 Welsh 

Language Use Survey (2006), found that only 57% of Welsh speakers considered 

themselves fluent in the language, while the corresponding percentage in 

1992 was 61%. Worryingly, in the age group 3–15 only 44% of Welsh speakers 

were regarded as fluent in comparison with 72% of speakers over 65. It is relevant 

to note that 73% of Welsh speakers aged 3–15 learnt Welsh at school 

rather than in the home, which highlights the importance of education in sustaining 

Welsh as a living language (2004 Welsh Language Use Survey 2006: 23). 

However, many children do not use it outside the classroom and are not inclined, 

or lack the confidence, to use it outside the domain of the school, and 

this has an effect on fluency in this age group. 

Language transferal within the home is a cause of concern which influences 

fluency among children and young people. Among Welsh-speaking children 

whose mother was the only parent who spoke Welsh, the survey found that 71% 

learnt Welsh at home and the remainder learnt it at school. Among speakers 

whose father was the only parent who spoke Welsh, less than half had learnt 

Welsh at home (2004 Welsh Language Use Survey 2006: 23). 

To summarize, the negative aspects, the precarious state of naturally Welshspeaking 

communities, and the fluency of young Welsh-speakers are issues of 

concern to the future and vitality of Welsh. In consequence, I will mention 

briefly the reasons to be more positive about the future of Welsh.


3. The future situation of Welsh and its speakers 

3.1. Status 

In 2010 the National Assembly of Wales voted to make Welsh an official 

language in Wales, along with English. Such official recognition may not be 

enough on its own, as the situation of Irish demonstrates, but it is a significant 

symbolic gesture and is indicative of the general goodwill that exists towards 

the language within Wales. In 2012 the National Assembly of Wales will appoint 

a Language Commissioner whose role will be to promote and facilitate the 

use of Welsh, with “strong enforcement powers to protect the rights of Welsh 

speakers to access services through the medium of Welsh.” (Welsh Government 

website 2011) 

3.2. Education 

1/3 of school pupils in Wales receive their education through the medium of 

Welsh, and the demand for Welsh-medium education continues to grow. 

The provision of Welsh-medium teaching in the higher education sector is 

not extensive and this paucity is being addressed by the recently-established 

Coleg Ffederal Cymraeg (Welsh Federal College). 

3.3. Workplace 

Bilingualism is regarded as an asset and many job advertisements state that 

the ability to use Welsh would be an advantage, particularly in the public sector. 

Research on the 2001 Census results have shown that Welsh-speakers earn 

slightly more than non-Welsh-speakers. Businesses also make more visual use 

of the language than was the case 20 years ago, and most supermarkets in Wales 

have bilingual signs above the aisles. 

3.4. Technology 

Welsh is increasingly visible on the internet. On Facebook there are over 

300 Welsh-medium groups, and on Twitter there are almost 3000 users who 

regularly tweet in Welsh. According to the website IndigenousTweets.com 

Welsh is the third most-tweeted minority language after Haitian Creole and 

Basque. 

Websites available in Welsh include Google, Mozilla Firefox, Facebook, 

and the BBC and software include Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and 

OpenOffice. The global availability of Welsh media via the net and the added 

possibility of learning the language on-line complement the furthering of Welsh 

as a living language.

142 

Rhidian Jones 

4. Conclusion 

Welsh’s future looks brighter today than 50 years ago due to its higher 

status in Welsh society, wide political support, and its prominence in schools. 

However there are signs it could cease to be the language of the majority in its 

traditional heartlands during this century and will become a language spoken by 

a network of fellow Welsh-speakers, as is the case today in more anglicised 

parts of Wales. 

A leading Welsh historian, Geraint H. Jenkins, who describes himself as 

a “pessimistic realist”, is not hopeful about the long-term future of the language. 

In 2001 he wrote: “Welsh’s extinction is not imminent. It will not occur as 

a sudden apocalyptic event – more a case of a tortuous death by a thousand cuts 

– but its demise is assured (Jenkins 2001: 66). 

I reluctantly agree with his pessimism; however pessimism regarding the 

fate of the Welsh language is nothing new and yet the language is still with us, 

or rather the Welsh people refuse to allow it to die. The language is a vital part 

of the national identity of Wales, and as long as a feeling of being Welsh exists 

then I predict that the language will also live. 

References 

2004 Welsh Language Use Survey 2006: Cardiff: Welsh Language Board. 

Aitchison, John, Harold Carter 1994: A Geography of the Welsh Language 1961–1991. Cardiff: 

University of Wales Press. 

Jenkins, Geraint H(uw) 2007: A Concise History of Wales. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: 

Cambridge University Press (Paperback Series: Cambridge Concise Histories). 

Jenkins, Geraint H. 2001: Terminal Decline: The Welsh language in the twentieth century, North 

American Journal of Welsh Studies (North American Association for the Study of Welsh 

Culture and History) 1 (2), 59–67. 

Jobbins, Siôn T. 2011: The Phenomenon of Welshness. Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch. 

Jones, Hywel 2007: Estimation of the Number of Welsh Speakers in England. Cardiff: Welsh 

Language Board. 

Thomas, Brinley 1959: Wales and the Atlantic Economy. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 

6, 181–192. 

Wales’s Population: A Demographic Overview 1971–2005 2006: Cardiff: Welsh Assembly 

Government.

RICHARD L. LANIGAN 

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICOLOGY INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Familiar frustration: The Japanese encounter with 

Navajo (Diné) “code talkers” in World War II 

ABSTRACT. After the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii, the United States 

declared war on the Empire of Japan as part of World War II. The War in the Pacific 

consisted largely of combat at sea and the systematic invasion of Pacific islands. The combat 

forces on both side of the conflict consisted largely of marines, i.e., sea borne ground 

soldiers. As in any war situation, communication is a vital element of logistics and is 

naturally susceptible to ease dropping by enemy soldiers who speak their opponent’s 

language. While bilingual English-Japanese soldiers were available on both sides, the U.S. 

Marine Corps had the innovative idea of using a third language to confuse the Japanese. This 

idea was plausible because of the existence of the Native American ethnic group of the 

Southwestern United States called Diné, which means simply “human” or “the people”. The 

more common usage is Navajo, the name given by the invading Spanish in the 17th century. 

Most Navajo’s are bilingual in American English, many are trilingual in Spanish. The men of 

this tribe were recruited by the U.S. Marine Signal Corps to develop a code in the Navajo 

language to use on radio-telephones in combat. This is a story of “familiarity” because 

Navajo is a tonal language very close in phonology to Japanese, yet utterly incomprehensible, 

“frustrating” in syntax and semantics to the Japanese ear. This is the first level of the code. 

The second level consisted of using nouns and verbs used to describe Nature as substitutes 

for words used to describe soldiers’ ranks, equipment, and relationships. Thus, even 

a Japanese who spoke Navajo (there were none!) would not understand the message. 

KEYWORDS. U.S. Marine Signal Corps, code talkers, Japanese, Navajo, tonal languages 

Introduction 

Shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor at Hawaii, the 

United States declared war on the Empire of Japan as part of World War II. The 

so-called “War in the Pacific” consisted largely of combat at sea and the systematic 

invasion of Pacific islands. Ultimately, this “theater of the war” was 

forever marked by the horrific decision to drop an Atomic Bomb on the Japanese 

homeland to end the conflict in the Pacific. 1 The combat forces on both 

sides of the conflict consisted largely of marines, i.e., sea borne ground soldiers. 

As in any war situation, communication is a vital element of logistics and is 

naturally susceptible to eaves dropping (listening in) by enemy soldiers who 

1 

Ironically, the bomb was largely developed at Los Alamos Laboratories, Taos City, New 

Mexico not far from the Diné homeland. 


144 

Richard L. Lanigan 

speak their opponent’s language. In short, my goal in this paper is to describe 

this little known unique event of languages in contact: The Navajo code talkers. 

While bilingual English-Japanese soldiers were available on both sides during 

WWII, the U.S. Marine Corps had the innovative idea of using a third language 

to confuse the Japanese. This idea was plausible because of the existence 

of the Native American ethnic group of the Southwestern United States called 

Diné, which means simply the “People” or “Human”(Kluckhohn 1974). The 

more common usage (because of history) is Navajo, the name given by the invading 

Spanish in the 17th century. Most Navajo’s are bilingual in American 

English, many are trilingual in Spanish. The men of this tribe were recruited by 

the U.S. Marine Signal Corps to develop a code in the Navajo language to use 

on radio-telephones in combat. This is a story of “familiarity” because Navajo is 

a tonal language very close in phonology to Japanese, yet utterly incomprehensible, 

“frustrating” in syntax and semantics to the Japanese ear. This is the first 

level of the code. The second level consisted of using Navajo nouns and verbs 

used to describe Nature as substitutes for words in American English used to 

describe soldiers’ ranks, equipment, actions, and relationships, along with 

names of the countries in the Allied Army. 

Thus, even a Japanese who spoke Navajo, there were none! (cf. Davis 2000) 

would not understand the message because of the extreme contrast with cultural 

referents, especially, nature and its objects. The “view of nature” that one has in 

the American Southwest could not be in greater contrast to the cultural frame of 

Nature familiar to any Japanese. An additional “familiarity” factor that leads to 

intensified frustration is the fact that both the Diné and Japanese are classified 

as group or sociocentric cultures where language is in the service of group 

perception and affiliation, as opposed to individual expression and reflection (an 

egocentric culture characteristic) in English. 

1. The cultural history of the people 

The Navajo or Diné are justifiably called simply the “People” because they 

originated in pre-history and have evolved as a group culture by contact with 

many other groups through time. This story is far to complex to recount here, 

but let me note that a comprehensive history will be found in two primary 

works, The Navajo by Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton (1974) and 

more recently Diné: A History of the Navajos by Peter Iverson (2002). The history 

begins with the Anasazi (“the ancient ones”) who occupied Canyon de 

Chilly in the “Four Corners” area (Figure 1, map site near Chinle) from 100 

BCE to 700 CE. The civilization reached its height at Publeo Bonito (Figures 

2 and 3; officially the Chaco Culture Natonal Historical Park) from 828 to 1126 

CE (Figure 1, map site near Farmington). Although the “Spanish Period” of the

The Japanese encounter with Navajo (Diné) “code talkers” in World War II 145 

Navajo is usually listed as 1626–1848 [the first Spanish document to describe 

the Navajo culture was written in 1626], the reality is that Don Juan de Oñate 

encountered the Navajo in 1597 and officially declared the whole region to be 

a province of Spain on 30 April 1598 under the name Santa Fé de Nuevo Mexico. 

Figure 1. Map of the Navajo and Hopi nations (USA) 

Oñate is a name remembered to this day because he presided over the first 

genocide of a Native American people. The Navajo at Acoma Pueblo (Figure 1, 

map site near Farmington) refused to give their winter food to Oñate’s soldiers 

and 13 Spaniards were killed. Oñate retaliated killing 800 Navajo in one day 

and taking the remaining 500 women and children into slavery. The “American 

Period” is dated from 1846 to the present day. This history is no better. As 

a side event to the American Civil War and the Mexican-American War (1846– 

1848), the “Indian War” against the mainly Navajo and Chirichaua Apaches 

was lead by Colonel Kit Carson who in June 1863 was ordered to systematically 

attack and destroy the “Indian settlements” in retaliation for their raids on white 

settlers. On 6 March 1864, the surviving 8000 Native Americans began the

146 


“Long Walk” to imprisonment at Fort Sumner, 180 miles southeast of Santa Fé. 

Years of malnutrition, disease, and the introduction of alcoholic drink led to the 

decline of the people (Scudder 1982). Children were removed from their family 

and sent to reservation boarding schools and forbidden to speak Navajo or visit 

their parents, thus destroying the extended family structure. The Navajo still use 

the name “Fort Sumner” to name their second genocide by White people. On 12 

August 1868, a treaty with the United States federal government created the 

Navajo Nation (Dinehtah) and over time became the land area of 24 500 square 

miles (64 000 square kilometers) shown in Figure 1. The modern history of the 

Navajo is better, largely due to the discovery of one of the world’s largest uranium 

ore deposits and equally large reserves of natural gas and oil on their land 

(originally given to them because it was perceived to be “worthless”). 

1.1. Communicological methodology 

My approach to the study of the Navajo code talkers is to use what Michel 

Foucault (1980: 144) calls the “toolkit” approach to discourse analysis: “The 

notion of theory as a toolkit means: (i) The theory to be constructed is not 

a system but an instrument, a logic of the specificity of power relations and the 

struggles around them; (ii) That this investigation can only be carried out step 

by step on the basis of reflection (which will necessarily be historical in some of 

its aspects) on given situations.” 

Figure 2. Discourse model


As we have just reviewed, the history of the Navajo and their language use 

is part of a complex power struggle for cultural identity heavily associated with 

their experience of “language contact” marked by the names The Long Walk 

and Fort Sumner. Imbedded in my analysis is a specific discourse model that is 

detailed in previous work (Lanigan 1988, 1992, 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b), but 

for present purposes, we may look briefly at Figures 2 and 3. For linguists, I should 

note that I tend to follow Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday’s approach to 

discourse analysis (1999: 415; see “scale and category grammar” and “systemic 

grammar” in Malmkjaer 1991: 384–388, 447–452). 

Figure 3. Communicology discourse model 

Using the discourse theories of Roman Jakobson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 

and Michel Foucault (discussed in Lanigan 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996a, 1997, 

2000, 2008), we will be able illustrate the hierarchies of discursive communication 

that are at work in the code developed by the Navajo code talkers. We shall 

come to this analysis momentarily, but first we need to understand some aspects 

of the sociocentric group culture that defines the Navajo people (Lanigan 1995, 

2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b).

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1.2. Sociocentric group culture 

Table 1. Comparison of egocentric and sociocentric cultures 

As illustrated in Table 1, 

there is a direct contrast between 

egocentric and sociocentric 

cultures. The main 

point to be made is that White 

American culture is egocentric, 

while the Navajo and 

Spanish cultures are sociocentric. 

The Navajo experience 

involves the language and 

practice contact of all three 

cultural orientations. In Table 

1, you need to simply substitute 

the name “Navajo” for 

“P. R. China” inasmuch as 

both are examples of the sociocentric 

orientation to interpersonal 

encounter. 

1.3. The culture of the Diné 

As one may read in one of 

the articles collected and edited 

by Robert Winston and 

Don Wilson “The Navajo 

people are divided into 64 

clans (k’éí), and members of 

trace their descent through the 

maternal line. Marriage between 

fellow clan members is 

forbidden” (2006: 361). 

In 1973, the Japanese photographer 

Kenji Kawano (1990) 

came to the Navajo Nation to make a photographic record of willing code talkers 

representing every clan. His book lists the names of each clan (in Navajo and 

English) and contains biographical photographs of the living code talkers who


have acknowledged themselves as such. The book also has many associated 

wartime photographs. 

Part of the culture conflict with the Anglo and Spanish invaders is this fact 

that “property rights” belong to the Mother of the family and Clan property is 

hierarchical according to who is the mother of a mother. In consequence, males 

have no property rights and, therefore, have a cosmological view of Nature in 

which anything that is “found” is “community property” and may be taken and 

used until no longer needed where upon the item is simply discarded. There is 

the obvious fundamental conflict with the derived European idea of “personal 

property rights” where land is fenced, “owned”, possessed, and upon death is 

passed from one male owner to his eldest son. 

The Navajo clan system is rather precise and accounts for the way in which 

the polysemy of the name Diné is often confusing because linguistic markers 

designate precise interpersonal relationships (just like Japanese honorifics!). 

The Navajo descent system includes six main categories: (1) mother’s clan; 

(2) father’s clan; (3) born for mother’s clan; (4) born for father’s clan; (5) clan 

for which mother is born; (6) clan for which father is born. A child becomes a 

member of his mother’s clan, for it is that clan which gives him birth. Although 

children are only given birth by their mother’s clan, they are said to be born for 

their father’s clan. The “born for” concept further relates a Navajo to those who 

are born for his clan and to those who are born for his father’s clan. One is also 

related to the clans for which his mother and father are born. The feature of 

giving birth or “born of” establishes the ego’s primary descent identity, while 

the “born for” concept establishes five additional categories of k’éí to which the 

ego is related (Witherspoon 1977: 95–96). 

With regard to the Navajo sociocentric group culture, we need to note the 

way in which it has been historically reinforced by contact with other group 

cultures. As a consequence of the frequent attacks upon, and periodic destruction 

of, the Pueblos, it was common practice for the Pueblo people to take refuge 

with the largely nomadic Navajo people, thus leading to an integration of 

the two native cultures giving the Navajo the emerging flexibility to be both 

nomadic (sheep herding introduced by the Spanish; cattle herding introduced by 

the Anglos) and place (farming) communities. 

Navajo families live in a “house” that is five-sided and circular called 

a hooghan [English = Hogan].The nature of communal living is such a structure 

probably derives from the ancestral influence of the Kiva or circular ceremonial 

room (where secret societies of men gathered for spiritual ceremonies) of 

a typical Pueblo as shown in Figures 4 and 5. The Kivas at Pueblo Bonito are 

the highest, most complex historical development of the group social structure.

150 


Figure 4. Pueblo Bonito showing Circular Kivas 

Figure 5. Pueblo Bonito photographed from the air 

Figure 6 depicts a traditional (pre-1900) adobe hogan (mud and straw construction) 

and Figure 7 shows a more modern (post-1900) log construction (still 

used, but with a wooden roof these days, unlike the mud roof in the picture). 

Also as pictured, modern hogans have a cast-iron wood burning stove with pipe 

vent, whereas the traditional design merely had a vent hole in the roof for a fire pit.


Figure 6. Traditional adobe hogan 

Figure 7. Modern log hogan 

1.4. The culture of the Kiva 

Tom McFeat (1974: 89–104) provides a concise history of the communication 

structure of the early Navajo culture up through the collapse of Pueblo Bonito 

in 1126 CE. Pueblo (Spanish for “people”) culture was largely agricultural 

and located in sheltered river valleys. The housing was communal with each

152 


family dwelling attached to the next in one large building complex. These domestic 

areas are the square shaped rooms depicted in Figures 4 and 5. The circular 

rooms are the Kivas which were meeting rooms for men. Such rooms 

were basically for religious purposes formed a unique bond among its members 

(Newcomb 1964). Pueblo Bonito is very important because it shows the development 

of the Grand Kiva or Kiva of smaller Kivas. For our communicological 

purposes, the Kiva system represents a sociocentric cultural organization for 

communication in which group identity is paramount. It is critical to understand 

that a major characteristic of the Kiva was the doctrine of secrecy and group 

silence about the communication and rituals that took place there. This would 

prove to be a major asset for the development and necessary secrecy of the Navajo 

code in WWII. It is worth noting here that even the code talkers’ families 

did not know what they had done in the war until 1969 when a veteran’s association 

of former members of the Fourth Marine Division worked to locate former 

code talkers to honor them at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois (Paul 1973: 

117). Even then, many of the talkers would not discuss the details of the code 

which partially for many inaccurate accounts of the code (e.g., Wrixon 1998: 

371). 

2. Tonal languages 

The Navajo and Japanese languages are usually classified as a “tonal” language 

and are often thought, therefore, to have a tonal system like the four tones 

of Chinese (Halliday 2005). The Chinese system is: (1) high-level [ma = 

mother], (2) high-rising [ma = hemp], (3) low-falling-rising [ma = horse], and 

(4) high-falling [ma = scold]. This Japanese “tone” description is controversial, 

to say the least. For example, Bernard Comrie (1987: 869) argues that “the 

Japanese accentual system is characteristically distinct from the archetypal tone 

languages of the Chinese type”. The short version of the dispute is say that both 

Japanese, in particular, and Navajo are best described not as “tone” languages, 

but as pitch-accent languages (Ding 2006). The point to be made is precisely 

that Navajo and Japanese are more alike than they are dissimilar in phonological 

terms. For an explicit comparison of English, Japanese, and Chinese, see 

Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 297). 

2.1. The language of the people 

The Navajo language (Diné bizaad) is spoken by approximately 149 000 

persons according to the 1990 census of the United States population (Crystal 

1997: 36). In 1970, the number of speaker was 100 000 which makes Navajo 

the fastest growing Native American language. We may speculate that this due


to the fact that Navajo is now the language of instruction (in preference to English) 

in the school systems of the Navajo Nation including it own Diné College. 

The Navajo language is technically part of the Athapaskan-Eyak family 

accounting for the languages spoken in Alaska (USA) and nortwestern Canada, 

as such “Navajo is the indigenous language of North America (Canada and the 

USA) with the largest number of speakers.” (Commrie 1987: 21; confirmed by 

Crystal 1997: 322). The Hopi and Zuñi languages are considered variants of 

Navajo, while the closet neighboring separate language is Apache. Ironically, 

a possible cultural connection between the Zuñi and Japanese languages has 

been proposed (Davis 2000). 

Navajo is a very difficult language to learn, but I was amazed that when 

I did a Google search for the phrase “I want to learn to speak Navajo” I had 

2 100 000 hits in .16 seconds. There are many self-help products to get you 

started. You can follow up, if you have the interest! For those that do, you will 

need the very good Navajo-English Dictionary (Wall & Morgan 1958). 

2.2. The communication of the people 

The communication features of the English, Navajo, and Japanese languages 

will give a general idea of why the Navajo Code was so effective for the 

Americans marines and so frustrating to the Japanese military in WWII. A primary 

factor in any communication process is the presence of noise, i.e., contextual 

elements in the message that interfere with correct interpretation. This point 

is best explainable with an example from Charles Egerton Osgood (1964) work 

on the semantic differential discussed by David Crystal (1997). The differential 

is a statistically scaled measure between value concepts like “Good vs. Bad” or 

“Weak vs. Strong”. A sequence of responses measures the tendency to favor 

a psychological state of emotional interpretive response. Crystal (1997: 103) 

comments: “The method was also used to make comparisons between cultural 

groups. For example, noise is a highly affective concept for the Japanese, who 

tend to react to it using the extreme of the polar scales; it is no so for Americans 

or Kannada-speaking Indians. The word male varies between Hopi, Zuñi, and 

Navaho [sic] Indians, the first two groups being fairly close together”. In other 

words, the inability to interpret a message will evoke an extreme emotional 

response in the Japanese, whereas the same ambiguity will be a moderate response 

by the Hopi and Zuñi and an almost neutral response by the Navajo 

(Diné). There are also some problems as between English and Navajo, for example, 

with color lexemes. This is to say, the Navajo language makes no category 

distinction between blue and green, whereas there is such a distinction for 

two shades of black (probably accounting for the fact that “red ant” is used in 

the code, while “black ant” is not).

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From a communication discourse perspective, Table 2 summarizes the 

comparative characteristics that come into play when bilingual comparisons are 

being made between (1) English and Navajo, and, (2) Navajo and Japanese. 

Keeping Figure 3 in mind, we have an encoding problem when making the 

Code because Navajo must be made compatible with American English. The 

opposite decoding problem occurs for the Japanese as they attempt to understand 

(much less decrypt) the Navajo. 

Table 2. Comparative communication features 

The communication features in Table 2 depict the basic interpretive problems 

confronting the respective users. Recalling Figure 2, the langage problem 

is illustrated with the issue of syntax in sentences. Word order in English is 

Subject–Verb–Object whereas Japanese is Subject–Object–Verb, not a difficult 

issue for any code-breaking analyst. However, Navajo has no preferred word 

order; is has “free order” chosen by the speaker (Crystal 1997: 98); that definitely 

is a cognitive problem for a listener expecting consistent word order! As 

we move down the hierarchy of discourse structure to Langue (Figure 2), we 

may take the interpersonal register as an exemplary issue. As described in Table 

1, English is essentially egocentric in orientation meaning that communication 

is direct with the goal of understanding oneself through one’s expression. By 

comparison, both Navajo and Japanese have a sociocentric orientation wherein 

communication is indirect and has the goal of understanding others through 

perception. Obviously, the comparative cultural orientations to communication 

are conflicting process of encoding versus decoding as the point of interpretation 

(Figure 3).


At the hierarchy level of discours (Figure 2), we are concerned with both 

honorifics and semantic intention in the communication process. American 

English is notoriously informal with the frequent use of first names and an implied 

informality that is often interpreted as offensive (especially by persons 

who have learned British English and its more formal cultural connotations). 

Americans imply the level of honorific by tone of voice, hence they are using 

a covert coding feature. The Japanese use of honorifics is just the opposite tendency 

with a highly structured, complex, and formally overt lexical system indicating 

a precise power/status relationship between the two speakers. Honorifics 

among the Navajo are a completely different story. So long as the child’s 

world is bounded by the family circle there is very little need for names. Kinship 

terms are enough for him to address or to refer to everybody, and they in 

turn can designate him adequately (also characteristic of Chinese communicators). 

In case of possible confusion, a qualifier can be added to the kin term: 

“my oldest maternal nephew”, “my maternal nephew who is the middle son of 

my youngest sister.” 

However, when the child goes outside his family group he must have a designation. Navajos 

do have names. The trouble is that they always have more than one “name”, and this whole 

system is to the White man one of the most baffling aspects of the Navajo way of life. There 

are, first of all, the “secret” or “war” names. Names are powers to The People. To use a name 

very often is to wear it out, whereas if the name is kept fresh and full of strength, uttering it 

may get its owner out of a tight hole sometime. … Besides these “war” names, during the 

course of his life every Navajo is dubbed with one or more nicknames. (Kluckhohn & 

Leighton 1974: 114–115). 

Yet, there is more. Most Navajo’s have several additional “European” or 

“White” names given to them by a school or work place. Most have a “Spanish” 

name used when speaking or interacting with a Spanish person. Many have 

“invented names” given to them by the Anglos or Spanish if their Navajo name 

could not be pronounced (this happened again when the Navajo became US 

Marines!). In modern times, Navajos have been hired to take the official US 

Census on the reservation because Anglos census workers in the past have assumed 

each name ment a separate person and most Navajos were counted three, 

four, or five times! In short, the Navajo tends to use the name you have given 

him in your last conversation! The name is created by perception, not expression. 

Obviously, this fact contradicts most of the theories of the “name” function 

in European concepts of historiography (cf. Lanigan 1996b). 

Returning to the discourse structure of parole (Figure 2), we are interested 

in semantic intentions and pragmatic markers in conversation. As already noted, 

American English uses first names and, in consequence, displays a high preference 

for pronominal reference, especially “I” and “me” or “you” and “them”. 

The Japanese honorifics specify quite precisely the social dynamic and class

156 


structure of the society. One’s place in the group is never in doubt with power 

moving from the young up to the old (seniority is power and demand respect). 

By comparison, the Navajo tend to display semantic intention by reference to 

Nature and ancestral practice. 

For our purposes with the code talkers, Nature is the operative concept. 

Places and creatures in Nature have names (points of perception) and their characteristic 

behavior (perception of process activity) guides the selection of 

names. The Nature that the Navajo know is their own environment, the high 

desert and rugged mountains of the Southwestern USA. Names for things in this 

world became the code names they used in their own language. 

Pragmatic markers in American English are the adjectives used to emotionally 

describe the speaker’s attitude in the conversation. These are essential to 

a listener’s understanding of the mood of the conversation and the degree of 

seriousness involved. A direct contrast is British English where noun usage 

specifies cognitive precision without emotion. For the British, American’s never 

get to the point and they exaggerate everything. For the Americans, the British 

are “cold fish” and too judgmental. The respective semantic intent of the 

Americans and British are polar opposites when it comes to speaking “English” 

or is it “American”? 

A word of caution about pragmatic identity markers among the Navajo (cf. 

Caswell 2009, Kristofie 2011). The Diné language does not have a “v”, therefore 

when the Spanish word “Navajo” is pronounced by a Diné speaker it is 

articulated as “Nab-bí-ho” (which like all foreign words is not found in the Navajo-English 

dictionary). Persons who make this type of mistake in Diné language 

are referred to by the Diné as speaking “Trader Navajo” pidgin (“trader” 

referring to White persons speaking English). 

3. Developing the code and training its talkers 

The idea of Navajo code talkers began with Philip Johnston who was working 

as a civil engineer in Los Angeles, California when Pearl Harbor was 

bombed by the Japanese. Johnston had grown up at Leuppe, Arizona on the 

Navajo reservation as the son of Presbyterian missionaries (somewhat rare as 

most missionairies were Catholic). He learned to speak “Trader Navajo” as 

a child. He read a news story about the Army’s communication experiment with 

Comanche Indians during WWI and decided to advance the idea of Navajo code 

speakers. 2 He contacted the area Marine Corps Signal Officer, Major James E. 

2 

A documentary film account is Navajo Code Talkers: The Epic Story, directed by Allan 

Silliphant (1995 Brendan W. Tully; ISBN: 0-9639698-1-1); the fictional film version is 

Windtalkers, directed by John Woo (2002, Metro Goldwyn Mayer; ISBN: 0-7928-5378-4).


Jones. Major Jones thought the idea had merit and passed the idea on to Major 

General Clayton B. Vogel. After considerable bureaucratic reviews and policy 

disputes the Marine Corps undertook a decision to ignore the expert advice of 

federal government Bureau of Indian Affairs and the offer of expert Navajo 

language trainers, the Navajo code talkers were organized in April 1942. Some 

29 Navajos became the 382nd Platoon of the U.S. Marine corps (McClain 1994: 

39). Johnston later became a Technical Sergeant in the Marine Signal Corps and 

helped train the Navajo recruits. “Of the total 540 Navajos enlisted by the Marine 

Corps, 420 qualified as code talkers” (Paul 1973: 117). Although the official 

records of the Navajo Communication School are still classified as “secret”, 

other public records have allowed the construction of a list of 264 known code 

talkers (McClain 1994: 288). The remaining 156 have kept the secret of the 

Kiva. 

Table 3. Navajo code construction rules 

It is important to understand the military context for the emergence of the 

Navajo code talkers. During WWI, the British Army experimented with signal 

corps soldiers speaking Welsh and the American Army experimented with Comanche 

Indians. This fact was preeminent in the German preparation for WWII. 

General Vogel noted a third point in his first proposal: 

3. Mr. Johnson stated that the Navajo is the only tribe in the United States that has not been 

infested with German students during the past twenty years. These Germans, studying the 

various tribal dialects under the guise of art students, anthropologists, etc. have undoubtedly 

attained a good working knowledge of all the tribal dialects except Navajo. For this reason 

the Navajos are the only tribe available for the type of work under consideration. It should be 

noted that the tribal dialect is completely unintelligible to all other tribes and all other people 

with the possible exception of as many as 28 Americans who have made a study of the 

dialect. (McClain 1994: 28) 

What the general did not know then was that the German secret agents had 

indeed tried to learn various Indian languages and had failed utterly. This fact, 

in turn, lead the Germans to conclude that the various languages could never be 

used because of their complexity and lack of useful vocabulary!

158 


3.1. The code 

The construction of an appropriate code of the Navajo Signal Corps Marines 

had to meet the requirements listed in Table 3. The initial effort at constructing 

an alphabet is shown in Table 4. 

Table 4. The first code-talker alphabet 

Letter Navajo word Meaning Letter Navajo word Meaning 

A Wol-la-chee Ant N Nesh-chee Nut 

B Shush Bear O Ne-ahs-jah Owl 

C Moasi Cat P Bi-sodih Pig 

D Be Deer Q Ca-yeilth Quiver 

E Dzeh Elk R Gah Rabbit 

F Ma-e Fox S Dibeh Sheep 

G Klizzie Goat T Than-zie Turkey 

H Lin Horse U No-da-ih Ute 

I Tkin Ice V A-keh-di-glini Victor 

J Tkele-cho-gi Jackass W Gloe-ih Weasel 

K Klizzie-yazzie Kidd X Al-an-as-dzoh Cross 

L Diheb-yazzie Lamb Y Tsah-as-zih Yucca 

M Na-as-tsosi Mouse Z Besh-do-gliz Zinc 

The assumption was that an alphabet would be necessary to spell out words 

in a message. The assumption was due to the signal corps secondary assumption 

that Morse code would be used to transmit some messages. As frequently happens 

in institutions like armies, this view represented the “old think” about “old 

technology” left over from WWI. World War II would be relying on radio telephone 

communication and combat message would rely more on a lexicon, than 

on an alphabet. Note that in the table, the meanings are names taken from Nature, 

mostly animals and plants, to accommodate code construction rules 2, 3, 

and 4. 

There are ways in which this alphabet is culturally metacoded. For example, 

there is a distinction being made with the Navajo insect name of “ant” which only 

a Navajo native speaker would recognize. This is to say the code contains a metacode 

wherein “A” is not “A”. 

The official translation for the letter A is wóláchíí = “red ant”, but there is 

also wólázihní = “black ant”. Red ant has to be used because the color lexicon 

of the Marine Combat Code does not use the color black (see Lexicon below). It 

is doubtful that the Marine Corps was aware of this lexicon choice or why it 

was made. 

While the code was sufficient according to the rules for using Navajo, the 

cryptologists immediately noted a problem when the code was translating English, 

namely, the problem of letter frequency in English – the key to breaking 

a code! So the problem with English is that the letters most frequently occurring


are: E, T, A, O, I, N. Next come the letters: S, H, R, D, L, U. This coding problem 

was solved by elaborating the code alphabet. 

3.2. The elaborated code 

The English letter frequency issue was solved by creating an elaborated 

alphabet in which the unit group was expanded in proportion to the letter frequency. 

Hence multiple code words were created for given letters, e.g., three 

words for the set E, T, A, O, I, N and two words for the set S, H, R, D, L, U. 

Which letter/word was chosen was random and reinforced the already natural 

randomness of Navajo word order. The elaborated code is given in Table 5. 

Table 5. The complete code talker alphabet accommodating English letter frequency 

letter Navajo word Meaning Letter Navajo word Meaning 

A Wol-la-chee Ant N Nesh-chee Nut 

A Be-la-sana Apple N Ts-a Needle 

A Tse-nihil Axe N A-chen Nose 

B Shush Bear O Ne-ahs-jah Owl 

C Moasi Cat O Tio-chin Onion 

D Be Deer O A-kha Oil 

D Lha-cha-eh Dog P Bi-sodih Pig 

E Dzeh Elk Q Ca-yeilth Quiver 

E Ah-nah Eye R Gah Rabbit 

E Ajh-jah Ear R Dah-nas-tsa Ram 

F Ma-e Fox S Dibeh Sheep 

G Klizzie Goat S Klesh Snake 

H Lin Horse T Than-zie Turkey 

H Tse-gah Hair T D-ah Tea 

I Tkin Ice T A-woh Tooth 

I Yeh-hes Itch U No-da-ih Ute 

I A-chi Intestines U Shi-da Uncle 

J Tkele-cho-gi Jackass V A-keh-di-glini Victor 

K Klizzie-yazzie Kidd W Gloe-ih Weasel 

L Dibeh-yazzie Lamb X Al-an-as-dzoh Cross 

L Ah-jad Leg Y Tsah-as-zih Yucca 

M Na-as-tsosi Mouse Z Besch-do-gliz Zinc 

3.3. The lexicon 

In addition to the elaborated alphabet, an initial lexicon of 265 words was 

created consisting of names and actions. As the war proceeded, it proved necessary 

to enlarge the lexicon to accommodate names for newly developed weapons 

and changing tactics associated with the unique problems of invading islands 

in the Pacific Ocean. The final June 15 1945 version of the elaborated 

lexicon consists of 508 words (McClain 1994: 129, 268).

160 


The lexicon consists of words in the following categories (* = my translation): 

(1) Alphabet (Navajo) 

(2) Alphabet (Military English, e.g., “Able” for A, “Baker” for B, etc.) 

(3) Names of Various Organizations, e.g., “Salt” [Ashih-hi] for Division. 

(4) Officers, e.g., “Two Star” [So-na-kih] for Major General. 

(5) Names of Countries, e.g., “Our Mother” [Ne-he-mah] for America. 

(6) Names of Airplanes, e.g., “Chicken Hawk” [Gini] for Dive Bomber. 

(7) Names of Ships, e.g., “Whale” [Lo-tso] for Battle Ship. 

(8) Names of Months, e.g., “Small Eagle” [Atasah-be-yaz] for January. 

(9) Vocabulary (all syntactical categories), e.g., 

“Making Talk” [Ha-neh-al-enji] for Communication. 

“Home” [Hogan] for Department. 

“Small Pup” [Tse-le] for Do. 

“Cliff Dwelling” [Ah-na-sozi-yazzie] for Fortification. 

“Lamb East” [De-be-yazie-ha-a-ah] for Least. (homophone) 

“Man Age” [Hastni-beh-na-hai] for Manage. (homophone) 

“No Turkey” [Ni-dah-than-zie] for Not. 

“Rib” [Atsanh] for Parenthesis. 

“Egg Fly” [A-ye-shi-na-tah-ih] for Robot Bomb. 

“Turkey Hat” [Tazi-cha] for That. (orthographic similitude) 

(10) Special Field (Combat) Terms: 

(a) Colors: 

Red [Lichii] 

Green [Tatlid-go-dootizh} = literal “Watermoss of Blue/Green”* 

Yellow [Ltso] 

Blue [Dootizh] = literal “Blue/Green” {“Blue” is arbitrary}* 

White [Lighi] 

(b) Numbers: 1 = [A-la-ih} = “One” (through) 10 = [Neeznaa] = ‘Ten’. 

Using numbers in particular and all messages in general, also required 

a signal to mark the end of a message unit, especially to signal turn-taking to the 

other communicator. This signal was: “Pass” [Bi-sodih-be Jilchii] = ‘Pig/Ass’ 

3.4. A discourse sample 

As a way of summarizing the main points of my analysis, Figure 8 provides 

a sample lexicon item as it fits in the discourse model noted in Figures 2 and 3 

above. American English provides the language universal (langage) or lexical 

item “Airplane”. Within the semiotic system of American English, we have the 

particular language usage (langue) intended by the U.S. Marine Signal Corps, 

i.e., “Observation Plane”. The conception of an airplane used “to observe from 

above” encapsulates the very unique behavior of the animal we know in English 

as the “Owl”. It is, therefore, quite natural for a Navajo to think of the name Neas-jah 

as the discursive word (discours) to code the English lexical item “Observation 

Airplane” (parole). Please recall the directionality of Figure 3. This is


to say, the speaking Navajo code talker (Addresser) is moving down the hierarchy 

by taking his concept of the object “Observation Airplane”, uttering the 

word Ne-as-jah, thereby encoding “Owl”. When the listening Navajo code 

talker (Addressee) hears this message, he speaks/translates in English “Observation 

Airplane”, thereby, moving up the hierarchy to decode Navajo “Ne-as-jah” 

into the English “Owl”. 

Figure 8. Sample lexicon item in the code-talker discourse 

Again using the discourse example of Figure 8, the use of the Navajo language 

creates an effective secret code by making the dominant discourse incomprehensible 

to the Japanese listener. The discourse is utterly confusing because 

the phonology of the message “sounds” very familiar (discours, parole), 

yet is completely frustrating because the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic 

context (langage, langue) is nonsense and noise, to which Japanese perception 

is especially sensitive. 

While it is beyond the scope of my analysis to discuss conceptions of Navajo 

cosmology, I have noted that their view of Nature is at the heart of their 

spiritual and religious beliefs. In this context, I must note that the very project 

of forming the code talkers as a military unit reinforced their sociocentric cul-

162 


ture beliefs in group formation by means of a narrative (oral history) passed 

from one generation to the next (Locke 1976). The creation of the code talkers 

was in many important spiritual ways akin to the formation of a Grand Kiva 

with all of its secret meanings and rituals embodied in the group membership. 

Witherspoon (1977: 39–40) captures the cosmological force of the “secret 

code” created by the Navajo code talkers and their view of what they were doing 

to fight the Imperial Japanese army: 

Whereas ritual language can be used to create order, it can also be used to create disorder. 

Ritual language was the means of transforming chaos into cosmos, but it can also be used to 

reduce cosmos to chaos. In the battle between the forces of disorder and evil and those of 

order and good, the “good” side has the advantage. This is based on the idea that through 

ritual knowledge and circumspect behavior one can acquire an immunity from evil, but there 

is no immunity from the ritual control and compulsion of good. There are no evil forces or 

deities that cannot be transformed or exorcised. 

The Navajo were on the side of good, their “ritual knowledge and circumspect 

behavior” in the form of “code talk” did, indeed, transform the forces of evil 

(the Japanese army) and restored Order to Nature (war victory of the American 

army). 

4. A personal note 

Let me conclude with a few biographical remarks that will contextualize my 

interest in the Navajo code talkers. I was born (1943) in Santa Fé, New Mexico, 

USA. I was reared in Albuquerque. My father was born in Gallup, New Mexico, 

the cite of the annual Navajo Ceremonial (the gathering of clans) held annually 

in Gallup. My grandfather, William Leo Lanigan, came to Gallup as an Irish 

immigrant construction worker on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad 

in the 1870s. He stayed on and settled in Gallup, initially working as a trader on 

the Navajo reservation, mainly at Fort Defiance, for the C. N. Cotton Co. He later 

became Station Master at Gallup for the railroad and my father worked for him 

there. My father later gained some unexpected fame when it was discovered that 

he was the first baby born (January 7th) after New Mexico became the 47th 

State of the USA on January 6, 1912. He was so honored in a personal appearance 

at the New Mexico State Capitol at Santa Fé during the US Bicentennial 

celebrations in 1976. 

My mother was born and lived in Globe, Arizona where her Irish immigrant 

father was a open-pit coal mining engineer and her mother ran an independent 

agency life insurance company. Globe is located on the border with the Apache 

Nation (south of the Navajo Nation). The main reservation headquarters for the 

Apache Nation is at the town of San Carlos, a name among the Apache tribe


that has the same infamous connotation as “Fort Sumner” for the Navajo. 3 In 

short, my family history is intimately tied to the Navajo and Apache cultures 

and their legacy with Spanish history. All this to say, when I was in the Catholic 

primary and secondary schools at Albuquerque, the student body was about 

equally divided among those who spoke the English, Spanish, and Navajo languages. 

This experience of two sociocentric cultures dominated my worldview. 

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Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press. 

Comrie, Bernard (ed.) 1987: The World’s Major Languages. New York, NY: Oxford University 

Press. 

Crystal, David 1997 /1987/: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd edition. Cambridge, 

UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 

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Ding, Picus Sizhi 2006: A typological study of tonal systems of Japanese and Prinmi: Towards a 

definition of pitch-accent languages. Journal of Universal Language 7, 1–35. 

Foucault, Michel 1980: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. 

New York, NY: Pantheon Books. 

Halliday, M(ichael) A(lexander) K(irkwood) 2005: Studies in Chinese Language. Collected 

Works: Vol. 8. Ed. by Jonathan Webster. New York, NY: Continuum. 

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Experience Through Meaning: A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. New York, NY: 

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Iverson, Peter 2002: Diné: A History of the Navajos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico 

Press. 

Kawano, Kenji 1991: Warriors: Navajo code talkers. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Publishing Co. 

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MA: Harvard University Press. 

Kristofic, Jim 2011: Navajo’s Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life .Albuquerque, NM: University of 

New Mexico Press. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 1984: Semiotic Phenomenology of Rhetoric: Eidetic Practice in Henry 

Grattan’s Discourse on Tolerance. Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology 

& University Press of America. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo)1988: Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau-Ponty’s Thematics in 

Communicology and Semiology. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 1992: The Human Science of Communicology: A Phenomenology of 

Discourse in Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 1995: From enthymeme to abduction: The classical law of logic and the 

postmodern rule of rhetoric. In: Lenore Langsdorf, Andrew R. Smith (eds.) 1995: Recovering 

Pragmaticism’s Voice: The Classical Tradition, Rorty, and the Philosophy of Communication. 

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 49–70. 

3 

A fictional account of the San Carlos Apache experience is the 1967 film Hombré, directed 

by Martin Ritt (© 2007, 20th century Fox; ASIN: B000NRQRR34)

164 


Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 1996a: Phenomenology. In: Theresa Enos (ed.) 1996: The Encyclopedia 

of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. 

New York: Garland Publishing Co., 512–513. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo)1996b: Foucault’s science of rhetoric: The contest between practical discourse 

and discursive practice, Symplokē 4 (1–2), 189–202. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 1997: Communicology; Structuralism. In: Lester Embree (ed.) 1997: The 

Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 104–110; 683–689. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2000: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). In: Jorge R. Schement (ed.) 

2000: The Encyclopedia of Communication and Information. Vol. 3. New York: Macmillan 

Reference, 705–707. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2008: Communicology. In: Wolfgang Donsbach (ed.) 2008: International 

Encyclopedia of Communication. Vol. 3. Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing 

Co.; International Communication Association), 855–857. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2009: Cosmology and communicology in an Internet world: Semiotic 

perspectives of the East (PRC) and the West (USA). Chinese Semiotic Studies 1, 228–254. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2010: The verbal and nonverbal codes of communicology: The Foundation 

of interpersonal agency and efficacy. In: Deborah Eicher-Catt, Isaac E. Catt (eds.) 2010: 

Communicology: The New Science of Embodied Discourse. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickson 

University Press, 102–128. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2011a: The logic of phenomena: Semiotic structures of West and East in 

communicology and culture. Chinese Semiotic Studies, [in press]. 

Lanigan, Richard L(eo) 2011b: On homeworld and community models of the city: The communicology 

of egocentric and sociocentric cultures in urban semiotics. In: Zdzisław Wąsik (ed.) 

2011: Unfolding the Semiotic Web in Urban Discourse. In scientific cooperation with Daina 

Teters. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 11–46. 

Locke, Raymond Friday 1976: The Book of the Navajo. New York, NY: Kensington Publishing 

Corp. 

Malmkjaer, Kristen (ed.) 1991: The Linguistics Encyclopedia. New York, NY: Routledge. 

McClain, Sally 1994: Navajo Weapon: The Navajo Code Talkers. Tuscon, AZ: Rio Nuevo Publishers; 

Books Beyond Border [The best historical and most accurate account of the Code; 

Appendix 6 is the Final Revised Edition of the Code, 15 June 1945]. 

McFeat, Tom 1974: Small-Group Cultures. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. 

Newcomb, Franc Johnson 1964: Hosteen Klah: Navaho Medicine Man and Sand Painter. Norman, 

OK: University of Oklahoma. 

Osgood, Charles E(gerton) 1964: Semantic differential technique in the comparative study of 

cultures. American Anthropologist 66 (3): 171–200. 

Paul, Doris A. 1973: The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing Company 

[The second best source for code description and official documents]. 

Scudder, Thayer 1982: No Place to Go: Effects of Compulsory Relocations on Navajos. Philadelphia, 

PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 

Stix, Gary 2005: Best-kept secrets: Quantum cryptography has marched from theory to laboratory 

to real products. Scientific American, January, 79–83. 

Wall, Leon, William Morgan 1994 /1958/: Navajo-English Dictionary. New York, NY: Hippocrene 

Books. 

Winston, Robert, Don Wilson (eds.) 2006: Human: Origins, Body, Mind, Culture, and Peoples. 

New York, NY: Smithsonian Institution; DK Publishing. 

Witherspoon, Gary 1977: Language and Art in the Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of 

Michigan Press. 

Wrixon, Fred B. 1998: Codes, Ciphers & Other Cryptic & Clandestine Communication: Making 

and Breaking Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internet. New York, NY: Barnes & 

Noble Books.

ELŻBIETA MAŃCZAK-WOHLFELD 

JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY IN KRAKOW 

The status of English lexis in the Polish language 

ABSTRACT. As the title of the present paper indicates, its purpose is to investigate the 

status of English words in the Polish language. To be more precise, it means that we would 

like to answer the question whether English borrowings or English foreign words dominate 

in Polish. First, a short history of the origin of English vocabulary is presented. This is 

followed by the description of English as a lingua franca, whose consequence lies in the fact 

that it has become a donor language to a number of tongues, including Polish. Then, a distinction 

of two terms: borrowing, loanword or loan vs. foreignism or foreign word is discussed. On 

the basis of a questionnaire conducted among Polish students of English, it has turned out 

that the borderline between a borrowing and a foreignism is fuzzy, which accounts for 

different interpretations of the terms in question as well as for different typologies of the two 

terms in the linguistics literature. 

KEYWORDS. Borrowing, foreignism, English lexis, lingua franca, the Polish languge; 

fuzziness. 

1. A short history of the origin of English vocabulary 

It is a well-known fact that only three percent of Old English lexis was of 

foreign origin. However, the situation drastically changed by the end of 1500 

when 60 percent of vocabulary consisted either of Latin or of French-derived 

words (Görlach 1994: 224). This fact only indicates that English could be characterized 

by a vast reception of foreign lexical items. We can only wonder why 

Samuel Johnson in the Introduction to his Dictionary (1852: IV) complained: 

“Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, 

been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating 

towards a Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavor 

to recall it”. However, it was quite clear that a return to an exclusively or 

predominantly Germanic vocabulary was impossible at that period of time 

(Mańczak-Wohlfeld 2007: 18). 

The situation of English is nowadays even more complicated. According to 

David Crystal (2007: 590), 350 languages are to be considered as contributors 

to English word system. As Donald Winford, quoted by Marek Kuźniak (2009: 

89), notices: 

most English speakers would be surprised to learn that 75 percent of the words in their 

language are “borrowed” from other languages during the course of its history … A great 

deal, perhaps the majority of lexical borrowing results only from marginal contact with other 


166 

Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld 

languages. Such contact may be due to travel, exploration, or conquest or it may be due to 

exposure to the donor language in the mass media, foreign language instruction, and the like. 

The above quotation only supports the claim that any language undergoes 

changes including the change and increase of vocabulary. Hans-Jürgen Diller 

(2011: 249), in turn, argues that: 

In his Explaining Language Change, Croft (2000: 82f.) identifies two kinds of “directional 

[language] evolution at a … global level.” One of them is “a massive increase of 

vocabulary;” this he attributes to “technological advances of the past century which require 

the naming of new entities.” The other is an increase in “syntactic complexity” which he 

attributes to “the advent of writing”. 

The latter reason is outside the scope of this paper, although it is reasonable 

to suspect that the advent of writing is responsible not only for increased complexity 

but also for the growth of the lexicon. Nevertheless, Diller (2011: 250) 

further observes that: 

The growth of the English lexicon is a fairly continuous trend that can be observed from 

about the year 1200, not only in the 19th century … The dent at 1200 is clearly due to the 

interruption of the written transmission of English in the wake of the Norman Conquest. 

“New entities” have to be named not only in the field of technological advances, but 

whenever new concepts emerge. I use the word emerge advisedly: a new word is introduced 

not only when a new concept is explicitly introduced in a manner which resembles the 

introduction of a technical product. It is also introduced when traditional words are quite 

vaguely felt to be insufficient. 

2. The position of English 

In the past English exerted no impact on other languages. Therefore, the 

famous observation of an English writer expressed in the 16th century, cited by 

Otto Jespersen (1948: 227): “The English tongue is of small reach stretching no 

further than this island of ours, nay not there over all” was of no surprise. 

It has to be said that the position of English was to be changed only in the 

course of the 19th century and later (especially after World War II) when it 

became a donor language to a number of European tongues. This was due to the 

growth of the British Empire, the industrial revolution which took place in England, 

as well as the subsequent economic development and success of the United 

States of America. These are the reasons why England is often referred to by 

some linguists as the Word Bank of English (cf. Mańczak-Wohlfeld 2007: 18).

The status of English lexis in the Polish language 167 

3. The influence of English on Polish 

It seems that the subject of the present article cannot be discussed without 

some reference to instances of contact between the English tongue and Polish. 

The process proper of borrowing from English into Polish began during the 

18th century. 

It is only in the 19th century, however, that a gradual increase in the impact of 

English on Polish becomes apparent in the sociolinguistic scene in Poland – a development 

reflecting the general trend in Europe at that time. The 20th century 

saw a steady increase of anglicisms in Polish, but it was not until the second 

half of the 20th century that the influence of English took on a noticeable significance. 

Since the middle 1960s, the heyday of the Beatles and the start of the spread 

of “pop-culture”, English has become ever more popular the world over. In 

Poland, however, for the most part of the communist era, it was fairly difficult 

for Poles to establish contact with the English language either via the mass media 

or via visits to English-speaking countries – notably, Great Britain and the 

United States of America. 

The changes in the political system in Poland in 1989 altered all that. Since 

then Polish society has become open to Western influences and, as a consequence, 

interest in the culture, new technologies, and other aspects of life in 

Great Britain and the United States in particular has grown noticeably. Large 

numbers of people, especially among the younger generation, have begun to 

learn English. 

These factors, along with the fairly easy access to English mass media, including 

the Internet, have promoted contact between English and Polish and, 

consequently, have increased the influence of English on the Polish language. 

The impact has for the most part been in the area of lexical borrowing, although 

there is evidence of other types of influence, which is beyond the scope of the 

present paper. We can, therefore, conclude that due to a considerable inflow of 

Anglicisms as well as of other linguistic elements connected with the English 

language the visage of Polish has somewhat altered. 

To be more precise, given the closed-society situation in the communist era, 

it is not surprising that the renowned scholar of Polish linguistics, Jacek Fisiak 

(1961) would find only a little over 700 English loans in Polish at that time. By 

1986, however, again according to Fisiak, the number of attested anglicisms had 

risen to 1 000. My own findings in 1994 show about 1 600 documented anglicisms 

(Mańczak-Wohlfeld 1994). A year later, according to my calculations, 

there were over 1 700 such loanwords attested in A Dictionary of Anglicisms in 

Selected European Languages edited by Görlach (2001). 

The number of English loans in standard Polish today, documented in my 

dictionary of English borrowings in the Polish language (Słownik zapożyczeń

168 


angielskich w polszczyźnie, ed. by Mańczak-Wohlfeld 2001) is about 2 000. The 

above data is indication of the degree to which English lexemes have penetrated 

the Polish language’s corpus in recent years. 

The above-mentioned list of about 2 000 anglicisms was arranged on the 

basis of lexical items found in recent national dictionaries, lexicons of foreign 

words, in the current press as well as in other media and, to a lesser extent, in 

some text corpora as there are always some doubts connected with their representativeness 

(cf. Mańczak-Wohlfeld 2008). It is evident that, while collecting 

a list of English borrowings in Polish, in a number of cases, I had to rely on my 

linguistic intuition. 

4. Borrowings vs. foreignisms 

We can now answer the question signaled in the title of this article concerning 

the status of English lexis in the Polish language. In order to provide an 

answer to it, we should define two crucial terms, namely, borrowing (the term 

used above) and foreignism. Most linguists do not follow this distinction as they 

are mainly interested in the process of borrowing and its result which is called 

either a borrowing, a loan or a loanword. 

A number of different definitions of the term borrowing have been proposed; 

however, it seems that Einar Haugen’s (1950: 212) suggestion, although 

a very old one, is most adequate: “The heart of our definition of borrowing is 

the attempted reproduction in one language of patterns previously found in another.” 

This definition is considered to be the most appropriate due to its general 

character as it covers different types of borrowing including lexical items, 

which are of our concern, but also affixes, structures or even phonemes, since 

the word pattern encompasses every linguistic unit. 

It is worth stressing that new loans are introduced by bilinguals who first try 

to imitate “models” as closely as possible. That is the reason why we are confronted 

with so-called citations at first and only later does the process of assimilation 

start on four linguistic levels of analysis, i.e., the phonetic, graphic, morphological 

and semantic. 

It is clear that the adaptation does not always take place on all the levels. 

Therefore, following Haugen (1950), we distinguish loans that are either imported 

or substituted on different planes of linguistic description. To give an 

example, the lexical item dżinsy < E jeans in Polish exhibits substitution on the 

phonetic, graphic and morphological levels and importation on the semantic 

plane. 

It has to be mentioned that some loanwords never undergo any process of 

assimilation in the borrowing language and they remain quotations (often referred 

to by the German term Gastwörter); the second category concerns Fremdwörter,


i.e., borrowings, which are partly adapted and finally, the third group contains 

loans, which are assimilated and, sticking to the German terminology, we would 

call them Lehnwörter. Some of these are so well-integrated that they are not felt 

as loanwords, particularly by those speakers who do not know the language of 

origin of a borrowing, which may be illustrated by the “Polish” word rum < E rum 

already recognized at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in Polish. It is obvious 

that the loans which are well assimilated often undergo derivational processes 

typical of the borrowing language (Mańczak-Wohlfeld 2006b: 48–49). 

To come back to the definition of the term foreignism, let me first refer the 

reader to Mirosława Podhajecka’s (2006: 294) understanding of the term: 

In some cases, they [foreign borrowings] tend to be associated with something deliberately 

foreign and exotic. Such words, called foreignisms, are usually fairly isolated in the 

borrowing language, as they are neither members of a semantic field nor are they selfexplanatory 

from the etymological point of view. Foreignisms in English are generally used 

for special effect, or local colour, or to demonstrate special knowledge. In print, they 

typically appear in italics and are glossed. Foreignisms are often encountered in translations 

of foreign literature. 

In turn, Marek Kuźniak (2009: 95) suggests the following definition of the 

concept foreignism: “the presence of the pronunciation of the language of origin 

constitutes a prerequisite to classifying a particular form as foreign”. 1 Kuźniak 

stresses the importance of distinguishing foreign words and phrases from borrowings. 

Therefore, the linguist does not limit his discussion of foreign words 

and phrases to the above definition but he also concentrates on the typology of 

borrowings and foreignisms. 

Borrowings 

Assimilated lexical items 

Non-assimilated but frequently occurring 

borrowings (unadapted borrowings) 

Citations 

Figure 1. A typology of borrowings proposed by Mańczak Wohlfeld (2006a) 

Thus, Kuźniak (2009: 134) contrasts the typology of borrowings suggested by, 

among others, the present author (2006a – Figure 1) or a similar one put for- 

1 

In his definition of the term foreignism Marek Kuźniak (2009) also takes into account attitudes 

to foreign words which are rather negative.

170 


ward by Ulrich Busse and Manfred Görlach (2007 – Figure 2): These two typologies 

are contrasted with Marek Kuźniak’s proposal (2009: 136): 

Borrowings 

Quotation words, codeswitching, 

foreignisms 

Fremdwörter 

Lehwörter 

Figure 2. 2 A typology of borrowings and foreignesms suggested by Busse and Görlach (2007 

Non-native lexis 

Borrowings 

(Totally adapted items) 

Foreign words and phrases 

‘Unknown’ words 

and phrases 

Figure 3. Non-native lexis as a superordinate category in the proposal of Kuźniak (2009) 

The crucial difference between the earlier typologies and the one suggested 

by Kuźniak lies in the fact that the category “non-native lexis” is elevated to the 

status of the superordinate category, whereas borrowings (totally adapted 

items), foreign words and phrases (not entirely adapted items) as well as “unknown” 

words and phrases (unadapted items) constitute basic level category. 

Which typology is more justified? Is there a need to introduce a distinction 

between a borrowing and a foreignism? We know that both terms, such as borrowing, 

loan or loanword vs. foreign word or foreignism are used in the literature. 

However, it seems that they are often used interchangeably, e.g., there are 

dictionaries of borrowings as well as of foreign words and they do overlap, although 

it is evident that they have been written by professionals. Could it mean 

that their authors are unaware of the above-mentioned distinctions? It seems 

that we cannot provide an answer to this question. Could these terms perhaps be 

better identified by people with only some linguistic background? It is more 

plausible to answer the latter question. 

2 

Note a different arrangement of the discussed categories in Mańczak-Wohlfeld (2006b) and 

in Busse and Görlach (2007).


5. An analysis of the questionnaire 

In order to answer the question concerning the distinction between borrowing/ 

loan/loanword and foreign word/foreignism, we have distributed a questionnaire 

among 34 students of the second year of licentiate studies and the first 

year of master students of the Institute of English Philology at the Jagiellonian 

University (April 2011). The questionnaire consisted of 160 lexical items beginning 

in arbitrarily chosen letters D and J excerpted from the mentioned dictionary 

of the English borrowings in the Polish language (Słownik zapożyczeń 

angielskich w polszczyźnie 2010). It goes without saying that the number of 

lexical items as well as the number of subjects were low but it is believed that 

the research shows the tendency in distinguishing the terms in question very 

well. It is worth stressing that the subjects were students of English philology, 

which means that they knew English well and had some linguistic awareness. 

The students were asked in Polish to identify foreign (i.e., unadapted) words of 

English origin. 3 The results are represented in Table 1: 

Table 1. Identifying the origin of words in the questionnaires of students 

dakron or dacron 25 drajwer or driver 11 

daltonizm dread or dred 10 

damping or dumping 21 dreadnought or drednot 30 

dance 19 dren 4 

dancing 5 drenaż 2 

dandys 8 drenować 1 

dandyzm 7 dres 1 

dansing or dancing 2 dressing 15 

dark room 24 

dresy or dres 

dart 14 drink 1 

darwinizm drink-bar 2 

D-day 25 

drops 

deadline 12 dropszot 24 

deal 18 drugstore 32 

dealer 2 drybler 12 

debel 10 drybling 5 

debeściak dryblować 5 

debugger 25 dryf 6 

debugować 12 dryft 6 

deck 21 dryfter 11 

default 29 DTP 21 

deflacja 1 dubbing 2 

defragmentacja dubleton 21 

defragmentator 5 dum-dum 21 

defragmentować 1 duty-free 24 

3 

The Polish version of the instruction ran as follows: „Proszę zaznaczyć wyrazy, które uważa 

Pan/Pani za niezaadaptowane czyli obce jednostki pochodzenia angielskiego. Oznacza to, że 

jednostki leksykalne, które nie zostaną zaznaczone, uznaje Pan/Pani za zapożyczenia angielskie”.

172 


dejman 25 DVD 2 

dekrepitacja 14 dyktafon 1 

delete 14 

dyskomfort 

demo 2 dyskonter 12 

denim 12 dyskretyzacja 12 

derby 2 dyspeczer 19 

design 4 dywersyfikacja 3 

designer 5 dżem 1 

desktop 13 

dżentelman or gentleman 

desktop publishing 27 dżersej or jersey 8 

detektyw 1 dżet 10 

detoks dżin or gin 1 

developer or deweloper 1 dżingiel or dżingel 11 

dewon 21 dżins or jeans 1 

dezodorant 7 dżokej 2 

dialer 19 dżoker or joker 1 

dial-up 21 dżul 7 

didżej dżungla 1 

digitalizacja or dygitalizacja 6 jacht 

digitalny 13 jachting 8 

digitizer 21 jachtklub 3 

dinghy or dinghy 22 jack 32 

dingo 5 jackpot 17 

DINK 30 jacuzzi 1 

dip 14 jamboree 25 

dipis or displaced person 31 jam session 10 

dirty 26 

jankes 

disc jockey or DJ 4 japiszon 4 

disclaimer 29 jard 3 

discman 5 Java 2 

disco 1 jazz or dżez 2 

discount or dyskont 8 jazz-band or dżezbend 3 

disengagement 33 jazz-jamboree 15 

Disneyland 1 jazzman 5 

dixieland 29 jeep or dżip 2 

DNA jet 11 

dog 19 jet lag 28 

dok 8 jet set 21 

doker 10 jive 6 

dolar jogger 21 

dolby 11 jogging 3 

domena 1 joint or dżoint 2 

domicyl 19 joint venture 22 

donut or doughnut 16 jo-jo or jojo 2 

door-to-door 25 jonagold 16 

doping 6 jonatan 11 

DOS 6 jorkszyr 25 

dotcom 22 joystick or dżojstik 2 

Down 13 juice 20 

downhill 21 jukebox 29 

download 8 jumbo jet 6 

dpi 19 jumper or dżemper 19 

drag or drug 6 jumping 22


drag queen 8 juror 4 

drajw or drive 14 juta 11 

The answers are striking since they show that there is almost no agreement 

on the status of lexical items of English origin. All the respondents agreed that 

there are 15 well-assimilated English borrowings (less than 10 percent of the 

corpus). If, however, we add those items that were marked as foreign by only 

one or two students, the number increases to 26 English loans. The reverse observation 

is also worth noting. No item was considered by everybody to have 

the status of a foreign word. In very few cases (32 subjects), which means almost 

all the respondents, indicated such items. What is even more surprising is 

the fact that some anglicisms which are so well-adapted that they are characterized 

by Polish flexion, e.g., dryblować, debugować or by Polish derivational 

suffixes, e.g., dygitalizacja, dygitalny were recognized as foreign words. 


It seems that the theoretical discussion concerning the differences between 

the discussed terms, which is always needed as it advances sciences, is not related 

to the distinctions known at least to some specialists or to well-educated 

Polish native speakers. 

As mentioned before, this difficulty in distinguishing the two terms: borrowing 

and foreignism is reflected in the lexicography. Thus, some lexicographers 

write dictionaries of foreign words and some of borrowings and both 

types of dictionaries include similar items. This simply implies that the borderline 

between a borrowing and a foreignism is fuzzy. Kuźniak (2009: 98–120) 

quotes many definitions of the term foreignism (or to be more precise, reasons 

for including various items to this category) suggested by different authors of a 

number of English dictionaries of foreign words and phrases. Sometimes they 

seem to be controversial. This is to say that dictionary writers take into account, 

among others, the following factors: an arbitrary or subjective decision to include 

an item (!), frequency of occurrence, a graphemic criterion (presence of 

italics), unfamiliarity of a unit, some degree of foreign orthography, pronunciation 

or flavour, recent adoptions which indicates a diachromic basis (cf. 

Kuźniak 2009: 101–120). On the other hand, as Kuźniak notices some authors 

use the same criteria in reference to borrowings. This is, for instance, Helen 

Boesse’s case (Boesse 1988, quoted after Kuźniak 2009: 121): “The notion of 

foreignness is presented as taken for granted, which practically leads to the discussion 

of a wide spectrum of qualitatively different units ranging from those 

quite well adapted to the English language to others whose presence is rather 

incidental”.

174 


This fuzziness has been also observed in our questionnaire. As the results of 

the questionnaire indicate, the degree of assimilation does not play any role (see 

some examples quoted above). Similarly, the discussed distinction of the two 

terms is not related to the time of the introduction of, in our case, an anglicism 

(e.g., very old loans like dancing, dandys were considered to be foreignisms). 

This difficulty is similar to many unsolved problems in linguistics, e.g., 

there are no satisfactory definitions of such basic terms as the word, sentence, 

clause, etc. Analogically, the discussion reminds us of the question posed in 

Polish linguistics concerning the number of grammatical genders, to which no 

conclusive answer has been ever suggested. 

All in all, it may be concluded that, although we try to provide different 

definitions of the two terms in question or different typologies, in fact the two 

terms are so fuzzy that in practice they are not clearly distinguished either by 

specialists or by well-educated native speakers. We can only state that, in the 

present era of globalization, English will probably continue to influence the 

vocabulary of the Polish language regardless of the status of the lexis (borrowings 

or foreignisms). 

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in English Language and Literature 17), 287–301.

KATARZYNA MOLEK-KOZAKOWSKA 

UNIVERSITY OF OPOLE 

PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN WROCŁAW 

Identity styling through code-mixing in journalistic 

discourse 

ABSTRACT. For the purposes of analyzing the journalistic discourse, style can be defined as 

a cluster of linguistic devices employed in order to fulfill a particular rhetorical function. In 

this study, one such linguistic device – code-mixing – is examined to illustrate its potential 

for identity styling. Code-mixing is the concurrent use of more than one language (variety) in 

one text. According to Nikolas Coupland (2007), identity styling can be realized through 

such linguistic strategies as targeting, framing, voicing, keying and loading. These are used 

here as analytic categories that help to make the connection between the textuality of 

journalistic discourse and the projection of identities. The analysis is based on the Polish 

political journalist Marek Ostrowski’s (2006) book Co nas obchodzi świat. Ściągawka na 

czas chaosu [Who cares for the world: A scrib for the times of chaos], where English loan 

words and phrases are applied frequently and diversely. This typological analysis focuses on 

how Ostrowski’s manner of code-mixing projects specific identities of the author (e.g., as an 

expert, as an insider, or as an entertainer), as well as on the wider implications of English- 

Polish code-mixing in journalistic discourse. 

KEYWORDS. Style, identity, code-mixing, journalistic discourse. 


Modern stylistics and discourse analysis tend to approach the notion of style 

in dynamic rather than essentialist terms, namely as an activity or practice of 

styling. It is through recurrent patterns of discursive practice – acts of styling – 

that people enact their personal identities against the backdrop of social and 

cultural contexts. As regards the analysis of public discourses, such as journalism 

for example, styles are often conceived of as clusters of linguistic devices 

deployed in order to fulfill particular rhetorical functions. One such linguistic 

device – code-mixing – is examined here to illustrate its potential for identity 

styling. Code-mixing is the concurrent use of more than one language (variety) 

in one text. The analysis is based on the Polish political journalist Marek Ostrowski’s 

(2006) book Co nas obchodzi świat. Ściągawka na czas chaosu [Who 

cares for the world: A scrib for the times of chaos], in which the sheer number 

and diversity of loan words and phrases from English (and to a lesser extent 

from French) merit special critical attention. The analysis focuses on how Ostrowski’s 

manner of code-mixing is likely to project specific identities (of the 

author as well as the reader). The analytic categories used in this study to assess 


178 

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska 

the expressive/impressive potential of style are Coupland’s (2007) notions of 

targeting, framing, voicing, keying and loading, as they help to make the connection 

between the textuality of journalistic discourse and the projection of 

identities. Finally, the study considers the question whether Polish political 

journalism can do without English in the age of global media, and if not, what 

the likely effects (not only in terms of identity construction) of such language 

mixing are. 

2. Style and styling 

In late modernity, social identities are becoming more and more multilayered. 

The membership to social collectivities has been more a matter of choice 

than determination, and such social categories of affiliation as nationhood, ethnicity, 

class, religion, age group, and even gender have been demonstrated to be 

electable and performable. It can be assumed that the need to express various 

compound and hybrid identities has instigated ever more intense language 

change, with sociolinguists trying to capture its fluidities and functionalities. 

That is why they postulate to adopt the notion of style, or rather its more dynamic 

counterpart, namely, styling, to study the identity-related linguistic variation 

(cf. Rampton 1995, Coupland 2007). 

The notion of style has been fairly well delimited and made applicable in 

social sciences, as well as cultural and media studies (Hebdige 1979). However, 

in linguistics the category of style is still contested and notoriously difficult to 

apply for larger comparative analyses. Within communication studies, discourse 

studies, semiotics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics, the notion of style has been 

variously labeled. It has been conceptualized, for example, in terms of activity 

type (Levinson 1979), communicative style (Selting 1999), rhetorical style 

(Fairclough 2000), language style (Machin & van Leeuwen 2005), or sociolinguistic 

style (Coupland 2007). As linguistic styles signify meanings, project 

identities and express values verbally, David Machin and Theo van Leeuwen 

(2005) see them as tools indicating not only unique personal qualities but also 

group ideologies and even consumption patterns typical of particular lifestyles. 

Language styles tend to be heterogeneous “composites of connotations” (2005: 

587), which may well be deliberately contrived. That is why Coupland (2007) 

distinguishes between expressive and impressive styles. The former are applied 

relatively unconsciously and may inadvertently signal a speaker’s individual, 

regional or social traits; the latter are designed to make a specific impression on 

a listener and thus are related to stylization, i.e., achieving a specific effect or 

reaction by applying particular linguistic devices. 

For the purposes of this study, it is important to point that the notion of style 

is functional and represents speakers’ “meaningful choices made in order to

Identity styling through code-mixing in journalistic discourse 179 

achieve particular effects or to suggest particular interpretations” (Selting 1999: 

1). What is more, a “style is not an invariable way of using language, it is rather 

a mixture of different ways of using language, a distinctive repertoire” (Fairclough 

2000: 96). Yet, those “mixtures” of linguistic devices are not at all combined 

out of random and incidental elements, since many stylistic features (e.g., 

registers, semantic macrostructures, syntactic patterns, lexical choices) are to 

some extent constrained by institutional contexts and prescribed by the texts’ 

generic requirements. It is assumed here that languages’ resources may be mustered 

to perform, or to style, an identity. The analysis of journalistic discourse 

undertaken here concerns the linguistic styling of personal and professional 

identities through written political commentary. Out of a range of resources for 

styling, one – code-mixing – is examined, in order to see how it constructs specific 

discourse identities. 

3. Determinants of identity styling 

It needs to be stressed that a way of speaking or a style of writing is not 

a simple index of one’s identity: various identities may be more or less consciously 

performed through stylization (Butler 1990; Cameron & Kulick 2003; 

Block 2007). The performance of identity in journalistic discourse is subject to 

constraints of public display as well as to social and cultural conventions of 

reception. Most stylisticians are against reductionist approaches to styling identity: 

“Language users both draw on and create conventionalized associations 

between linguistic form and social meaning to construct their own and others’ 

identity” (Bucholtz & Hall 2004: 478). This also means that one can express 

oneself “like an expert”, “like a celebrity”, or “like a leader” without being one. 

An act of identity styling through language is projective and its social contextualization 

is highly contingent. To grasp this complexity, Coupland (2007: 

111–115) proposes recognizing the following processes involved in styling: 

targeting, framing, voicing, keying and loading. Targeting is connected with the 

construction of a persona of a chosen discourse participant, mostly the author or 

the recipient, sometimes the third party. Targeted identities may be personal or 

professional (“this is how a ‘real’ reporter speaks”), individual or collective 

(“this is the way we, the Polish, are”). In this study, code-mixing will be demonstrated 

to work towards the author’s self-styling as an “expert” in order to 

increase the authoritativeness of his claims. By implication, in written discourse, 

self-styling by the author as a “teacher” determines the status of the 

target readers as “learners”. 

The second process, framing, is a key determinant of identity styling. It is 

connected with how the speaker has made a specific identity aspect salient 

through the choice of linguistic devices. Discursive frames have both an iden-

180 


tificational and relational value. By combining and applying certain semiotic 

features, such as phonetic variables, syntactic structures or vocabulary options, 

the author may activate a given frame for the communicative encounter, for 

example that of an interview rather than a conversation. Thus, the author can 

frame the discourse in terms of the genre applied, the speech act performed, or 

the level of formality in register. With respect to the relational aspect of framing, 

the stylistic choices taken by the author may be used to signal the implied 

distance between the participants, or their familiarity with the subject. Personal, 

professional and relational identities can be pre-figured in the discourse with 

certain stylistic choices, as has already been documented in the case of “girl 

talk” and “queer talk” (Rampton 1995), “teacher talk” (Block 2007), or “business 

talk” (Coupland 2007). In this study, the “educational” frame has been 

activated by entitling the book of political commentary as “a scrib”. It has been 

designed to make this particular journalistic text relatively accessible to broader 

audiences, perhaps in opposition to other serious or scholarly texts on international 

politics. 

Voicing refers to how authentic the speaker appears to be in relation to his 

identity. By closely following the prescriptive norms of a given discourse community 

(e.g., journalists), one loses an opportunity to “voice one’s individuality”. 

Likewise, by quoting only other people’s words, one is not able to express 

one’s own stance. Conversely, one can use public outlets to “voice” one’s opinion, 

insight and knowledge. In journalistic discourse both types of voicing are 

permissible – for reporters and columnists respectively. Nonetheless, with the 

rise of “celebrity journalism”, the role of self-styling has increased. In the competitive 

media market, a journalist needs to write in such a way as to stand out 

from the crowd. Once a journalist becomes recognized, he/she needs to keep up 

this reputation by cultivating a unique personal writing style. Sometimes such 

celebrity persona needs to be managed through contrived stylistic devices, such 

as memorable loans and coinages. 

Keying is the tone or the degree of seriousness of the communicative encounter, 

from banter and teasing through light-hearted irony and witticism, to 

sarcasm and ridicule (all of which can be found in Ostrowski’s book). Often 

instances of verbal play involve personal display of one’s sense of humor and 

intelligence. Importantly, identity effects are usually instigated by connotative 

potential of linguistic signs rather than their denotation. In this study, it will be 

of interest whether the use of code-mixing is a function of the informative content 

of the exposition, a playful and entertaining design, or a stylistic ploy to 

project desired identities. 

Finally, loading refers to “the level of a speaker’s investment in an identity 

being negotiated” (Coupland 2007: 114). One might try to style, even stylize, 

certain identities through an intricate design of linguistic elements. This is


somewhat related to the pragmalinguistic rules behind “doing face work” – 

appearing to the others in a positive light and not allowing to be imposed upon. 

Specifically, associations of prestige could be conveyed by the use of hypercorrect 

standard variety, elaborate structure, technical jargon or foreignized lexis, 

as is the case in the present study. 

4. Code-mixing in Marek Ostrowski’s book: A typology 

The following is a typological analysis of identified examples of codemixing 

in Marek Ostrowski’s (2006) book of political commentary Co nas obchodzi 

świat. Ściągawka na czas chaosu [Who cares for the world: A scrib for 

the times of chaos] (pp. 305). However, the analysis is based on examples garnered 

only from pages 105-305. This has been done: (1) to make the number of 

examples manageable for the purposes of this study; (2) to exclude cases, presumably 

in early chapters, where the author may have introduced and explained 

foreign terminology; (3) to ensure the sample is representative for styling. The 

overall number of tokens of code-mixing in the sample is 102 (i.e., English appears 

on average on every second page). All the instances are referenced below 

in brackets, but only some have been chosen for exemplifications. 

4.1. Translated loans 

The first and most numerous type of code-mixing (42 out of 102) is when 

the author introduces an English word or phrase and translates it into Polish. 

One case is when Ostrowski quotes some memorable English lines, sayings or 

proverbs (2006: 112, 130, 149, 167, 210, 218, 282, 300). These may express the 

original thought in such a concise manner that using their Polish equivalents 

would not be equally rhetorically potent: 

[1] There are no free lunches – nie ma obiadów za darmo – jak mawiają anglosascy 

biznesmeni (130); 1 

[2] Demokracja większościowa, w której winner takes all, zwycięzca wyborów bierze 

wszystko (300). 2 

By weaving English quotes into his line of argumentation, Ostrowski 

achieves an effect of staying close to the authentic ways of political thinking 

and journalistic expression in the Anglo-American world. What may bother us 

is the inconsistent glossing system; italics or inverted commas are used to indi- 

1 

2 

There are no free lunches – there are no free lunches – as Anglo-Saxon businessmen would 

say. 

Majority democracy, where [the] winner takes all, the winner of the election takes it all.

182 


cate original lines, whereas the Polish translation and/or explanation is variously 

signaled with dashes, commas, brackets or inverted commas. 

However, sometimes the Polish equivalent is a word or phrase that is a popular 

and readily available term or collocation (2006: 107, 108, 110, 111, 204), 

so introducing its English version first seems redundant from the point of view 

of textual progression: 

[3] Intelektualiści oceniają ją [opinię publiczną] bardzo marnie, lecz obowiązująca political 

correctness, poprawność polityczna powstrzymuje ich od ostrych i jednoznacznych ocen 

(107); 3 

[4] Czas śmiertelnego zagrożenia Anglii Winston Churchill określił mianem finest hour, 

najintensywniejsza, najświetniejsza godzina (111). 4 

The above examples illustrate Ostrowski’s manner of styling, as English 

used here seems superfluous, and not as an indispensable component of his 

argumentation. 

Yet another common way of code-mixing in Ostrowski’s text is providing 

the reader with English terms or expressions after the point has been made in 

Polish (2006: 165, 203, 237, 247, 287). This type of introducing English into 

the sentence may be criticized for interrupting the textual progression with unnecessary 

glossing and afterthoughts: 

[5] Pieniądze przekazywane bezpośrednio kandydatom (tzw. hard money, twarde pieniądze), 

a dowolne sumy na rozbudowę partii (tzw. soft money, miękkie pieniądze) (203). 5 

[6] Tę druga grupę [polityków] nazwał twardymi, bezwzględnymi graczami (ang. hardball 

practitioners) (287). 6 

This type of code-mixing can be interpreted as an attempt at additional 

elaboration, or as a deliberate choice to offer the readers exposure to English 

terminology. This may well have an educational function, but it may also impress 

as unnecessary patronizing in a book that is supposed to be popular rather 

than academic. 

Finally, there is a large collection of cases in which Ostrowski uses a term 

or phrase originating from English political or journalistic jargon (2006: 127, 

151, 155, 156, 158, 159, 167, 168, 169, 210, 216, 222, 244, 264, 280, 286): 

3 

4 

5 

6 

Intellectuals do not hold it [public opinion] in high esteem, but political correctness, political 

correctness prevents them from voicing direct negative opinions. 

When England was in mortal danger, Winston Churchill said it was her finest hour, the most 

intense, the best moment. 

Money given directly to candidates (the so-called hard money, hard money) and sums presented 

for the development of the party (the so-called soft money, soft money). 

The other group [of politicians] was called tough, unscrupulous players (Eng. hardball practitioners).


[7] Nixon, który zdobył sobie niezbyt chlubny przydomek – Tricky Dicky – … coś w rodzaju 

Rysia Kłamczucha (155); 7 

[8] Przystojny John był okazem kogoś, o kim w Ameryce mówi się nie tyle playboy, co 

womanizer, czyli pies na kobiety (222). 8 

As can be seen above, Ostrowski does struggle to provide the reader with 

the exact meaning denoted and connoted by the English terms. He often uses 

enumerations, circumlocutions, metaphors or explanations (cf. the recurrence of 

the word “czyli” [that is]), or his own peculiar ideas for translating them (cf. 

“Rysio Kłamczuch” for “Tricky Dicky”). He sometimes signals that the Polish 

translations are not as apt as the English phrases using “coś w rodzaju” [something 

like], or “tak zwane” [so called]. As there are evident problems in rendering 

the meaning, or the meaning is rendered inaccurately, one can only speculate 

why the author has chosen to resort to code-mixing here. One interpretation 

could be that he has done it precisely for identity-styling effects. 

A borderline case of translated code-mixing is when Ostrowski attempts to 

elucidate the meaning, usage or etymology of some English phrasemes or acronyms 

(2006: 119, 124, 127, 128, 135, 284): 

[9] „Oczywiście ...to jest off” … (z angielskiego: „off the record” – nie do publikacji 

w przeciwieństwie do „on the record” – można cytować z nazwiskiem) (119); 9 

[10] JDAM, czyli joint direct attack munitions, inteligentna amunicja (135), GPS czyli 

z kolei general positioning system (135). 10 

There is certainly a reason why English acronyms or idiomatic expressions 

should be explained in the text, notably for readers not familiar with specific 

technologies. However, the side-lined, “off-the-cuff” way of such explanations 

may be either insulting to readers’ intelligence or making them even more confused. 

7 

8 

9 

10 

Nixon, who was nicknamed scornfully Tricky Dicky – … something like Ricky the liar. 

Handsome John was someone who in America is no longer called playboy, but womanizer, 

which means a women-chasing dog. 

“Of course… this is off” … (from English “off the record” – not to be published as opposed 

to “on the record” – may be quoted with the speaker’s name). 

DAM, which is joint direct attack munitions, intelligent munitions; GPS, in turn, means 

general positioning system.

184 


4.2. Untranslated loans 

Examples of code-mixing where English is not translated are not uncommon 

(25 out of 102). These may be the most problematic for the readership not 

fully conversant with English. 

There is a set of instances where English terms, names or labels are inserted 

into sentences to illustrate a specific mechanism inherent in American or British 

politics, campaigning or journalism (Ostrowski 2006: 123, 130, 136, 155, 162, 

199, 205, 223, 231, 234, 238, 262): 

[11] Jedynym przywódcą wystawianym do prawdziwych starć w trudnych debatach publicznych 

jest brytyjski premier w tak zwanym Question time w Izbie Gmin (162); 11 

[12] Kandydat Kennedy zatrudnił też prywatnego pollstera – niczym prywatnego detektywa 

(223). 12 

Although the author clearly introduces an English loan word or phrase 

(which is signaled with italicized print), he neglects to provide a Polish equivalent 

or translation, assuming that the reader must be acquainted with it. Indeed, 

while looking for some clues as to the meaning of the English terms in the immediate 

co-text, the reader might in some cases find relevant information to 

make an informed guess, yet in many cases such guessing might prove futile or 

produce wrong conclusions. 

The comprehension problems mentioned above may be even greater with 

non-translated quotations (cf. Ostrowski 2006: 139, 156, 202, 210, 289): 

[13] They can run, but they can’t hide – powiedział Reagan zapowiadając ściganie terrorystów 

… Była to znana kwestia filmowa (156); 13 

[14] [w musicalu Kabaret] śpiewali: money makes the world go round, world go round, 

world go round – i tego tłumaczyć nikomu nie trzeba ani z angielskiego, ani z żadnego 

innego języka (201). 14 

Again, the author seems to be assuming that the intended reader is both 

familiar with and fond of such English set phrases and sayings. Apparently, 

people who do not know the English language or American and British history 

and culture well enough are not qualified to read Ostrowski’s writings. 

11 

12 

13 

14 

The only leader facing tough public debate is the British Prime Minister in the so called 

Question time in the House of Commons. 

Candidate Kennedy hired a private pollster – like he would hire a private detective. 

They can run, but they can’t hide – Reagan said promising to capture the terrorists … It was 

a well known film line. 

In The Cabaret musical they sang: money makes the world go round, world go round, world 

go round – and this needs no translating either from English or from other languages.


Strikingly, some sentences involving English words, even if these are typed 

in italics in the book, are assumed to be self-explanatory (cf. Ostrowski 2006: 

111, 154, 157, 158, 205, 240, 285, 299): 

[15] Przemówienia, z reguły przygotowane przez utalentowanego dziennikarza, czy nawet 

pisarza, speech writera (154); 15 

[16] Kandydat na prezydenta … występuje w tickecie wyborczym ze swoim spodziewanym 

wiceprezydentem (205). 16 

Some of these loan words have Polish inflectional endings that match Polish 

syntactic rules, the sound effect of which are rather awkward. One may have 

a hesitant feeling that the author has not revised his text adequately to eliminate 

clumsy expressions and has not thought of suitable Polish equivalents. Alternatively, 

the author may be styling his political commentary to achieve a “spoken” 

mode of expression, which is, admittedly, much easier to follow than tightly 

written political discourse. 

4.3. Assimilations 

The third main type of code-mixing is a set of expressions with assimilated 

loan words (19 out of 102). These English borrowings are never signaled with 

italics, often inflected and incorporated into the Polish sentences. 

For example, Ostrowski uses English proper names, despite the fact that 

Polish has their equivalents, as in “D-Day” (166) or “Commonwealth” (169). 

Some loan words (party) retain their English spelling, which together with their 

Polish inflectional endings produces hybrid words (in bold), as in (Ostrowski 

2006: 119, 138, 200, 224, 234, 301): 

[17] W formie briefingów, backgroundów dla lepszego zrozumienia problemu (119); 17 

[18] Pracodawcy [zapewniali], że nie będzie lokautów (301). 18 

Some examples represent relatively long-standing and generally accepted 

assimilations of etymologically foreign words into Polish (Ostrowski 2006: 116, 

193, 196, 198, 217, 218, 219, 302): 

[19] Transparentne instytucje publiczne zaangażowane w walkę z korupcją (193); 19 

[20] Dwie minuty nie pozwalają na niuansowanie problemów ani ocen (217). 20 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

Speeches are prepared by a talented journalist or writer, a speechwriter. 

A presidential candidate appears on one ticket with his expected vice-president. 

As briefings or backgrounds for a better understanding of the problem. 

Employers [promised] there would be no lockouts. 

Transparent public institutions engaged in the fight against corruption. 

Two minutes is not enough to nuance problems or evaluations.

186 


However, there are some unnecessary English intrusions, which are hard to 

account for (2006: 219, 221, 278): 

[21] Mr. Bystry za każdym razem wali się na deski nokautowany przez Mr. Fajnego (219); 21 

[22] British Parliament produkuje nie mniejszą liczbę przepisów niż inne parlamenty (278). 22 

The conclusion is that the examples of code-mixing of this type are most 

likely to be indicative of the author’s self-styling. 

4.4. Misuses 

The fourth group of examples (16 out of 102) is a collection of cases that in 

most circumstances would be interpreted as misuses resulting from crosslinguistic 

and cross-cultural interference. One sub-type of code-mixing here is 

false cognates, which are words that have similar form, but different or only 

partly overlapping meanings in both languages, see Ostrowski (2006: 169, 170, 

176, 182, 187, 249). 

[23] Zdumiewające jak mistycznych i sensualnych pojęć używa Pimlott (169); 23 

[24] Opisuje rozmaite przekręty finansowe tak detalicznie (249). 24 

By examining the co-texts of the above words, one may conclude that what 

the author means when he uses sensualny (from “sensual”) is zmysłowy, and 

detaliczny (from “detailed”) is in fact szczegółowy. It seems that in the Polish 

lexicon there are somewhat better alternatives to the cognates chosen by the 

author, which add difficulty to extracting the appropriate meaning. 

Another problem is Ostrowski’s (2006: 162, 283) manner of translating 

English idioms and cultural references. Idiomatic phrases are not usually translated 

into the target language, as they do not carry the same connotations, evaluations 

and symbolic associations as the source language, as is the case with the 

noun phrase porządek dziobania [“pecking order”] (283). What can also be 

confusing is the fact that Ostrowski (2006: 221, 226) uses the same word agenda, 

once in accordance with its Polish sense – as a synonym to agencja 

[“agency”], and some other time in its English usage – “an item to be discussed 

in an official meeting”. One more identifiable type of code-mixing is 

represented by transpositions of historical references (e.g., the Founding Fathers, 

the battle of Gettysburg, the Great Communicator) that are likely to be 

generally known in the Anglo-American world, but which mean little to Polish 

21 

22 

23 

24 

Mr. Clever is always knocked out by Mr. Cute. 

British Parliament produces no less legislation than other parliaments. 

It is astounding to see what mystical and sensual concepts are used by Pimlott. 

He describes financial tricks in such a detailed way.


readers when translated verbatim and without annotation (cf. Ostrowski 2006: 

108, 165, 191, 207, 208, 219). 

5. Implied identities and projected stylistic effects 

It has been noted that styles can be not only expressive of identities but also 

impressive, that is effecting particular reactions and interpretations in targeted 

recipients. This study aims to illustrate how the variety and extent of English 

loans in Marek Ostrowski’s book work towards projecting “model” identities of 

discourse participants – the “author’s persona” and the “implied reader”. 

When taken cumulatively, and in accordance with the subtitle of the book 

(The scrib for the times of chaos), one of the key identities constructed within 

the text is that of the author being an “instructor”. The word “scrib” means a 

kind of selective, simplified and digested compilation of information needed to 

become acquainted with the basics of a given subject. It is also implied that the 

contemporary world is so “chaotic” that it is incomprehensible to most of us 

without expert assistance. Ostrowski seems to be styling himself as such an 

“expert”. By using various devices, particularly journalistic jargon and English 

borrowings, Ostrowski acts as an “insider” sharing his first-hand knowledge and 

insights with us. In turn, we are expected to accept his observations, to agree 

with his conclusions and to learn from his worldly experience. 

However, to do this we have to be conversant with English, with which the 

author “enriches” his discourse. But as shown above, many examples of codemixing 

actually impede textual progression or appear to be superfluous. Such 

cases are “loaded” with identity effects: displays of intelligence and wit resulting 

from playful arrangements of connotations. Sadly, sometimes the author 

does not seem to care if his points are actually understood, since some English 

inserts are never translated. To a non-English speaking reader, this may appear 

as elitist and condescending. At other occasions, the author’s use of English 

intensifies the projection of a person who is resigned to and disillusioned with 

some political abuses inherent in capitalist democracies. His “keying” of apparent 

cynicism may well be contrived in order to preclude any intimation of naivety. 

It can be noted that the author often legitimizes his conclusions through the 

appeal to his experience as an international journalist and through his personal, 

first-hand reporting style. That is why he is likely to use the original labels and 

concepts that have more resonance in English than Polish. For one, he takes 

advantage of the prestige English enjoys in political journalism, for another, he 

insinuates that many concepts are not renderable into Polish without some loss 

in meaning. At the same time, however, he indulges in the “easy journalism” of 

personal stylization without considering the actual needs of the audience. Here,

188 


despite the book’s intention to acquaint the general reader with the main 

mechanisms of international politics and media representations thereof, the author 

seems to be excluding non-elite readership with his penchant for codemixing. 

Alternatively, it could also be assumed that the author “performs” certain 

identities, notably that of a “talker” rather than a “writer” or an “entertainer” 

rather than an “instructor”, which is a useful promotional ploy. In fact in 

the preface, the author admits to having used foreign words a little out of snobbishness, 

but mainly because it has been “difficult” for him to translate some 

examples of journalistic jargon (cf. Ostrowski 2006: 8). 

6. Conclusion 

Marek Ostrowski’s book makes for insightful, lucid and brisk reading. Undoubtedly, 

it manifests the author’s in-depth knowledge of political reality, 

coming from his worldly experience and resulting in intelligent, even if controversial, 

lines or argumentation. Notwithstanding that, the book also seems to 

imply that Polish is not a good enough linguistic code to represent adequately 

the state of modern politics. 

In consequence, such writing upholds the supremacy of English in political 

journalism. In addition, the book seems to perpetuate the notion of “celebrity 

journalism”, according to which some columnists are awarded a privileged 

status. They are not expected to be subjected to the conventions of reporting 

dictated by audience needs and requirements. For most celebrity journalists, 

keeping their reputation is tantamount to deploying stylistic idiosyncrasies. 

Marek Ostrowski’s excellence in covering international politics is predicated on 

his immersion in the international community and its lingua franca – English. 

But by abusing code-mixing for identity styling, the author may appear counterproductive 

– as elitist, aloof and self-absorbed rather than as self-effacingly 

assisting the readers to reach their own conclusions. 

The question that may arise at this point is related to the role of English in 

Polish political journalism. Is the fact that code-mixing is extensively practiced 

by a renown journalist in a popular book an indication that, in the era of globalization, 

journalistic discourse must be increasingly multilingual? 

Is it still possible to accurately report on international politics in Poland 

without resorting to anglicisms? Even if we accept that code-mixing is not yet 

a commonly used stylistic strategy, this study has demonstrated that it is being 

increasingly legitimized for identity effects in journalistic discourse. The danger 

is that, with fewer and fewer objections from editors and audiences, it will become 

naturalized in Polish political commentary.


References 

Block, David 2007: Second Language Identities. London: Continuum. 

Bucholtz, Mary, Kira Hall 2004: Theorizing identity in language and sexuality approach. Language 

and Society 33, 469–515. 

Butler, Judith 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. 

Cameron, Deborah, Don Kulick 2003: Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Coupland, Nikolas 2007: Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Fairclough, Norman 2000: New Labour, New Language? London: Routledge. 

Hebdige, Dick 1979: Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. 

Levinson, Stephen 1979: Activity types and language. Linguistics 17 (5/6): 356–399. 

Machin, David, Theo van Leeuwen 2005: Language style and lifestyle: The case of a global 

magazine. Media, Culture and Society 27, 577–600. 

Ostrowski, Marek 2006: Co nas obchodzi świat. Ściągawka na czas chaosu [Who cares for the 

world: A scrib for the times of chaos]. Warszawa: Trio. 

Rampton, Ben 1995: Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman 

(Real Language Series). 

Selting, Margaret 1999: Communicative style. In: Jeff Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert 

(eds.) 1999: Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1–33.

DENISE SCHMANDT-BESSERAT 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN 

Numeracy before literacy 

ABSTRACT. The Near Eastern tokens used as counters between 7500–3100 BC reveal that 

an Age of Counting preceded the Age of Writing. During the Age of Counting data 

processing was concrete and tactile, but in the following Age of Writing data was dealt with 

in abstraction. The development of civilization – the stage of cultural development at which 

writing is attained – required the acquisition of complex cognitive processes such as 

abstraction. In this paper I analyze the development of the capacity of abstraction in the 

ancient Near East between 7500–3000 BC as reflected by tokens and writing. 

KEY WORDS. Counting, concreteness, tactility, writing, abstraction, cognition. 

1. Counting and the redistribution of economy in the ancient 

Near East 

In the ancient Near East, agriculture was associated with the formation of 

a redistribution economy. Based on studies of modern archaic societies and of 

the pre- and proto-historic Near East, it can be assumed that the Neolithic 

community leaders collected at regular intervals a share of the farmers’ flocks 

and harvests. In turn, the accumulated communal goods were redistributed for 

the benefit of the group. Some were allocated to those who could not support 

themselves, but the greatest part was earmarked for the performance of rituals 

and festivals in honor of the gods. In other words, with agriculture came the 

need for counting and accounting in order to control and manage community 

surpluses. 

Before analyzing their cognitive significance, I briefly describe tokens and 

writing, the two accounting systems created to compute entries and expenditures 

of goods in kind during the first four millennia of the Near Eastern redistribution 

economy. The earliest system with tokens appeared about 7500 BC. It 

consisted of counters, about 1–2 cm across, modeled in clay in multiple, often 

geometric shapes such as cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, tetrahedrons, ovoids, 

triangles and quadrangles (Figure 1). Some of them bore markings in the form 

of incised lines and impressed dots. In 7000 BC, because the system exclusively 

recorded goods, there were only some 10 token shapes, each representing one of 

the farm products levied at the time, such as grain, oil and domesticated animals. 


192 

Denise Schmandt-Besserat 

Figure 1. Plain tokens, Mesopotamia, present day Iraq, ca. 4000 BC. The cone, sphere and 

disk represented a series of grain measures; the tetrahedron stood for a unit of labor. 

Courtesy Denise Schmandt-Besserat, The University of Texas at Austin. 

The prehistoric administration used tokens to record three types of information. 

The shape and markings of the artifacts indicated, first, the type of good 

computed, and second, the quantity thereof. For example, both the cone and the 

sphere stood for grain but in two different quantities probably equivalent to 

a “small” and a “large” basket of grain, and an ovoid with a circular incision 

represented a jar of oil. It should be well understood that, at the time, measures 

were not yet calibrated. They consisted of the traditional containers used to 

handle goods in everyday life, such as different-sized baskets, jars, juglets, 

bowls or cups. It is even conceivable that the tokens represented such casual 

units as an “armful” or a “handful”. The system, therefore, only dealt with approximate 

quantities comparable to to-day’s “carafe” of wine or “cup” of coffee. 

Lastly, the tokens recorded the number of units of goods received or dispensed 

in one-to-one correspondence. In other words, two small units of grain 

were shown with two cones, three cones stood for three small units of grain, and 

so on. 

There can be no doubt that an unceasing cross-fertilization took place between 

the economy’s increasing demands and the development of counting and 

accounting. For example, the number of token shapes increased to about 350 

around 3500 BC, when urban workshops started contributing to the redistribution 

economy. Some of the new tokens stood for raw materials such as wool and 

metal, and others for finished products among which textiles, garments, jewelry,

Numeracy before literacy 193 

bread, beer and honey (Figure 2). These so-called “complex” tokens sometimes 

assumed the shapes of the items they symbolized such as garments, miniature 

vessels, tools and furniture. These artifacts took far more skill to model compared 

to the former geometric shapes such as cones and spheres, suggesting that 

specialists were then manufacturing them (Schmandt-Besserat 1992). 

Figure 2. Complex tokens representing, from left to right, one garment, one ingot of metal, 

one jar of oil, one sheep, one measure of honey, (?) and one garment, from Susa, Iran, ca. 

3300 BC. Courtesy Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités Orientales, Paris 

By 3300 BC, tokens were still the only accounting device to run the redistribution 

economy now administered at the temple by priestly rulers. The communal 

offerings in kind continued but the types of goods, their amount and the 

frequency of delivery to the temple became regulated, which meant that noncompliance 

was penalized. The response to the new challenge was the invention 

of envelopes where tokens representing a delinquent account could be kept safely 

until the debt was paid. The tokens standing for the amounts due were placed 

in hollow clay balls and, in order to show the content of the envelopes, the 

accountants created markings by impressing the tokens on the wet clay surface 

before enclosing them (Figure 3). The cones and spheres symbolizing the measures 

of grain became wedge-shaped and circular impressed signs (Figure 4). 

Within a century, about 3200 BC, the envelopes filled with counters and their 

corresponding signs were replaced by solid clay tablets, which continued the 

system of signs impressed with tokens. By innovating a new way of keeping

194 


records of goods with signs, the envelopes created the bridge between tokens 

and writing. 

Figure 3. Envelope showing the imprint of three lenticular disks and three cylinders (= 33 

sheep) ca. 3200 BC. Courtesy Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités Orientales, 

Paris 

Figure 4. Tablet showing the impression of spheres and cones representing measures of 

grain, from Godin Tepe, Iran, ca. 3200 BC. Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler Young, Royal Ontario 

Museum, Toronto, Canada 

With the formation of city-states, ca. 3200–3100 BC, the redistribution economy 

reached a regional scale. The unprecedented volume of goods to administer 

challenged writing to evolve in form, content and, as will be discussed later, in 

cognitive ability. First, about 3100 BC, the form of the signs changed with the 

use of a pointed stylus that sketched more accurately the shape of the most in-


tricate tokens and their particular markings. The sign for oil, for example, clearly 

reproduced the ovoid token with a circular line (Figure 5). 

Figure 5. Pictographic tablet featuring an account of 33 measures of oil, (circular = 10, 

wedges = 1) from Godin Tepe, Iran, ca. 3100 B.C. Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler Young, Royal Ontario 

Museum, Toronto, Canada 

Second, plurality was no longer indicated by one-to-one correspondence. 

Numbers of jars of oil were not shown by repeating the sign for “jar of oil” as 

many times as the number of units to record. The sign for jar of oil was preceded 

by numerals – signs indicating numbers. Surprisingly, no new signs were 

created to symbolize the numerals but the impressed signs for grain took on 

a numerical value. The wedge that formerly represented a small measure of 

grain came to mean “1” and the circular sign, formerly representing a large 

measure of grain meant “10”. 

Figure 6. Example of the rebus principle used to record names

196 


Third, about 3000 BC, the state bureaucracy required the names of the recipients 

or donors of the goods listed be entered on the tablets. And to record 

the personal name of these individuals, new signs were created that stood for 

sounds – phonograms. The phonograms were sketches of things easy to draw 

that stood for the sound of the word they evoked. The syllables or words composing 

an individual’s name were written like a rebus. The drawing of a man 

stood for the sound lu and that of the mouth for ka, which were the sounds of 

the words for man and mouth in the Sumerian language. For example, the modern 

name Lucas, could have been written with the two signs mentioned above 

“lu” + “ka” (Figure 6). 

The state administration could no longer deal with the approximate quantities 

of informal containers and this prompted the standardization of measures. 

The resulting adjustment in accounting was to assign new signs for the standard 

measures of grains (ban, bariga, etc.), liquids (sila), and surface areas (ikus, 

eshe3, bur, etc.). The standardization of measures brought accounting to an 

unprecedented precision, while putting an end to dealing with informal handmanufactured 

containers (Figure 7). 

Figure 7. The representation of “one sila of oil” in 3500 BC, 3100 BC and 3000 BC 

During four millennia and a half, from 7500–3000 BC, tokens and writing 

constituted the backbone of the Near Eastern redistribution economy. Both re-


cording systems were closely related in material, form, and function. They 

shared clay as a raw material; the token shapes were perpetuated by the written 

signs; both kept track of similar quantities of the same types of agricultural and 

industrial goods for an identical socio-economic function. The difference between 

the systems was cognitive, namely the degree of abstraction used to manipulate 

data. 

2. Tokens and abstraction 

The cognitive principle at work in the token system was abstraction, i.e., the 

dissociation of one feature from a collection. Each token abstracted goods in 

two ways. First, their shape abstracted one of the types of merchandise levied, 

for example animals, grain, or oil. Second, the shape abstracted the quantity of 

merchandise. The cone abstracted the unit corresponding to a “small” basket vs. 

the sphere that abstracted a “large” basket. 

Otherwise the token system remained concrete in form, content and in the 

representation of plurality (Malafouris 2010). The tokens were solid and tangible 

artifacts. They could be grasped with the fingers and held in the hand. Each 

token stood for a concrete entity, namely, one unit of staple goods. Note that an 

ovoid token stood for a “jar of oil”, and a sphere for a “large basket of grain” 

which means that, as in daily life, the product (oil, grain) and their usual container 

(jar, basket), were fused into a single concept. 

The token system dealt with plurality concretely, in one-to-one correspondence 

– as it is in the real world. In nature, a forest consists of a multitude of 

single trees; a flock is a set of single animals. 

3. Tokens and cognition 

The true cognitive significance of the token system was to foster the manipulation 

of data. Compared to oral information passed on from one individual 

to the other, tokens were extra-somatic, that is outside the human mind. As a 

result, the Neolithic accountants were no longer the passive recipients of someone 

else’s knowledge, but they took an active part in encoding and decoding 

data. 

The token system substituted miniature counters for the real goods, which 

eliminated their bulk and weight and allowed dealing with them in abstraction 

by. As a result, heavy baskets of grains and animals difficult to control could be 

easily counted and recounted. The accountants could add, subtract, multiply, 

and divide by manually moving and removing counters.

198 


Patterning, the presentation of data in particular configurations, also promoted 

the abstraction of particular features. For example, the tokens representing 

the budget for a festival could be ordered in columns abstracting the merchandise 

according to its types, donors, entries and expenditures, and intended 

use, i.e., for particular rituals. The relative value of merchandise could be abstracted 

by lining up units of greater value above those of lesser value. For instance, 

spheres, standing for large measures of grain could be placed above the 

cones, representing small measures of grain. It is well possible that the geometric 

lay out of operations such as adding two tokens to two tokens, and three 

tokens to three tokens, and so on, helped the conceptualization of abstract numbers 

(Justus 1999a: 56, 64; Hoyrup 1994: 70). 

Finally, because the clay tokens could be manufactured at will and stored 

indefinitely they abstracted goods from time. Consequently, accountants could 

manage merchandise independently of their current status. For instance, quantities 

of grain could be accounted for whether they were still in the fields or harvested, 

stored in granaries or in transit, delivered or promised. 

In sum, the immense value of the token system was in promoting the acquisition 

of new cognitive skills that capitalized upon the visualization and physical 

manipulation of data. Computing with tokens in ever-greater volume of 

more complex data paved the way to writing. 

4. Writing and abstraction 

Archaeology can interpret the technological innovations of the token system, 

such as the creation of new shapes and envelopes. But the cognitive dynamics 

that led writing to create logograms, numerals, standard units of measure, 

and phonograms are far beyond the scope of traditional archaeology. These 

remarkable leaps in abstraction can be identified and dated to the early fourth 

millennium BC but their interpretation will have to wait until cognitive archaeology 

comes of age (Malafouris 2010). 

The early logograms, i.e., signs in the form of tokens standing for a unit of 

merchandise, represented a second degree of abstraction. The signs impressed 

or traced with a stylus, abstracted tokens, which were themselves abstracting 

actual goods. A circular marking replaced the round token, which means that 

the written signs kept the outline of the counters and their symbolic significance 

but did away with their volume. Intangible written signs replaced the awkward 

piles of three-dimensional tokens. 

Written numerals abstracted the common denominator between sets such as 

“three” baskets of grain and “three” jars of oil. As a result, “three” became 

a concept that could be expressed by a sign. The invention of abstract numerals 

had extraordinary consequences. First, it put to an end dealing with goods in


one-to-one correspondence. Second, numeral signs made obsolete the use of 

different counters or numerations (different number words) to count different 

products. Finally, with the abstraction of numbers counting had no limit. 

About 3000 BC the abstraction of numbers (how many) was followed by 

that of quantity (how much). Thereafter, writing abstracted each of the concepts 

involved in for instance “one” “sila” of “oil”, requiring a sequence of three 

signs for notation. Instead, a century earlier, in 3100 BC, two signs were sufficient 

to record a similar amount, namely, “one” “jar of oil”, and in 3500BC, 

a single token fused the three concepts together “one jar of oil”. 

Finally, the invention of phonograms that abstracted the sounds of speech, 

removed writing from the concrete world of real goods. The signs no longer 

referred to concrete objects, but instead to the sound of a word. This was the 

beginning of a phonetic script when, by emulating speech, writing was no longer 

confined to the recording of goods. 

Of course, all these processes of abstraction innovated by writing, in particular 

that of numbers, were to take many steps to be fully realized (Justus 

1999a). It is clear that for many centuries the commodity counted still determined 

the arithmetical value of numerical signs. For example, when animals 

were being counted the circular sign signified “10” whereas it was to be read 

“6” when it referred to measures of grain. Also, as long as the cuneiform script 

existed, one-to-one correspondence continued to express the number of units 

such as “1” and “10”. For example 33 jars of oil were expressed by three tens 

(three circular signs), three ones (three wedges) followed by the sign for “jar of 

oil” (Figure 5). 

The standardization of measures also progressed at a slow pace and, for a long 

time, the relation between units continued to vary with the kind of entities dealt 

with. For example, the units of grain (ban, bariga, etc.) followed a sequence of 

factors: 5, 6, 10, 3 compared to 6, 3, 10, and 6 for the units of area measures 

(ikus, eshe3, bur, etc.) (Nissen, Damerow & Englund 1993: 64–65). 

5. Conclusion 

Between 7500–3000 BC, tokens and writing processed the data of the growing 

Near Eastern redistribution economy in ever-greater abstraction. Each of the 

two accounting technologies, tokens and writing, documents one stage of the 

manipulation of data in abstraction. By abstracting units of real goods, the tokens 

could manage, one by one, a limited number of casual measures of selected 

staples. With the abstraction of tokens, numbers and measures, writing 

raised data management to limitless quantities of any possible unit of goods. 

Moreover, by abstracting sounds writing reached beyond accounting to take on 

new functions in communication.

200 


References 

Hoyrup, Jens 1994: In Measure, Number, and Weight: Studies in Mathematics and Culture. New 

York: State University of New York Press. 

Justus, Carol F. 1996: Numeracy and the Germanic upper decades. Journal of Indo-European 

Studies 23, 45–80. 

Justus, Carol F. 1999a: Pre-decimal structures in counting and metrology. In: Jadranka Gvozdanovic 

(ed.) 1999: Numeral Types and Changes Worldwide. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 55– 

79. 

Justus, Carol F. 1999b: Can a counting system be an index of linguistic relationship? Journal of 

Indo-European Studies. Monograph 33, 219–240. 

Justus, Carol F. 2004: On language and the rise of a base for counting. General Linguistics 42, 

17–43. 

Malafouris, Lambros 2010: Grasping the concept of number: How did the sapient mind move 

beyond approximation? In: Colin Renfrew, Iain Morley (eds.) 2010: The Archaeology of 

Measurement Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 35–42. 

Nissen, Hans Jörg, Peter Damerow, Robert K. Englund 1993: Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing 

and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: The 

University of Chicago Press. 

Schmandt-Besserat, Denise 1992: Before Writing (2 vols.). Austin: The University of Texas 

Press. 

Schmandt-Besserat, Denise 1996: How Writing Came About. Austin: The University of Texas 

Press.

AGNIESZKA STĘPKOWSKA 

POZNAŃ COLLEGE OF MODERN LANGUAGES 

Language shift in the Raeto-Romansh community 

ABSTRACT. The sociolinguistic environment of the Raeto-Romansh community is not 

stable. In fact, there are signs of concern on the part of the federal authorities about the future 

of Romansh. Also, the Swiss public in general, including many linguists, seems to be 

conscious of the dramatic decline in the number of Romansh speakers. An in-depth 

understanding of the reasons for this decline helps detect the main weaknesses of the present 

predicament of the Romansh community. One of the most far-flung measures undertaken so 

far to avert further dialect fragmentation of Romansh, was the introduction of an 

experimental form of a common language named Rumantsch Grischun. 

This article attempts to analyse and assess the viability of the Romansh language in 

Switzerland. In order to carry out such an analysis, I shall make use of the “cycle of language 

shift” proposed by Einar Haugen (1980), which served as the prime inspiration to write this 

article. For anyone wishing to see Romansh live on, its standardised form is now to be 

observed with a cautious optimism. Interestingly, no stage of change involved in Haugen’s 

cycle is inevitable, and it can be stopped or even reversed, provided that countermeasures 

have been initiated in due time. 

KEYWORDS. Bilingualism, diglossia, language contact, language shift, linguistic identity, 

sociolinguistics. 

1. Romansh in the Grisons 

Out of 26 Swiss cantons only four are not officially monolingual. Out of 

these, the further three (Bern, Fribourg and Valais) are split into either Germanor 

French-speaking areas. The last one, the Grisons (German Graubünden), is 

the only trilingual Swiss canton. Language issues in Switzerland have always 

been engaging due to its official multilingualism, the number of languages and 

the actual autonomy of cantonal authorities, which adds to linguistic complexity. 

However, the language situation in the Grisons is even more complex than 

that viewed from a nationwide perspective. The situation of diglossia exists not 

only in the German part (Schwyzertütsch vs. Hoch- or Schriftdeutsch), but also 

in the Italian parts (dialetto vs. lingua italiana) of the canton. On top of that the 

Romansh part has five dialects, all of which are spoken and written. Among the 

examples of minority language situations presented by John Edwards (2004), 

Romansh classifies as a unique minority language, as it is unique to one state 

only, being an endemic language similarly to Swiss German. 

When, on the eve of World War II in 1938, Romansh was elevated to the 

rank of a national language, Article 116 of the Federal Constitution incorpo- 


202 

Agnieszka Stępkowska 

rated a distinction between the Confederation’s three official and four national 

languages of Switzerland. For practical reasons, Romansh was included in the 

latter group to denote the language of political, social and cultural entity. According 

to Carol Schmid (2001), the amended language article aimed at three 

goals. First, the responsibility for promoting mutual understanding and exchange 

between the language communities formally fell on the cantons and the 

confederation. Second, the cantons of Grisons and Ticino were made eligible 

for special support from the confederation. And third, Romansh was to become 

a language of communication between the Romansh-speaking population and 

the federal government. In fact, the content of the amendment amounts to 

“a declaration in favor of diversity recognizing that special protection is needed 

to prevent it [Romansh] dying”, and that “the greatest possible success would be 

to maintain its position” (Gillett 1989: 37). 

The language situation in the Grisons by no means presents a picture of 

proportional shares. According to the 2000 census (Lüdi & Werlen 2005), two 

thirds of people living in the Grisons declare German (68,3%) to be their main 

language, i.e., a language in which they think and speak best. The other two 

language minorities put together make up for a quarter of the canton’s population: 

14,5% of Romansh and 10,2% of Italian speakers. As to the Romansh minority, 

the census revealed also that half of Romansh speakers lived outside 

their language area and nearly a quarter lived outside the Grisons. These numbers 

alone are alarming. The numerical superiority of German speaking Swiss 

also makes 85% of people use German, or rather Swiss German, in their everyday 

life, while Romansh is used only by one fifth (Grünert et al. 2008). This 

means that Romansh does not score high as a second language among native 

speakers of other Swiss languages. It would be hard to imagine, for instance, 

a German speaking Swiss motivated to learn Romansh, unless he had an ethnic 

Romansh background. Thus, in most cases, a German, French or Italian Swiss 

with a decent knowledge of Romansh would, in all likelihood, have originally 

come from the Romansh parts of Switzerland. If this assumption were correct, it 

would point to a pending language shift in the Romansh community in Switzerland. 

2. Haugen’s cycle of language shift 

Language shift is brought about, stimulated or impeded by extra- and intralinguistic 

factors. In 1980, Einar Haugen wrote an article entitled “Language 

problems and language planning: The Scandinavian model” in which he argued 

that this phenomenon was worldwide, and that many social groups were caught 

up in what he called the “cycle of language shift”.

Language shift in the Raeto-Romansh community 203 

The prerequisite for language shift is always language contact. In a situation 

of contact, a community with the minority status speaking L1 interacts with 

a dominant group speaking L2. In prolonged contacts, monolinguals in L1 learn 

enough of L2 for basic communication. At this stage L2 is used externally in 

a diaglossic relationship. Next, the economic pressure, with time, induces full 

bilingualism on the part of the minority in question. If bilingualism is unstable, 

it may develop into monolingualism in L2, and this is where the shift occurs. 

The last stage of the cycle means the death of L1. The usual duration before 

a shift is complete takes at least three generations. For Haugen (1980: 152) it is 

not a unidirectional development as he says that “there is nothing inevitable in 

this cycle”; and then he adds: “One of the external factors that can speed it up or 

slow it down is the deliberate will of a group to do so. But this can only occur if 

the development is perceived as a problem calling for a solution”. 

For the recent decades, German has kept pushing Romansh back into the 

mountain valleys of Grisons, where it evolved into five distinct geographical 

varieties: Surselvan, Sutselvan (i.e., Upper and Lower Rhenish), Surmeiran, 

Puter (Upper Engadine), and Vallader (Lower Engadine). The borders between 

German- and Romansh-speaking areas are blurred with appreciable numbers of 

German speaking Swiss even in predominantly Romansh localities. Romansh 

people have no urban centre, which used to be Chur. In the opinion of Gottfried 

Kolde (1988: 518), “today we are witnessing what may be the final phase in the 

Germanization of this region”. Indeed, if we compare the figures of Romansh 

presence in Chur with those in the entire canton of Grisons, the decrease is 

greater in Chur than in the canton. In the case of the Romansh, within a decade 

from 1990 to 2000, their share fell from 6,9% to 5,4% (2 269 vs. 1 765 persons), 

i.e., by 22,5%, whereas in the Grisons from 17,1 to 14,5% (29 679 vs. 

27 038), i.e., by 15,3% (Grünert et al. 2008: 251–252). 

The prolonged contact between two languages may transform into diglossia. 

Charles Ferguson (1972 /1959/: 232) originally described such a situation as the 

one in which “two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the 

community, with each laving a definite role to play”. For Ferguson the specialization 

of function for the High variety and the Low variety was the paramount 

feature of diglossia, as he wrote that “[i]n one set of situations only H is appropriate 

and in another only L, with the two sets overlapping only very slightly” 

(1972: 235). Many discussions concerning Romansh failed to produce an agreed 

standpoint on the standard variety. Christina Bratt Paulston (1988: 5) explains 

that “shift does not take place in a diglossic-like situation in which the two languages 

exist in a situation of functional distribution where each language has its 

specified purpose and domain and the one language is inappropriate in the other 

situation”. The classic Fergusonian concept of diglossia seems too “narrow” for 

the language behavior demonstrated by Romansh speakers. German permeates

204 


more and more spheres of life, and the Romansh dialects put up resistance, 

though rather weak in the final analysis. 

When we move further on the Haugen’s cycle, we arrive at what Uriel 

Weinreich (1968 /1953/: 1) described as “the practice of alternately using two 

languages”, i.e.,, bilingualism. If prolonged, bilingualism may result in shift. 

Haugen (1972) distinguishes between supplementary, complementary, and replacive 

bilingualism. These three kinds of bilingualism may occur together or 

separately in any social context. They may ensue in a chronological order, 

marked by the gradual change of the generations, like in the Romansh case. 

Their communicative needs cannot be fulfilled entirely by any of the Romansh 

dialects and, in consequence, they need to learn German. Thus, they may learn 

it as a supplement to Romansh for specific needs. Or, they may wish to learn to 

read and write Standard German, which thereby fulfills a complementary function 

to the first language. Or, in the replacive bilingualism, German may gradually 

take over all the communicative needs of the speakers so that the use of 

Romansh is rendered useless and, in the end, consigned to oblivion. 

If bilingualism is not secured at a steady level, then the process of shift ensues. 

The first symptoms are indicated by fewer users and a diminishing political 

status. If the replaced language begins to lose economic attractiveness and 

its knowledge is no longer demanded in pursuing professional career, as well as 

if its social prestige starts to shrink, then that language should be regarded as 

seriously threatened. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (2003: 33) deplores the situations 

of shifts, arguing that “big languages turn into killer languages, monsters that 

gobble up others, when they are learned at the cost of the smaller ones. Instead, 

they should and could be learned in addition to the various mother tongues”. 

Thus, the shift is complete when the replaced language has disappeared completely 

– a state also referred to as language loss or, to use a more elaborate 

term, glottophagia, i.e., “the suppression of the minority language by that of the 

majority” (Calvet 1974, in Nelde 1992: 391). The shift between languages reflects 

the proportions or balance of powers, which means that the demise of 

a language is always brought about by non-linguistic causes (Maurais 2003: 

28). When a language dies, no single native speaker of it is left and “all its functions 

or uses have been usurped by another language” (Pauwels 2004: 719). 

Thus language contact, being the prerequisite of language shift as well as its 

first potential stage, may (though it does not have to) involve linguistic competition. 

3. Researching language shift 

For several decades the study of the erosion of Romansh grew multidisciplinary 

in nature, and this fact is reflected in the multitude of research method


and tools (Pauwels 2004). The tools, particularly prominent in the study of language 

shift and maintenance, include (1) census surveys with questions about 

language use, proficiency or choice; (2) questionnaires used to probe into selfassessments 

of language proficiency and language attitudes; and (3) participant 

observation, like the one carried out by Weinreich in Switzerland, when the 

researcher mingles with the community for a certain time. Naturally, no method 

is free of shortcomings. Surveys are based, to some extent, on self-reports and 

self-assessment, often subjectively charged. This, however, does not detract 

from large-scale surveys as they are probably most helpful in studying language 

shift. The data obtained from subsequent censuses can be cross-tabulated with 

socio-demographic variables. From a series of subsequent censuses it is possible 

to identify a trajectory of language shift or signs of its reversal. It should be 

noted that language shift requires repeated measures on preferably the same 

sample of individuals, and over a long time. In his Reversing Language Shift, 

Joshua Fishman (1991) proposes a model of eight stages providing insights into 

the steps to be taken collectively to counteract language reversal. He divides 

those stages into two groups. So, the stages from 8 to 5, if undertaken, will result 

in attaining diglossia, i.e., parallel use of the minority language as the low 

(L) variety, with the majority language as the high (H) variety (a là Ferguson 

1972 /1959/). Subsequent to the attainment of diglossia, stages 4 to 1 are to be 

applied to “transcend diglossia” (Fishman 1991: 395) and aim at “increased 

power-sharing” (1991: 401). 

The degree of shift is essentially determined by the attitude of the speech 

community toward cultural assimilation, and thereby we can talk about a correlation 

between the attitude of speech community toward their language and 

culture and the degree of shift. In fact, speakers of minority languages perceive 

their cultural and economic evolution “in the guise of a majority language” 

(May 2004: 37). Since Romansh speakers often view the regional language as 

an instrument for upward social mobility, their dialects are shifting to the dominant 

regional language (German) in most functional domains. As a result, their 

Romansh dialects are restricted practically to home and intra-group communication. 

This is one of the possibilities, as the attitudes of minority language speakers 

may take different forms ranging from total to partial shift (see also Weinreich 

1968: 107). 

Following Rajeshwari Pandharipande (1992), the shift from minority to 

majority languages may be seen as assimilation, coexistence or isolation. When 

a minority culturally assimilates with a majority, the shift is complete and in all 

functional domains. Assimilation is a chance, or rather a strategy, for upward 

mobility in the dominant culture and for better participation in it. Often, the 

switch to a standard variety, especially when done voluntarily, is not viewed by 

minority speakers as a threat to their cultural identity, as they believe that by

206 


adhering to their traditional rituals, they can maintain their “unique values”. 

Nevertheless, for speakers undergoing assimilation, their bi- or multilingualism 

will be only transitional in nature. A slightly different attitude characterizes 

a minority that aims to maintain cultural and linguistic coexistence with the 

nearby majority. Such a minority shifts languages in all domains but the home. 

Here, their multilingualism is supposed to be stable and this stability implies 

“the slowing down or complete stoppage of linguistic change” or “the fixation 

forever (or for as long as possible) of a uniform norm” (Haugen 1972: 249). 

Still, there may be another group of minority language speakers which may opt 

for an isolation from the dominant community. In this case, the degree of maintenance 

of their linguistic and cultural cohesion is high. This paradigm (of assimilation, 

co-existence, and isolation) assumes a correlation between maintenance 

of culture and maintenance of language. In other words, “the greater the 

degree of assimilation of the speech community with the dominant culture, the 

greater the degree of transitional bilingualism, and the higher degree of shift of 

the minority language to the majority language” (Pandharipande 1992: 260). As 

for the language change in the Romansh community, it clearly points to traces 

of assimilation, although perhaps the more desirable state of facts from the 

viewpoint of Swiss language policy would be the coexistence of Romansh 

speakers with the majority of the German-speaking Swiss. 

4. Reasons for the decline of Romansh 

The complete process of language shift takes time and is usually brought 

about by numerous stimulating factors. There is no general rule to be singled 

out to explain the process of either the language retention or its loss. The Grisons 

is distinguished by a strong pluralism of linguistic and cultural patterns 

which appear to reveal an easily appreciable imbalance in the proportions of 

people speaking Swiss German, Italian and Romansh. The perspective of the 

last two decades (1980–2000) alone, apparently in line with the long-term trend, 

points to a slow-moving decline in the number of Romansh speakers against 

German. According to Furer (2005), in 1980, Romansh native speakers counted 

51 128, whereas in 2000 this figure fell to 35 095. In other words, the number of 

Romansh speakers decreased by 16 033 persons or 31%. Without repeating here 

the exact numerical data, which are to be found in Grünert et al. (2008), it 

should suffice to comment on the trends they reveal. Thus, during the decade 

between 1990 and 2000, the majority language, German, has strengthened its 

position both as the main language and the language of everyday communication; 

Italian has been better off only in the latter respect while slightly decreasing 

as the main language; and finally, Romansh has shrunk in both respects, but 

lost out particularly on the number of speakers declaring it as their main lan-


guage. Virtually all speakers of Romansh can speak either two or more languages, 

which makes them – beside their Italian-speaking compatriots – truly 

multilingual individuals. Thus, their attitude to bilingualism needs to combine 

“an emotional attachment to Romansh and a rational commitment to German” 

(Stevenson 1990: 252). 

Most of the major reasons for the decline of Romansh were already listed 

some thirty years ago by McRae (1983) in his Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual 

Societies: Switzerland. It appears that most of those reasons are still 

relevant today, which means that they have not been eliminated, and the countermeasures 

aiming to strengthen the position of Romansh in the meantime have 

turned out to be less than effective. Kenneth McRae (1983) compiled a long list 

of problems directly affecting the Romansh minority in Switzerland. These 

problems include: the waning proportion of Romansh speakers resulting from 

inter-cantonal migration; the mixing of population in the canton; the lack of any 

major Romansh-speaking municipality; no recognition of the Romansh region 

in either cantonal or federal law; the utmost dialectal variation (discussed in the 

following section of the article); an equal divide of the total population of the 

Grisons in religion between Protestants and Roman Catholics. All these problems 

surely are not counteracted with sufficient determination by institutional 

controls. At present, Liga Romontscha, an organized interest group, seems to be 

the last mainstay of the Romansh languages. Unfortunately, its frequently successful 

activities are neither reflected in authoritative decision-making, nor 

forged into any legal enforcement. 

In the discussions about the mechanisms of language change, the issue of 

speakers’ attitudes is often raised. Perhaps those who most deplore the vanishing 

minority languages are not the ones using them in everyday life, like linguists 

or intellectual elites. It leaves no room for illusion that today Romansh is 

associated by its native speakers with the language of the elderly and the traditional, 

agrarian or pastoral culture, whereas modern technological vocabulary is 

sought in German. In his study, Weinreich (1968 /1953/) proved that Romansh 

ranked low in social prestige and German was to secure educational, professional 

and economic advancement. McRae (1983) writes about a “substantial 

attitudinal gap” between the Raetoroman intellectual elite and the average citizen, 

which leads us to conclude that the survival of Romansh has remained primarily 

an elite concern. The future of Romansh is very much dependent on the 

commitment of Romansh speakers themselves, for it is difficult to cultivate 

a minority language, when this minority itself decides on a majority language 

for practical reasons. The absence of these pragmatic reasons for language 

maintenance puts the language in jeopardy, thereby implying an indissoluble 

relationship between language and economics (see also Grin 1990).

208 


By way of recap, it seems purposeful to recall some generalized points 

made by Edwards (1985) whose surveys, in fact, converged to form a list of 

universal observations readily applicable to any minority language struggling 

for survival. These points are also true of Romansh. That is to say, all languages 

on the decline are mostly spoken by an older generation and are not transmitted 

further on to younger people; languages undergoing shifts are often cramped 

into poor and rural areas; bilingualism is only of transitory nature; the most 

explicit desire for language maintenance is voiced by small unrepresentative 

groups; and, finally, a group identity usually survives language death. All in all, 

reversing language shift is highly unlikely in practice if not completely impossible. 

Usually, efforts to revive a dying language prove to be artificial, or “removed 

from a realistic overall appreciation of social dynamics” (Edwards 1985: 

169), and therefore doomed to failure. Language decline needs to be researched 

and understood in a wide social context “with full appreciation of the processes 

of social evolution which have created contemporary conditions” (Edwards 

1985: 169). If these conditions are natural and normal in every way, then the 

final consequence they lead to should also be regarded as such. And, this is 

what May (2004) calls the “resigned language realism”. 

5. Rumantsh Grischun – one instead of five 

Under the territorial principle all language groups are relatively stable and easy 

to define. Georges Lüdi (1992: 46) elaborates on this description as follows: 

The validity of the territoriality principle in Switzerland changed its administrative map into 

a patchwork of monolingual cantons with the exception of a few overlap areas in case of 

a couple of officially bilingual cantons. Depending on the viewpoint, the territoriality 

principle either constrains or permits the use of one official language. As a result, the other 

national languages in any given monolingual canton enjoy the status comparable to that of 

Spanish or English. 

The situation of Romansh communities has remained unsolved, and it will 

remain as such, unless the numbers in statistics concerning Romansh come to 

a halt. In the opinion of Lüdi (1992), the territorial principle deals rather poorly 

with school problems and migration across the language borders. The formerly 

unforeseen abundance of language contacts, brought about by industrial and 

economic development and the power of the mass media, will not stop at the 

cantonal borders. According to Blommaert (2004: 59), “territorialization stands 

for the perception and attribution of values to language as a local phenomenon, 

something which ties people to local communities and spaces. Customarily, 

people’s mother tongue (L1) is perceived as territorialized language” (my emphasis). 

Nevertheless, for the dispersed Romansh communities the issues of


language maintenance and stability continue to be highly problematic. The 

problems raised by the territoriality principle with reference to Romansh were 

voiced by Richard Watts (1991: 86) in the following way: 

The negative side of the Territoriality Principle is felt by native speakers of Romansh. 

Census figures led to a decision to count that commune as German-speaking. This has led to 

a lack of institutionalized support for the language, particularly in the school system. Thus, 

one clear effect of language policies within Switzerland is that Romansh community is 

heavily marginalized. 

Marginalization of Romansh is strongly believed to have its source in the 

extreme dialect fragmentation. Indeed, in the Romansh-speaking areas, it is the 

most distinctive language problem classified by Haugen (1980) as one of the six 

major language problems worldwide, beside other five which he labeled: conflict 

of national norms, foreign pressure, indigenous minorities, immigrant minorities 

and sociolectal minorities. The plurality of dialects is perceived as 

a critical factor significantly reducing the survival chances of Romansh. Additionally, 

the five idioms which are commonly squeezed under one umbrella 

name of Romansh are distributed unevenly in percentage: Vallader (74.6), Sursilvan 

(52.2), Surmiran (38.8), Puter (23.1) and Sutsilvan (13.8) (see McRae 

1983). 

The danger of extinction looming over Romansh languages has not been 

a novelty for a couple of decades now. As has been mentioned earlier, the bestowal 

of Romansh with the national status in 1938, although intended to bring 

its marginalization to a halt, did not help much. Probably, it was a case of “too 

little too late” (Pap 1990: 139). A further effort to counteract the shift of Romansh 

towards German has been the elaboration of one common written standard, 

by blending the lexicons of Romansh dialects. In 1982, Heinrich Schmid 

developed a compilation language (or Kompromisssprache), a Romansh written 

artificial standard called Rumantsch Grischun. It was an orthographic koiné 

among the major Romansh dialects (see also Camartin 1987). Naturally, it 

would be much better and easier, if the Romansh had one standard language 

perpetuated in the literature, but regrettably it does not. In a sense the attempts 

to establish Rumansh Grischun can be regarded as a form of resistance. Thus, 

the introduction process of this language has to undergo a basic four-point 

model for the procedures typical in the establishment of new written languages 

as proposed by Haugen (1966, 1972, 1980), namely, (1) selection, (2) codification, 

(3) implementation and (4) elaboration. He called it “the extended model” 

in which steps (1) and (2) refer to the form, whereas (3) and (4) to the function 

of the language. In turn, steps (1) and (3) need to meet with the society’s approval, 

while (2) and (4) involve the commitment of individuals who first codify 

and later on make use of the language in question. Finally, Haugen (1980:

210 


152) emphasizes that “the distinctions are to some extent arbitrary, and the steps 

overlap; they are not necessarily sequential, but may be simultaneous and even 

cyclical”. 

6. Concluding remarks 

Language shift to German continues in the Grisons. In the 2000 census, 

about 35 000 people in Switzerland, and 14,5% (about 27 000 people) of the 

population of Grisons, indicated Romansh as their main language (or bestbeherrschte 

Sprache) (see Furer 2005, also Lüdi & Werlen 2005, Grünert et al. 

2008). There is no single town in the Romansh-speaking area where the shift 

would not continue appreciably. Romansh is a living language. Yet, the reversal 

of shift in Romansh remains questionable. The biggest possible success would 

be to maintain its present position. The next generation of Romansh speakers 

will surely come, but it will be smaller in number, of more mixed origin, and 

more bi- or trilingual, always with German in their language repertoire. If the 

present conditions do not change radically, Romansh will die out, because one 

of the future generations will be too small to pass on the language. 

Language shift tends to be an emotional topic if it is already at an advanced 

stage and, especially, if it involves an imminent language death. However, it 

would be hard for me to disagree with Jean Aitchison (2001: 209) who asserts 

that “language death is a social phenomenon triggered by social needs”. Therefore, 

in this line of thought, we should not see anything wrong with the dead or 

dying language itself. Language starts to fade away when it fails to fulfill the 

communicative, social and cultural needs of the group who speaks it. Viewed 

from this perspective, language change appears in no sense wrong. Similarly, 

the change, being an inherent part of evolution in general, should be regarded as 

a natural course of history. Thus, any phenomenon, including language, that 

undergoes a change should be accepted as natural by definition, or at least not 

dismissed from the start as controversial or undesirable. 

Linguistic rights belong to classic and ever-lasting moral dilemmas. By 

promoting indigenous languages as instruments for education and public life, 

we are caught in what Jan Blommaert (2004: 61) calls “a web of conflicting 

factors”, since this approach is “largely symbolic” and “at odds with people’s 

understanding of what they want and need in the short and medium term”. 

Moreover, this approach “runs counter to the existing trajectories of upward 

social movement, involving moving out to other place” and perhaps, more importantly, 

it is “understood by the target groups as preventing them from achieving 

upward social mobility by tying them to locality”. In other words, purely 

practical reasons will, in the end, lead any minority to learn the language of 

majority. For Haugen (1972: 263) it can even become “an experience of great


value” and he is far from calling it “calamity”. Nevertheless, deplorable as the 

loss of language may be for some linguists, it should be remembered that it does 

not have to be intrinsically correlated with the loss of cultural identity. Luckily, 

the identity of a group is demonstrated by not a single, but several markers that 

were broadly categorized by Pandharipande (1992) as linguistic, regional and/or 

geographic, religious, and racial and/or ethnic. Only together do they constitute 

the cultural identity of a social group. 

As a way of concluding, it seems befitting to stress that language, being one 

of the identity markers, does not stand for the entire cultural identity of any 

speaker. It is because culture, by definition, comprises several elements, and is 

not limited to any one of them. Thus, the shift in language does not necessarily 

amount to the shift in the cultural identity of the speech community. Another 

point to note is that, often due to a language shift, the loss of one identity 

marker tends somehow to reinforce other identity markers. Finally, the language 

shift need not always be caused by external factors. It may rather be a conscious 

decision made by the community to give up its own language identity as 

a means of counterbalancing social and economic pressures (see Pandharipande 

1992). Since no stage of change involved in the Haugen’s cycle is inevitable, 

and it can be stopped or even reversed at any time, today the Romansh minority 

can be allotted a place of unstable bilingualism resulting from the ever decreasing 

numbers of Romansh speakers in statistics, which in fact means that they 

keep moving towards a full shift. The shift in the Raeto-Romansh minority is 

progressing at an unusually slow rate and to be completed, it will certainly take 

more than three generations. 

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Mouton.

ALEKSANDER SZWEDEK 

SPOŁECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK, WARSAW 

KUJAWY AND POMORZE UNIVERSITY IN BYDGOSZCZ 

More evidence on the primacy of the noun 

over the verb. A cognitive explanation 

ABSTRACT. In linguistic tradition, the verb has frequently been regarded to be the central 

element of the sentence. Only recently Ronald Langacker (1986) argued that relations 

(represented by verbs) are conceptually dependent on things (represented by nouns). The 

present paper offers more evidence of the primacy of nouns over verbs drawing on the 

following diverse language phenomena: (1) semantic description of nouns and verbs in terms 

of selectional restrictions, (2) sentence stress placement and its relation to word order, (3) 

conceptualisation of abstract entities in terms of physical objects, and (4) language 

acquisition. 

While nouns are described independently, verbs get their description in terms of noun 

features. For example, teach whose subject is described as [+ human], will collocate with 

[+human] nouns, but not with [-human] nouns. It has been shown that in Polish, in normal 

intonation, sentence stress falls on the contextually new noun (KSIĄŻKĘ). Verbs and adverbs 

get the stress only if no new noun is present. Moreover, research has demonstrated that all 

abstract entities are conceptualized as objects, represented by nouns, nouns are acquired 

before verbs, nouns predominate in early production and comprehension, children learn 

object reference readily. The discussion will show that nouns are independent; hence, the 

conclusion is about the primacy of nouns over verbs. 

KEY WORDS. Cognitive linguistics, the hypothesis of objectification, the primacy of nouns 

over verbs, Functional Sentence Perspective. 


In linguistic tradition, the verb was often regarded to be the central element 

of the sentence. For example, Christian Lehmann (1991) wrote that “the verb is 

the central element of the sentence” (1991: 481). Angela Downing, Philip 

Locke (2006 /1992 /: 12) maintained that “[a]s clauses have as their central 

element the verbal group, their status as finite or non-finite depends on the form 

of the verb chosen”. According to Charles Fillmore (1977), each verb selects, as 

if it was the determining category, a certain number of deep cases which form 

its case frame. 

In contrast, Langacker (1986) believed that relations, represented, among 

others, by verbs, are conceptually dependent on things, represented by nouns. 

Dedre Gentner (1982), and Dedre Gentner and Lera Boroditsky (2001) presented 

convincing language acquisition arguments for the primacy of nouns 

over verbs, and, what is more, offered cognitive explanation of this primacy. 


214 

Aleksander Szwedek 

Their explanation is corroborated by my hypothesis of objectification according 

to which abstract entities are conceptualized metaphorically in terms of physical 

objects, the domain of which is the ultimate domain, i.e., subject to no further 

metaphorization. 

The present study will show that there is more evidence of the primacy of 

nouns over verbs in diverse language phenomena, but the cognitive mechanism 

behind them is the same. The diverse language phenomena that are analyzed 

here constitute selectional restrictions, sentence stress placement and its relation 

to word order (FSP = Functional Sentence Perspective), and conceptualization 

of abstract entities (phenomena) in terms of physical objects (objectification). 

To make the case complete, special reference will be made also to Gentner 

(1982), as well as to Gentner and Boroditsky (2001). 

2. Selectional restrictions 

Apart from the Phrase Structure component, the generative model requires 

a lexicon. Lexical insertions in the earlier form of the model allowed for the 

following sentences: 

*The boy may frighten sincerity. 

*Sincerity may admire the boy. 

Since such simple lexical insertion rules are not sufficient in the generation 

of correct structures, two problems emerged requiring reflection and solution: 

– what kind of information is necessary? 

– where is that information to be placed? 

2.1. Considering the role of verbs in the nominal frames 

An analysis of the verbs frighten and admire shows that they require an 

animate object, and an animate subject, respectively. Transformationalgenerative 

model proposed that this semantic-syntactic information should be 

part of lexical information in the following form: 

BOY 

+ Common 

+ Count 

+ Animate 

+ Human 

It seems fairly easy to characterize nouns in this way, particularly in the 

subject function. What we need to know next is how to characterize VERBS in

More evidence on the primacy of the noun over the verb 215 

that system. Once we have two objects, they can be perceived as entering into 

many relations represented by verbs, for example: 

+human subject and +human object – TEACH, LEARN, LOVE, etc., 

+human subject and -animate object – MAKE, LEND, etc. 

It means that a transitive verb needs two nouns with a semantic-syntactic 

description permitting specific verbs, or in other words, the frame of nouns 

opens a slot for a variety of verbs. Since objects and nouns representing them 

have an independent description, it means that the characterization of verbs 

depends on the independently characterized nouns. 

Thus, a nominal frame below opens up a slot for a number of verbs like 

make, take, read, etc. 

+ Noun make + Noun 

± Common take ± Common 

+ Count read ± Count 

+ Animate …. – Animate 

+ Human – Human 

2.2. Conclusions from the properties of nouns in the physical world 

– Characterization of nouns is independent of verbs and any other categories; 

This is so, because nouns refer to physical objects which exist independently 

in the physical world; 

– Verb characterization depends on the characterization of nouns; 

– The mechanism of selectional restrictions is limited to the world of physical 

objects. 

3. Sentence stress and category membership 

The Functional Sentence Perspective phenomenon has been defined in 

terms of word order and focus. Typically, the new information follows the 

given information. In addition, in neutral, non-emphatic interpretation, sentence 

stress falls within the new information section determined by the context. 

In my earlier works (Szwedek 1986, 1987), I argued that in English and in 

Polish, neutral sentence stress placement is associated with the category of 

nominals. On the basis of tests with English and Polish native speakers I concluded 

that: (1) the new information part of the sentence follows the given in-

216 


formation part; (2) in neutral interpretation, sentence stress falls within the new 

information section; (3) in neutral interpretation, the sentence stress falls on one 

lexical item only; (4) there is no way in which the so-called ‘scope of focus’ 

(new information section) can be determined on the basis of the place of sentence 

stress (cf. Pakosz 1981); (5) the “new” information section is determined 

by the context. The question is whether the sentence stress is associated with 

any particular word category within the new information section. Such a question 

has not been contemplated even up to now. 

3.1. Considering the stress placement as associated with nominals 

I formulated more specific principles governing neutral sentence stress 

placement: if there is a new noun present in the sentence, it gets the sentence 

stress; if the nouns are given, they must not be stressed. The first part of this 

simple principle can be illustrated with the following text: 

[3.1] Speaker A: What were you doing last night? 

[3.2] Speaker B: I was reading a book. 

The stress falls on the new noun although the verb reading is equally new in the 

given context. Any other stress placement would be interpreted as contrastive: 

[3.3] Speaker B: I was reading a book. 

This might be attributed to the final position of the noun. However, it is possible 

to move the noun to the front, and the sentence stress would stay with it despite 

the fact that the new verb is now in the final position, cf. 

[3.4] A book I was reading. 

though the interpretation might seem slightly emphatic. What is important here 

is that the “new” information verb in the final position would still not get the 

stress. 

The second part of the principle can be exemplified by the following exchanges, 

in which under no circumstances must the play be stressed in neutral 

interpretation: 

[3.5] Speaker A: Would you like to see Macbeth 1 tonight? 

[3.6] Speaker B: I saw the play yesterday. 

[3.7] Speaker B: I saw the play. 

[3.8] Speaker B: *I saw the play (yesterday). 

1 

Macbeth is here new information nominal in relation to the preceding context.


Such cases clearly show that the coreference or non-coreference of nouns is 

the decisive factor in the stressing process; other categories get sentence stress 

only when new nouns are not available. 

More evidence comes from cleft sentences. Notice that clefting with nouns 

is natural, while it is impossible with verbs in the finite form. 

[3.9] It was John who wore his best suit at the dance last night. 

[3.10] It was his best suit (that) John wore at the dance last night. 

[3.11] It was at the dance (that) John wore his best suit last night. 

[3.12] *It’s wore that John did his best suit at the dance. 

As Randolph Quirk et al. (1985) remark, the only way to circumvent “the 

restriction on V as focus” is to render the verb in a non-finite form, e.g., 

[3.13] It's teach(ing) that he does for a living. 

Languages of a different structure, like Polish, provide more evidence. Below, 

I am going to discuss sentence stress, and cleft constructions in Polish. 

Word order in Polish will also be discussed in support of the claim that verbs 

play subsidiary role in the information structure. 

Let us first examine the Polish equivalents of the English examples discussed 

above. In [3.15] taken as a sequence to [3.14] the sentence stress is on 

the new noun although the verb is equally new in the given context. 

[3.14] Speaker A: Co robiłeś wczoraj wieczorem? 

What did 2sg,masc. yesterday evening 

[3.15] Speaker B: Czytałem książkę. 

Read 1sg,past,masc. book Acc,fem. 

One could claim, of course, that the end-weight principle is at work here. Polish, 

however, allows certain freedom of word order, so [3.16] should be possible: 

[3.16] Speaker B: Książkę czytałem. 

Book Acc,fem. read 1sg,past,masc. 

because czytałem is as contextually new as książkę, it is stressed and in sentence 

final position. And yet [3.16] has been rejected as a sequence to [3.14] by all 

native speakers I tested. Likewise, it is possible to say [3.17]: 

[3.17] Speaker B: Książkę czytałem. 

Book Acc,fem. read 1sg,past,masc. 

but not [3.18]:

218 


[3.18] Speaker B: Czytałem książkę. 

Read 1sg,past,masc. book Acc,fem. 

These examples show that nouns behave in a different way than verbs in the 

information structure. This point is further supported by Polish equivalents 

[3.19–3.22] of the English examples discussed earlier: 

[3.19] Speaker A: Chciałbyś zobaczyć Makbeta? 

Would like 2nd,sg. see Macbeth 

[3.20] Speaker B: Widziałem tę sztukę wczoraj. 

Saw 1sg,masc. this Acc,fem. play Acc,fem. yesterday 

[3.21] Speaker B: Widziałem tę sztukę 

Saw 1sg,masc. this Acc,fem. play Acc,fem. 

where in [3.21] constituents are equally given from the preceding context and 

yet the stress must not fall on the noun sztukę, as [3.22] clearly shows: 

[3.22] Speaker B: *Widziałem tę sztukę (wczoraj). 

Saw 1sg,masc. this Acc, fem. play Acc, fem. (yesterday) 

As in English, more evidence comes from Polish equivalents of cleft sentences. 

Horn (1978) came to the conclusion that English clefts are semantically equivalent 

to constructions with a lexically empty Polish pronoun to (“this neut. ”), e.g., 

[3.23] To ona napisała ten list. 

It she wrote 3sg,fem. this Acc, masc. letter Acc, masc. 

‘It was her who wrote this letter.’ 

She found that, like in English, verbs cannot be part of such structures: 

[3.24] *To dał jej jabłko. 

It gave 3sg,masc. her Dat apple Acc, neut. 

3.2. Summarizing remarks on the contextual role of nominals 

– The informational value (contextually given/new) of nominals determines 

the place of the sentence stress; 

– Verbs get the sentence stress only by default, in the absence of a new noun 

in the sentence; 

– Verbs express relations between nominals, and thus acquire their reference 

only through the referents of the nominals; 

– In neutral interpretation, in both English and Polish, the sentence stress is 

inseparable from the new noun. The position of the stress and the new noun


depends on the more restrictive word order in English, and less restrictive 

word order in Polish, with a general tendency to put them as far to the final 

sentence position as possible. 

All this is independent of whether the nouns are concrete or abstract, which 

may mean that this mechanism is acquired later in the language acquisition 

process. 

4. Conceptualization of “abstract entities” 

The question is how “abstract entities” are conceptualized and what it has to 

do with nouns? I assume that the fundamental distinction in human sensory 

experience is the distinction between material and phenomenological worlds 

(Cf. Krzeszowski 1997). The basis of such a distinction is no doubt our sensory 

experience – primarily touch as the only sense that can experience density, the 

fundamental property of matter. 

While it is easy to conceptualize and refer to physical objects that we can 

touch and see, it is much more difficult to conceptualize abstract entities that are 

not accessible to our senses. We cannot touch or see MIND, THOUGHT, LOVE, 

etc. At best we can see the result of mind and thought in the form of language 

expressions, and some symptoms of emotions, such as love or anger. The question 

is then, how we conceptualize these abstract entities. 

4.1. Analyzing selected examples of the conceptualization of objects 

THOUGHT is not only definitely non-physical and inaccessible to our senses, 

but, what is more, it is a fragment of a continuous process. The process must 

first be somehow broken into segments, one of these segments must then be 

conceptualized as an object (in the process of objectification) with its properties, 

and finally, appropriate vocabulary must be assigned to the newly created 

concept. It has to be added that this segmentation is strictly connected and/or 

correlated with our basic experience of physical objects. As the examples below 

show, THOUGHT is conceptualized as an object and its subcategories, such as 

a container (object), moving object, animate being, with all the various properties 

of physical objects. 

THOUGHT IS AN OBJECT 

The examples below show that, just as we have or put books, collect or 

gather scattered objects, and so forth, we also have thoughts, put thoughts, 

thoughts are scattered, gathered/collected, and so forth. 

[4.1] He put these thoughts to the back of his mind.

220 


[4.2] He needed time to collect his scattered thoughts. 

[4.3] I have a thought. 

THOUGHT IS A CONTAINER (OBJECT) 

Being three-dimensional, an object has boundaries and therefore is a container. 

Once a thought is conceptualized as an object, it is also naturally understood 

as a container – we can be deep in thoughts or lost in thoughts, thoughts 

can be deep, and so forth. 

[4.4] She lost herself in her thoughts. 

[4.5] From deep thought himself he rouses. 

THOUGHT IS A MOVING OBJECT 

Since objects are movable, and THOUGHTS are conceptualized as OBJECTS, 

thoughts move – thoughts can be passing, sliding or fleeting, cf. 

[4.6] The poem is written so as to give the impression of fleeting thoughts. 

[4.7] A thought slid into his mind. 

[4.8] Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles. 

THOUGHT IS AN ANIMATE BEING 

Some objects are endowed with life and exhibit appropriate attributes. 

When THOUGHTS are conceptualized as ANIMATE BEINGS, they can be dangerous, 

happy, sober, healthy and pregnant; they are born, cross one’s mind, come 

and strike, cf. 

[4.9] The thought came to him in sleep. 

[4.10] The birth of thought in the depths of the spirit… 

[4.11] All these thoughts and many more were racing through my head. 

[4.12] Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 

THOUGHTS can also be counted – we can have many thoughts, first thought 

and second thought, cf. 

[4.13] Now advise or hear what to my mind first thoughts present. 

[4.14] It is often said that second thoughts are best. 

THOUGHTS, like physical objects, are arranged in space – we can have the 

first, next, or last thought, a current or train of thoughts, cf. 

[4.15] Don’t interrupt my train of thoughts. 

[4.16] The Story of the Last Thought. 

FEAR can be analyzed in a similar way. FEAR is an emotional state, an emotional 

response to impending danger. As an emotional state FEAR is abstract 

and, except for physical symptoms, is not accessible to our senses.


Mental and emotional states are commonly treated as containers, but it is 

generally overlooked that containers are objects. Again, we first identify FEAR 

as an entity and conceptualize it as a physical object which allows us to use 

‘physical’ vocabulary to describe it. 

FEAR IS AN OBJECT 

[4.17] He had no fear of God or man. 

[4.18] All her little fears were burned away in the great fear. 

FEAR IS A CONTAINER 

[4.19] They ..make it a sport to put their children in fear. 

[4.20] Delyuer me out of my fear. 

FEAR IS A MOVING OBJECT 

[4.21] The fears of a general crisis are passing away. 

[4.22] Then the fear and pain disappeared... 

FEAR IS AN ANIMATE OBJECT 

[4.23] Jim Fleeting indicated that he was driven by fear. 

[4.24] I will mock when your fear commeth. 

[4.25] How does one kill fear, I wonder? 

FEAR IS A HUMAN BEING 

[4.26] Fear has been the original parent of superstition. 

[4.27] Then fear steps in, and tells me… 

[4.28] No passion robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. 

The above examples show that abstract entities are conceptualized in terms 

of objects. They can also be conceptualized in terms of other domains, for example, 

LOVE IS A JOURNEY. What, however, is most important is that the domain 

of physical objects is not subject to further metaphorization. In other 

words, the domain of objects cannot be a target domain and is thus the ultimate 

source domain. 

4.2. On the primacy of nouns over verbs in conceptualization processes 

– The primacy of nouns over verbs stems from the independent 2 nature of objects, 

and dependent relations between them; 

2 

Cf. Langacker’s (1986) description of nouns as conceptually independent units.

222 


– Relations, expressed mostly by verbs and adjectives, are abstract, and can 

be conceptualized as objects; 

– Objects are not subject to further metaphorical conceptualization and thus 

constitute the ultimate source domain. 

5. Language acquisition 

Gentner (1982) and Gentner and Boroditsky (2001) convincingly argue that 

nouns are acquired before verbs. They offer an analysis of language data, as 

well as a cognitive explanation. Gentner and Boroditsky call upon earlier experimental 

research (discussed in the work of Gentner 1982) that showed that 

nouns predominate in early production and comprehension and children learn 

object reference readily. What, however, is most interesting for the purposes of 

the present paper is Gentner’s (1982) explanation in terms of natural partitioning 

and relational relativity. 

Referring to natural partitioning, Gentner (1982: 324) wrote that “there are 

in the experimental flow certain highly cohesive collections of percepts that are 

universally conceptualized as objects, and … these tend to be lexicalized as 

nouns across languages. Children learning language have already isolated these 

cohesive packages – the concrete objects and individuals – from their surroundings”. 

Furthermore, on relational relativity he argued that “when we conceptualize 

the perceptual world, the assignment of relational terms is more variable 

crosslinguistically than that of nominal terms … Predicates show a more variable 

mapping from concepts to words” (Gentner 1982: 323–325). 

6. Final conclusions 

All of these phenomena indicate the primacy of nouns over verbs, but there 

is a difference between their role in selectional restrictions, objectification, and 

language acquisition, on the one hand, and in FSP on the other hand. The former 

three are based on the cognition of objects in the material world, following 

the sharp distinction between the material and phenomenological worlds. The 

latter is a context sensitive phenomenon affecting concrete and abstract nouns 

alike. I would like to suggest that the FSP behavior is a later development in the 

history of the language following a primeval distinction between physical and 

abstract entities, the latter’s conceptualization as physical objects, and then 

both, physical and abstract entities being represented by nouns. Thus, the reference 

of abstract nouns is an extension of the reference of the concrete nouns.


References 

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Downing, Angela, Philip Locke 2006 /1992/: English Grammar: A University Course. 2nd ed. 

Abingdon, New York: Routledge /New York: Prentice Hall/. 

Fillmore, Charles 1968: The case for case. In: Emmon Bach, Robert T. Harms (eds.) 1968: Universals 

in Linguistic Theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1–88. 

Fillmore, Charles. 1977: The case for case reopened. In: Peter Cole, Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.) 

1977: Syntax and Semantics 8: Grammatical Relations. New York: Academic Press, 59–82. 

Gentner Dedre, Lera Boroditsky 2001: Individuation, relational relativity and early word learning. 

In: Melissa Bowerman, Stephen Levinson (eds.) 2001: Language Acquisition and Conceptual 

Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 215–256. 

Gentner, Dedre 1982: Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural 

partitioning. In: Stan Kuczaj (ed.) 1982: Language Development 2: Language, Thought and 

Culture. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 301–334. 

Horn, Aleksandra 1978: Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English and their Polish equivalents. 

Unpublished PhD dissertation. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University. 

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Press. 

Krzeszowski, Tomasz P(aweł) 1997: Angels and Devils in Hell. Elements of Axiology in Semantics. 

Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Energeia. 

Langacker, Ronald 1986: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar I: Theoretical Foundations. Stanford, 

California: Stanford University Press. 

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Premper (eds.) 1991: Partizipation. Das sprachliche Erfassen von Schverhalten. Language 

Universals Series (LUS) 6. Tübingen: Günter Narr, 183–239. 

Pakosz, Maciej 1981: Prosodic manifestation of the scope of focus in English, Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 

28, 85–99. 

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik 1985: A Comprehensive 

Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman. 

Szwedek, Aleksander 1986: Sentence stress and category membership. In: Dieter Kastovsky, 

Aleksander Szwedek (eds.) 1986: Linguistics across Geographical and Historical Boundaries. 

In Honour of Jacek Fisiak on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday. Berlin, New York, 

Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 1051–1061. 

Szwedek, Aleksander 1987: The role of category membership in the thematic structure of the 

sentence. Folia Linguistica XXI, 2–4, 249–259.

ALICJA WITALISZ 

PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF CRACOW 

English loan translations in Polish – preliminary 

comments 

ABSTRACT. The paper aims to provide a formal classification of English loan translations 

which have been much on the increase in Polish since the socio-political transition in 1989. 

Set expressions, such as, e.g., Polish biały kołnierzyk from English “white collar” or 

Polish Pierwsza dama from English “First Lady”, are formed out of native linguistic 

material but copy foreign structural and semantic patterns. Formal and semantic properties of 

the translated versions of English set expressions allow a four-fold classification of loan 

translations into loan translations proper, loan renditions, expressions following the Germanic 

morpho-syntactic pattern and phraseological replicas. The article also offers a discussion of the 

semantic processes that occur when a new expression is formed in a language as a result of 

foreign influence. The processes in question include semantic importation and idiomatisation 

as well as semantic reborrowing and reinterpretation. Since this class of borrowings is 

continually growing and new instances appear daily in the Polish media, the article also 

discusses the status of loan translations in the class of neologisms. 

KEYWORDS. Loan translation, calque, phraseological replica, neologism, lexicalization, 

semantic reborrowing. 


The paper aims to provide a formal classification of loan translations from 

English (henceforth abbreviated as < E.), which constitute a continually growing 

but much neglected type of borrowings in Polish (P.). The formal division 

shall be followed by a discussion of the semantic processes that occur when 

a new expression is formed in a language as a result of foreign influence. In 

recent studies on English-Polish language contacts, conducted by Elżbieta 

Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1995, 2004, 2006), much attention has been paid to other 

types of borrowed elements, i.e., to loanwords. These types, as the research of 

Andrzej Markowski (1992), Marcin Zabawa (2004), Alicja Witalisz (2007a) has 

shown, undoubtedly construct the most copious group of loans in any European 

language, and to English semantic loans, which have been much on the increase 

since the socio-political transition in 1989. One other type of borrowed expressions, 

not perceived as foreign by non-specialists though, are loan translations, 1 

1 

In this introductory section, I follow Einar Haugen’s (1950: 219–220) terminology and use 

the term loan translation in a wider sense to refer to translated polymorphemic set expressions 

which will later in the paper be split into several categories. I deliberately avoid the 


226 

Alicja Witalisz 

such as, for example, P. biały kołnierzyk (< E. “white collar”) or P. Pierwsza 

dama (< E. “First Lady”), formed out of native linguistic material but copying 

foreign structural and semantic patterns. It is not only the overwhelming number 

of English loan translations in Polish but also their formal diversity and 

semantic development that force research in the area. 

The present study excludes such compound formations which are classified 

after Einar Haugen (1950: 215) as loanblends (or hybrids, e.g., P. cyberprzestrzeń 

< E. “cyberspace” or P. pracoholik < E. “workaholic”), in which only one 

foreign element has been substituted by a native lexeme. Excluded are also 

formations which can be termed multi-word semantic loans (cf. Wesołowska 

1978: 57) such as the following expressions, well-established in the Polish 

lexicon: Koń trojański (E. “Trojan horse”), which under the influence of 

English has extended its traditional meaning and is used in contemporary Polish 

in the computer-related sense, or od drzwi do drzwi (E. “door to door”), with its 

new English sense ‘door to door delivery’. The latter set of expressions must be 

excluded from the study of loan translations, since in their case only semantic 

importation can be observed, thus taxonomically they are closer to semantic 

loans. Excluded are also loan creations (Grzega 2003), i.e., free translations of 

English expressions, and pseudo-calques (Witalisz 2007a) such as P. szara 

strefa (E. literally. “gray area”), whose semantic content does not allow to look 

for its origins in the English expression “gray area”. 

Research material for the analysis comes from a collection of over three 

hundred English structural calques whose use was already attested in Polish in 

2006 (cf. Witalisz, 2007a). 

2. Formal classification of English loan translations in Polish 

This suggested division of loan translations takes into account the formal 

properties of the products of the calquing process and the possible deviations 

from the foreign model. The shape of this classification is to a large extent determined 

by the available research material whose nature directly depends on 

which two particular languages are in contact. 

2.1. Loan translations proper 

The term loan translation is employed here (after Haugen 1950: 215) to 

refer to a subtype of loanshifts which show morphemic substitution and semantic 

importation. English compound words, such as, e.g., “fast food” or “soft 

term calque as it may also refer to semantic calques, which are excluded from the present 

study.

English loan translations in Polish – preliminary comments 227 

drug” are translated into Polish, and possibly any other language, with the use 

of its native morphemes, P. szybkie jedzenie and P. miękki narkotyk, respectively. 

The semantic content, usually idiomatic in nature, is imported and “imposed” 

onto the newly-created phraseological unit in the receiving language. 

Loan translations proper are then exact translations of foreign etymons, following 

their morpho-syntactic structure and adopting their semantic content as well 

as using native lexical items that are equivalents of the corresponding foreign 

words, e.g., P. biały kołnierzyk (< E. “white collar”), P. gorąca linia (< E. “hot 

line”), P. Biały Dom (< E. “White House”), P. czarny rynek (< E. “black market”), 

P. globalna wioska (< E. “global village”), P. wysoki sezon (< E. “high 

season”). 

2.2. Loan renditions (approximate loan translations) 

The translated expressions though may differ in a number of ways from 

their English etymons. Since in the case of English set expressions translated 

into Slavonic languages one cannot expect too much of formal sameness due to 

divergent morpho-syntactic patterns of the Slavonic and Germanic systems, it 

seems that actually the majority of the English fixed expressions translated into 

Polish would have to be termed as loan renditions (or alternatively loan rendering; 

Weinreich 1953: 51) to capture the possible formal and lexical discrepancies. 

Loan renditions defined as inexact translations of foreign expressions may deviate 

lexically from their etymons, as in P. drapacz chmur (< E. “skyscraper”). 

The orthodox approach to the exactness of translation has it that only those 

translated expressions in which the exact lexical equivalents of English words 

appear in the same quantity and are arranged in the same order, qualify as loan 

translations proper, e.g., P. zimna wojna (< E. “cold war”) or P. numer 

jeden (< E. “number one”). Also, the English etymon and its recipient language 

translation must be identical semantically. 

At this point, it is worth noting that linguists see the exactness or inexactness 

of translation in different ways. Even though in the “Introduction” to English 

in Europe, Manfred Görlach (2004: 9) provides a thorough theoretical 

background of how to differentiate between loan translation and loan rendition, 

stating that loan translation is “the perfect rendering of constituents” and loan 

rendition is “a rendering which deviates from the meaning … or morphology” 

[the latter emphasis is mine: AW] and illustrating each with suitable examples, 

a number of contributors to the volume disregard this distinction and classify as 

loan renditions only those translations that differ lexically from their English 

etymons. This means that those structural calques which happen to differ morphologically 

from their English etymons are also included under the heading of 

loan translations, e.g., see sections on Croatian, French, Italian or Spanish. 

A milder attitude is presented in Grzega (2003: 26), who remarks in a footnote

228 


that a category labelled loan translations “also includes the translations with 

respect to the word-formation patterns of the recipient language”, thus allowing 

a different word order of elements or the introduction of a preposition. In the 

present paper, I shall rely on the distinction proposed by Görlach (2004: 9). 

In the case of inexact loan translations, or loan renditions, we may account 

for three types of possible discrepancies between the translated version and the 

original (Obara 1989: 61): (1) lexical, as in P. czarny koń < E. “dark horse”, 2 in 

which the English lexeme “dark” is rendered as P. czarny (E. “black”); (2) 

grammatical, as in P. opera mydlana < E. “soap opera”, which are syntactically 

different because of the formal differences between Polish and English, and (3) 

semantic, as illustrated by P. Pierwsza dama < E. “First Lady”, whose Polish 

senses do not correspond exactly to the ones used in English (cf. Witalisz 2011: 

153). It ought to be added that in the case of some loan renditions more than one 

type of alteration is present, e.g., P. strefa zero (< E. “ground zero”), which is different, 

lexically and partially semantically, from its English model. E. “ground” is 

rendered as P. strefa (E. “zone”) and the Polish expression has been extended 

semantically and used to refer to a number of various events, other than those in 

the United States (cf. Witalisz 2011: 153). This, however, cannot be a counterargument 

for looking for the origins of P. strefa zero in English. Similarly, 

P. drapacz chmur (lit. “scraper of clouds”) exhibits both lexical and grammatical 

deviation from its English etymon. 

As it is to be expected, in the Polish translations of English phraseological 

units it is the grammatical difference that is most frequent. Considering their 

internal structure, we can account for three types of morphological alteration: 

(1) English noun + noun expressions are rendered in Polish as either: 

(a) noun + inflected noun formations, e.g., P. łowca głów (E. “head hunter”); 

P. wyścig szczurów (E. “rat race”); P. gorączka złota (E. “gold rush”) or as 

(b) noun + adjective structures, e.g., P. poduszka powietrzna (E. “airbag”); 

P. opera mydlana (E. “soap opera”); P. podróż kosmiczna (E. “space 

travel”) or much less frequently as 

(c) noun + prepositional phrase structures, e.g., P. konferencja na szczycie 

(E. “summit conference”); P. wojna w sieci (E. “network war”) or as 

2 

The examples illustrating each type of discrepancy come from my work (Witalisz 2007a). 

Jerzy Obara’s (1989) examples of inexact loan translations come mostly from Russian, 

French or German since, at the time of his book’s publication, English loan translations were 

rather infrequent in Polish.


(d) adjective + noun formations, such as, e.g., P. ptasia grypa (E. “bird 

flu”); P. plastikowe pieniądze (E. “plastic money”); P. Żelazna dama 

(E. “Iron Lady”). 3 

(2) Many English adjective + noun expressions are rendered as noun + adjective 

formations in Polish, e.g., P. poprawność polityczna (E. “political correctness”); 

P. oferta specjalna (E. “special offer”); P. kultura popularna 

(E. “popular culture”). 

Additionally, in types (1a), (1b) and (1c), we may observe a reversed order 

of constituents. Contrary to their English etymons, Polish expressions of the 

first three types are all left-headed. 

In terms of numbers, the formations of type (1a) and (1b) constitute a vast 

majority of the Polish translations of English noun + noun expressions (each ca. 

47%) with types (1c) and (1d) being rather infrequent (each ca. 3%). The translations 

of English adjective + noun compounds, on the other hand, are rendered 

as either noun + adjective (2) or adjective + noun formations (loan translations 

proper) and these two types are evenly distributed. 

2.3. Loan translations following the Germanic pattern 

An interesting, though possibly worrying, observation that can be made, in 

the course of studying research material, is that some of the translated, halftranslated 

or independently coined expressions usually follow the Germanic 

morpho-syntactic pattern of their English etymons, and thus they violate the 

morphological system of Polish (Witalisz 2009). Expressions such as P. biznes 

informacje (E. “business news”), P. radio konkurs (E. “radio contest”), P. DVD 

premiera (E. “DVD premiere”), P. Agata Meble (E. lit. “Agata Furniture” – the 

name of a company) are not uncommon in Polish anymore, not to mention copious 

instances of formations of this type with morphemes such as “bank” (e.g., 

P. Inwest Bank, Kredyt Bank); bus (e.g., P. Krab Bus, Jan-Bus 4 – the names of 

companies) or sex (e.g., P. sex sklep (E. “sex shop”), sex telefon (E. lit. “sex 

phone”). It seems that the need for inflectional suffixes or the interfix, which are 

normally used in the formation of compounds in Polish, 5 is dropped as the new 

formal pattern is a reflection of the one normally found in Germanic languages. 

3 

4 

5 

Still, precision calls for noticing such cases in which the Polish translation uses an adjective 

as in P. plastikowe pieniądze or P. Żelazna dama, whereas the determinant used in their English 

etymons belongs to the category of either noun or adjective. 

One other similar example is P. AirBus – name of a bus company, which may be classified as 

a loanword (< E. “Airbus”), adapted semantically, graphically and phonologically. 

There are very few instances of noun + noun compounds in Polish, e.g., P. zuch dziewczyna, 

but this has by no means been a productive pattern. There is no doubt that the formation of 

such expressions has been stimulated by English influence.

230 


Taking into account the Germanic morphological pattern employed in these 

Polish expressions, we are tempted to classify them as instances of loan translations; 

however, most formations of this type exhibit a hybrid nature and are 

either true loanblends (e.g., P. biznes wiadomości < E. “business news”), i.e., 

partial translations from English or hybrid creations (Haugen 1950: 221) without 

English etymons (e.g., balkon party – E. lit. “balcony party”). Research 

material provides only a few instances of loan translations of this type, as, 

e.g., P. But sklep (E. “shoe shop”), used as a brand name of a Polish shoe shop. 

2.4. Phraseological replicas 

The substitution of foreign lexemes may extend to multi-word idiomatic 

expressions, which are reproduced as native words in the receiving language. 

The products of such translations may be termed as phraseological replicas 

(Wesołowska 1978: 57) and include P. mieć ciasto i zjeść ciastko (< E. “to have 

a cake and eat it”); P. mieć motylki w brzuchu (< E. “to have butterflies in the 

stomach”), or P. nie ma co płakać nad rozlanym mlekiem (< E. “there is no use 

crying over spilt milk”). 

2.5. Other cases 

Finally, whole syntactic phrases may be reproduced by native words of the 

receiving language. A syntactic substitution may be illustrated by the Polish 

translation of E. “How can I help you?” Its Polish version, Jak mogę (Pani/Panu) 

pomóc?, is used quite strangely by Polish shop assistants instead of the more 

traditional P. Proszę? English “No problem!” is translated into Polish as Nie ma 

problemu!, which is heard frequently instead of the more natural Nie ma 

sprawy. English figurative “at the end of the day” translates directly into Polish 

as pod koniec dnia or na końcu dnia. The latter version is frequently used by 

Poles who know their English idioms well. The existing Polish phrase pod 

koniec dnia (E. lit. “at the end of the day” meaning ‘in the late afternoon’), differs 

semantically and has no figurative sense. 

In conclusion to this brief formal description of structural calques, to use 

a broader term, it is worth pointing to more recent, cognitive approaches to borrowings, 

which take into account the communicative acts and cognitive processes 

that are involved when the speaker of a receiving language coins a new 

expression and introduces it in his/her language. In other words, we ask about 

the possible strategies we may use in a situation in which we are motivated to 

coin a new, contact-induced innovation. One of the strategies, connected with 

both loan translations and loan renditions, is treated as analogical innovations 

by means of word-formation processes, where the receiving language user proposes 

a semantic and morphological innovation that has its model in the donor


language (Winter-Froemel 2008: 24). This new term takes into account both the 

fact that the translated expressions are new to the receiving language and the 

semantic analogy that exists between the Polish version and its English etymon. 

3. Semantic processes 

The semantic analysis of loan translations and loan renditions from English 

should embrace a number of issues related to the newly appearing sense in the 

receiving language, namely the processes responsible for the appearance of the 

figurative meaning of the newly-coined expressions, their potential twofold 

semantic development, as well as their representing a particular semantic field. 

3.1. Semantic importation and lexicalization 

The chief theoretical problem related to both types of calques discussed 

here concerns the process of idiomatization of the newly formed expressions. 

Their more or less idiomatic nature is a fact. The puzzle that needs to be solved 

or at least addressed is the way in which the translated versions of English fixed 

expressions receive their idiomatic semantic content. In short, it might be simply 

claimed that the translated expressions copy the metaphorical senses from 

their English etymons through semantic importation, thus no users’ creativity is 

involved in the creation of a semantic innovation that appears as a result of language 

contact. However, a close semantic scrutiny reveals that the morphological 

process employed in the coining of a new expression involves also a semantic 

process which is a change in meaning of one of the lexemes that are employed 

in the formation of that expression. This change, though, is compelled 

by the known idiomatic sense of the English etymon. We might conclude, then, 

that the process of semantic lexicalization of the new expressions, involving the 

loss of semantic transparence and leading to the non-compositionality of a complex 

word, does occur, even though the metaphorical meaning of the newlyformed 

expression is motivated by a foreign influence. Most of the loan translations 

and renditions in question are semantically non-compositional; however, 

the borderline between what we consider semantically lexicalized or idiomatized 

and non-lexicalized has not been clearly defined. A handful of expressions 

such as P. czarny koń (< E. “dark horse”); P. mieć motylki w brzuchu (< E. “to 

have butterflies in one’s stomach”) or P. białe kołnierzyki (< E. “white collars” 

in the figurative sense) are clear instances of semantic lexicalization. On the 

other hand, if we consider a whole series of expressions involving the word 

“bank” as in “blood bank”, “stem cell bank” or “sperm bank”, it is clear that the 

idiomaticity of the translated set expressions is a matter of degree.

232 


3.2. Semantic reborrowing 

There are a few instances of loan translations and renditions that develop 

semantically on the soil of the receiving language. This may apply either to 

adopting more English senses of the polysemous English etymon, particularly 

those senses that have appeared in English after the expression was calqued in 

the receiving language, or to the semantic extension of the loan translation/rendition, 

independent of the semantic content of the foreign model (cf. 

Witalisz 2011). It must be stressed though that the two types of semantic development 

may co-occur. 

The term reborrowing has been used in the literature (cf. Haugen 1950: 

222) in reference to loanwords to suggest that “the loan is subject to continual 

interference from the model in the other language” as various speakers use different 

phonological and morphological forms of the same loanword. Adopting 

the term in respect to the meaning of loan translations and renditions, we might 

think of semantic reborrowing in cases where a calque from English develops 

semantically by acquiring new English senses (not known in English at the time 

of the first borrowing) to catch up with the semantic development of the English 

etymon, as in the case of P. strefa zero (E. “ground zero”). Semantic reborrowing 

may be exact or inexact, depending on whether all of the new English 

senses are adopted or not. Such semantic extension may be seen as one other 

stage of semantic lexicalization. 

3.3. Independent semantic extension 

Simultaneously to the semantic reborrowing or quite independently of it, 

another process of semantic extension may occur. Loan translation or rendition 

may develop one or a set of additional senses which are independent of the 

senses used in English. This may happen when the translated expression has 

either been well-established or has filled a lexical gap in the receiving language 

by concisely naming a concept that previously demanded an elaborate, descriptive 

way of referring to it. Far from this linguistic ideal, semantic extension of 

this sort occurs also as a result of linguistic snobbery and as a way of catching 

other language users’ attention. This reinterpretation (Bauer 1983: 57) is well 

illustrated by P. strefa zero (E. “ground zero”) and P. Pierwsza dama (E. “First 

Lady”), which have been used on a number of occasions to refer to specific 

Polish realia (Witalisz 2011: 153). It might be argued, though, that this type of 

independent semantic development may change the status of loan translations/ 

renditions to a subtype of semantic pseudo-loans since the corresponding English 

fixed expressions never appear in English in the senses that have been 

added to their Polish translations.


3.4. Culture-specific loan translations 

It must be emphasized that a vast majority of the translated English fixed 

expressions are culture-related, which best reflects the process of Old World 

communities taking over certain American cultural patterns. The semantic fields 

which are most numerously represented include the following: (1) working 

style, making a career based on competition; (2) new occupations; (3) new 

technologies and computers; (4) food and eating habits; (5) popular culture including 

music, film, television, entertainment in general; (6) advertising; and (7) 

American cultural phenomena (examples for each field in Witalisz 2007b). 

4. Loan translations as neologisms 

Although many of the loan translations and renditions from English are 

already well-established in Polish and are commonly used both in the written 

and spoken variety, the set is by no means closed. Novel English-sourced expressions 

such as P. gorący ziemniak (< E. “hot potato”); P. ziemniak kanapowy 

(< E. “couch potato”) or P. mieć coś z tyłu głowy (< E. “to have sth at the back 

of one’s mind”), used in the Polish media, are not frequent but it seems that 

their institutionalization (Bauer 1983: 48) is only a matter of time. This raises 

the question of the status of loan translations and renditions in the class of neologisms. 

Following Jean Tournier’s (1985: 21), discussed by Leonhard Lipka 

(2002: 108), categorization of productive patterns, based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s 

conception of linguistic sign, English phraseological units (when they 

were first created) may be classified as morpho-semantic neologisms since both 

the signified (French signifié) and signifier (signifiant) are concerned. May their 

foreign translations then be considered representatives of the same category? 

Tournier’s classification of neologisms (1985) lists adopting loanwords as an 

external process, which theoretically excludes loan translations and renditions 

as morpho-semantic neologisms. However, Tournier’s taxonomy takes into 

account only adopted loanwords, which are certainly a much different type of 

borrowed elements than loan translations. In the case of loanwords, there is no 

sign of language productivity or users’ creativity as hardly any word-formation 

processes are used; the foreign lexeme is imported both semantically and formally. 

It seems, then, that loan translations and renditions which involve both 

word-formation and semantic processes may be categorized as cases of morphosemantic 

neologisms since both their form and meaning are new to the receiving 

language.

234 


5. Conclusion and suggestions for further research 

English loan translations constitute a growing category of borrowings in 

contemporary Polish. In this case, the borrowing method is translation rather 

than morphemic importation, which seems an easier option for multiword compound 

expressions. Also, set expressions formed of native linguistic material, 

even if at first semantically unclear, do not frighten an average user of Polish 

with their foreignness and are more easily accepted by Poles with little knowledge 

of English. Rendering foreign expressions by means of native vocabulary 

seems a successful method for filling lexical gaps in the lexicon of Polish. 

More research needs to be carried out in the area of loan translations. Related 

to the issues discussed above is the question of the stages of the institutionalization 

of loan translations and renditions in the receiving language, such 

as morpho-semantic innovation (taking over the foreign pattern); formal institutionalization 

(formal neologism) and semanticization (semantic neologism) 

(Traugott & Dasher 2005), and finally lexicalization (well-established lexeme) 

(Bauer 1983). It would also be interesting to carry out a cross-linguistic study 

incorporating samples of English phraseological calques in other European languages 

to see how various languages render the same foreign concept using 

either the processes of importation or substitution of English linguistic material. 

References 

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Görlach, Manfred (ed.) 2004: English in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

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Onomasiology Online 4: 22–42. In: www1.ku-eichstaett.de/SLF/EngluVglSW/grzega- 

1032.pdf ED 09/2011. 

Haugen, Einar 1950: The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language 26(2): 210–231. 

Lipka, Leonhard 2002: English Lexicology. Lexical Structure, Word Semantics and Word- 

Formation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. 

Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta 1995: Tendencje rozwojowe współczesnych zapożyczeń angielskich 

w języku polskim [Tendencies in the development of contemporary English borrowings in 

Polish]. Kraków: Universitas. 

Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta 2004: Polish. In Manfred Görlach (ed.) 2004: English in Europe. 

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Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta 2006: Angielsko-polskie kontakty językowe [English-Polish language 

contacts]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. 

Markowski, Andrzej 1992: Nowsze anglicyzmy semantyczne w polszczyźnie [New English 

semantic loans in Polish]. Poradnik Językowy 4: 156–160. 

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Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. 

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Paris, Genève: Champion-Slatkine.


Traugott, Elizabeth, Richard Dasher 2005: Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

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in contemporary Polish]. Rozprawy Habilitacyjne nr 16. Uniwersytet Jagielloński. 

Kraków. 

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loans in Polish – with a dictionary]. Kraków: Tertium. 

Witalisz, Alicja 2007b: Anglosemantyzmy jako odzwierciedlenie amerykańskich wpływów kulturowych 

[English semantic loans as a reflection of American cultural influence]. In: 

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[Intercultural communication: perspectives on interdisciplinary studies]. 

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[Do new Polish compounds follow the English morphological pattern?]. In Kazimierz Ożóg 

(ed.) 2009: Język żyje. Rzecz o wspólczesnej polszczyźnie [Language lives. On contemporary 

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Witalisz, Alicja 2011: Linguistic globalisation – a contribution to linguistic homogenisation or the 

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Text – Meaning – Context: Cracow Studies in English Language, Literature and 

Culture. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 149–166. 

Zabawa, Marcin 2004: Nowe zapożyczenia semantyczne w polszczyźnie [New semantic loans in 

Polish]. Poradnik Językowy 1, 59–67.

KAMILA BINIEK 

KARKONOSZE STATE HIGHER SCHOOL IN JELENIA GÓRA 

Etymology: who is right? Aspects of etymological 

research on the source languages of borrowings in 

selected Polish dictionaries 

ABSTRACT. The article presents differences regarding etymology of selected entries from 

Polish dictionaries. The analysis was performed on entries which may be considered as 

borrowings from English, following their extraction and creation of a large database placed 

into an Excel spreadsheet. Quantitative results showed that 20,5% of the entries from 

Słownik języka polskiego PWN [Dictionary of Polish] (Szymczak 1978–1981) differ in their 

etymological description because of the author’s different approach to establishing the 

source language of the borrowing. Further quantitative comparison which was made showed 

that entries of disputable origin constituted about 2,69% of the sample of entries from the 

publication of Mańczak-Wohlfeld (2006), 2,59% of the sample from Słownik współczesnego 

języka polskiego [Dictionary of Modern Polish] (Dunaj 1995); 2,38% of the Trzaski, Everta 

i Michalskiego encyklopedyczny słownik wyrazów obcych [Encyclopeadic dictionary of 

foreign words by Trzaska, Evert & Michalski] and 1,4% of the sample from Wielki słownik 

wyrazów obcych [Great dictionary of foreign words] (Bańko 2005). 

The reasons for the differentiation of changes in the meanings of words have been 

deduced from the possible lack of sufficient etymological information or the tendency to 

readily attribute the English origin in borrowings which are acquired recently. It has been 

noticed tated that the differences in providing appropriate etymological information occur 

almost in every analyzed dictionary. Hence, it is concluded that more research is needed in 

the field of etymology of the loanwords in Polish, especially those which are borrowed 

through English language. 

KEYWORDS. Etymology, lexicography, borrowing, loanword, Anglicism, source language. 

1. Goals and scope of the analysis 

Departing from the statement that linguists and lexicographers have different 

views on the source language of foreign words in the Polish language, the 

subject matter of this paper constitutes the typological survey of Anglicisms 

which can be considered as having a disputable origin. The objects of comparison 

are descriptive approaches to the etymology of selected borrowings with the 

focus on Anglicisms, from letter N to P, in selected Polish dictionaries. The aim 

of this study is neither to trace a detailed history of particular words nor to discuss 

the semantic changes of all of the identified entries. It is intended as the 

initial quantitative and qualitative analysis of selected borrowings, which can be 

used for further research. 


238 

Kamila Biniek 

In the ensuing sections, the descriptive terms, material data and investigative 

methods will be briefly explained and presented. Finally, the entries which 

have been considered as disputable in origin will be analyzed with respect to 

their etymology on the basis of selected dictionaries. 

2. Terminology 

The term borrowing can be understood as Tadeusz Piotrowski (2008: 1) has 

noticed in various ways, both as a process of transferring certain features from 

one language to another, as well as products of these processes. In the following 

study, reference is made mainly to borrowings, which are understood as products. 

The language which acquires the transferred feature is referred to as the 

recipient language, whereas the language, from which the lexical item is taken, 

is called the source language. A word that serves as a model for the loanword is 

a source word. If the transfer concerns a word, then it is referred to, for example 

by Martin Haspelmath (2003: 4), as a loanword, synonymously with a borrowing. 

In this paper, loanwords have been specified in a broad sense, as a general 

term for both loanwords, which are in some way assimilated in the recipient 

language, as well as these which are used in their original, non-assimilated 

form. Borrowings from English are called Anglicisms. The qualification of 

a word to the class of Anglicisms is done on the basis of qualifications used by 

the authors of analyzed dictionaries. These were their arbitrary decisions based 

on their knowledge of the origin of words, accepted methodology and etymological 

work. 

The definition of the field of etymology contained in the contemporary 

Handbook of Linguistics reads that: 

The field of etymology studies the origin and the earliest meaning of semantic units, i.e., 

morphemes, words, and phrases. The source (or to use the Greek term, etymon) is the word 

at the time and in the language in which it emerged, i.e., when and where we can break it 

down into its constituent parts, understand its formation and the reasons that led to the 

emergence of its earliest meaning, as well as understand its semantic motivation (Strazny 

2005: 305). 

In practical lexicographical work, etymology is often understood as the 

source language of a given loanword, included as a specific label in the entry. 

Lexicographers creating general dictionaries of Polish language or, popular in 

Poland, dictionaries of foreign words and phrases, face the fact that words are 

often borrowed through other languages. A lexicographer has to decide which 

source language, if not any, he wants to show in the entry, on the basis of the 

available linguistic information. Most authors take the lexical approach towards 

the etymology of borrowings. According to this approach, discussed among the

Etymological research on the source languages of borrowings in Polish dictionaries 239 

others by Małgorzata Witaszek-Samborska (1992: 19), the source language of 

the borrowings is established on the basis of the direct language from which the 

word was transferred as being the last link in the borrowing chain. Others take 

the so-called morphological approach and establish the etymology of a given 

loanword considering morphological and semantic features of its stem. The 

differences outlined above will be presented and illustrated with examples in 

Section 3. 

3. The material and methodology 

The lexicographic material used for the purpose of analysis constituted the 

lists of entries excerpted from nine dictionaries of foreign words and Polish 

language and a list of Anglicisms from the publication of Elżbieta Mańczak- 

Wohlfeld (2006). These materials had been described in more detail in my Master’s 

thesis and shortly in an article “Selected Anglicisms in dictionaries of Polish 

(entries G–N)” published by Higher School of Philology Press (Jeleńska 

2011). Table 1 lists these dictionaries, providing the number of overall entries 

that they contain and the number of entries in the samples which have been 

analyzed. 

Table 1. Dictionaries containing extracted numbers of entries 

The dictionary Entries in dictionaries Entries in samples 

SWO Arct 33 000 442 

ESWO Trzaski 53 000 839 

SJP Dor 125 000 563 

SWO PWN Tok 27 000 607 

SJP PWN Szym 80 000 767 

SWJP Wilga Dun 62 000 231 

WSWO PWN Bań 40 000 981 

USJP PWN Dub 100 000 769 

APKJ Mańczak 1 793 483 

SGJP Sal 180 000 910 

The data from each of the dictionaries mentioned in Table 1 were collected 

manually and placed in an Excel spreadsheet. The main headers of the columns 

contained the names of the dictionaries in the order mentioned in Table 1; the 

two sub-columns of each dictionary were intended for the entry itself and the 

etymological information about it. A single row was reserved for the same entry, 

together with its etymological information, which was considered an Anglicism 

in at least one dictionary. If an entry was found only in one dictionary, the 

row contained only this one record. If a given entry was found in two or more 

dictionaries, the row contained two or more records. Such a form of the spread-

240 

Kamila Biniek 

sheet enabled an easy comparison of the entries and their etymological 

information. 

For the purpose of this research, only the entries from letters G–N had been 

analyzed. The first entries which were inserted into the sheet came from the 

publication of APKJ Mańczak-Wohfeld, the EWSO Trzaski, the WSWO PWN 

Bań and the SWJP Wilga Dun. Each of these entries was marked as being of 

English or American origin. The collection of the remaining data involved their 

manual extraction from other dictionaries. It depended on the entries which 

were present in the previously mentioned three dictionaries, because, in the first 

instance, their presence in other dictionaries was also checked. Accordingly, 

they were put in the appropriate cells at the intersection of a row reserved for 

a given entry and a column in the spreadsheet. In most of the cases, their source 

language was also marked – English or American English. Sometimes, however, 

entries present in the other dictionaries were not marked as being of English 

origin. This was also noted in the table and constituted the basis for further 

analysis. 

4. Analyzing the etymology of selected entries 

The most striking discrepancy regarding etymological information was 

noted between Słownik Języka Polskiego [Polish language dictionary] edited by 

Mieczysław Szymczak (1978–1981) and other dictionaries. In the sample of 

entries from the letter G to N 199 lexemes were classified by most dictionary 

editors/authors as coming from English, whereas Szymczak provided the original 

language as the source of the borrowing. This is 20,5% of the sample from 

SJP PWN Szym. This situation was caused by the fact that the author’s approach 

to etymology was different. He established the source language of these 

entries on the basis of the first language that he considered them to come from. 

All of the other dictionary authors followed the approach that a given word was 

considered an Anglicism if the last language from which the word was borrowed 

was English. Table 2 shows the first 20 Anglicisms of that kind from the 

whole list of 199. 

Because of the high number of identified entries with different etymology, 

which could not, due to the considerable size of the table, be reproduced here in 

full, they are analyzed in terms of their classification as scientific and specialist 

vocabulary. It was found out that 153 out of 199 entries, constituting 77% of the 

selection, were used in scientific lexical fields such as biology, chemistry, philosophy, 

medicine, history, paleontology, religion, art, zoology, linguistics etc. 

In some cases, Szymczak attributed more than one label to one entry. In the 

analyzed group, several entries had been found which were not marked in SJP 

PWN as specialist vocabulary; nevertheless, they were treated as specialist.


Out of the 199 entries 134, that is, 67% of the specialist vocabulary, were 

classified by Szymczak as coming either from Greek or Latin. These statistics 

provide yet another illustration of the trend for coining new words in the scientific 

and specialist lexical areas in English (and Polish) on the basis of the Greek 

and Latin languages. 

Table 2. List of 20 Anglicisms and their first language etymology by Szymczak (1978–1981) 

Number Entry Etymology according to SJP PWN 

1 generacja Latin 

2 generatywizm Latin 

3 giaur Persian 

4 gliceryd Latin 

5 glicyna Latin 

6 globulina Latin 

7 glukoza Greek 

8 glutyna Latin 

9 gnejs German 

10 gonadotropina German, Greek 

11 goniatyt Greek 

12 gradacja Latin 

13 grill French 

14 guanidyna Spanish 

15 guanina Spanish 

16 habituacja Latin 

17 Harmonogram Greek 

18 Herbicyd Latin 

19 Histeria Latin 

20 Homolog Greek 

Szymczak’s approach to etymology was not successful among other dictionary 

authors as it did not reflect the actual borrowing process from the English 

to the Polish language. One of the possible reasons for Szymczak taking 

such an approach could be his intended or forced willingness to purposefully 

obscure the fact that the Polish language indeed borrowed extensively from 

a Western language, despised in the communist times. The dictionary was compiled 

in the years 1978–1981, when the anti-imperialist censorship in Poland 

flourished. 

The next step is to analyze further inconsistencies regarding etymological 

information in the analyzed dictionaries. Table 3 presents entries which were 

found in Trzaski, Everta i Michalskiego encyklopedyczny słownik wyrazów obcych 

[Encyclopeadic dictionary of foreign words by Trzaska, Evert and Michalski], 

(1939), which were listed as Anglicisms, while they were labeled differently 

in other dictionaries (2,38% of the sample). 

The discrepancies shown in Table 3 can be connected with the lack of sufficient 

etymological information which the authors of the ESWO Trzaski had at

242 

Kamila Biniek 

their disposal at the time of dictionary creation. We can look here at such compiling 

dictionary entries as, for example, gambir, infant, jury or kangur, which 

the authors classified as having an English origin while later linguistic enquiries 

led to the conclusions that they come from other languages. 

Table 3. Comparison of selected entries from ESWO Trzaski, SWO PWN Tok and USJP 

PWN Dub 

Number Entry ESWO Trzaski 

source language 

SWO PWN Tok 


USJP PWN Dub 


1 gambir English, French Malaysian Malaysian 

2 gradient English German, English German, English 

3 infant English Spanish Spanish 

4 inlet English German German 

5 jury English no data French 

6 kangur English French French 

7 karykiel English no data no data 

8 kojot English Spanish-Mexican Spanish-Mexican 

9 kok English French French 

10 konkret English French French 

11 ksero English Greek Greek 

12 lombard English German German 

13 lubrykator English Latin Latin 

14 marka English no data no data 

15 marsel Dutch, English Dutch Dutch 

18 nandu French, English, no data 

Spanish 

Spanish 

19 narwal English no data French 

20 nargile English no data Osm-Tur 

In the course of further analysis, other entries are presented where the authors 

of a dictionary did not unanimously treat as them as coming from the English 

language. Table 4, in turn, shows the entries from Wielki słownik wyrazów 

obcych [Great dictionary of foreign words] (Bańko 2005), which are considered 

Anglicisms, but are labeled as coming from another language in Uniwersalny 

słownik języka polskiego [Universal dictionary of Polish language] (Dubisz 

2005). 

The differences may be connected with the fact that one or the other dictionary 

has inconsistently shown the source language of the borrowing, with the 

authors of the entries in WSWO PWN Bań readily classifying borrowings such 

as makrobiotyka or neurotyk as being of English origin and USJP PWN Dub 

giving the origin of the borrowings on the basis of their original language. The 

inconsistency occurs because in other cases in UJSP PWN Dub the source language 

was established on the basis of the last language in the borrowing chain. 

Some other differences, as shown in Table 4, may be caused by the fact that 

entries such as ikona (borrowing from English in the sense of the picture on the


screen of the computer) were mentioned by WSWO PWN Bań a new sense, 

which was not yet recorded by the USJP PWN Dub. 

Table 4. Comparison of selected Anglicisms from WSWO PWN Bań and USJP PWN Dub 

Number Entry WSWO PWN Bań 


USJP PWN Dub 


1 Grawiton English Greek 

2 Guide II English French 

3 Ikona English Ukrainian, Russian, Neo-Greek 

4 Italo disco English Italian 

5 Ircha English German 

6 Kolaps English Latin 

7 Land English German 

8 Latania English Latin 

9 Limit English Russian 

10 Makrobiotyka English Greek 

11 Menarche English Greek 

12 Mielina English Greek 

13 Neuralgia English French 

14 Neurastenik English French 

15 Neurotyk English Greek 

The next sample of analysis embraces a group of entries, in which differences 

concerned also the list of Anglicisms from the publication of Mańczak- 

Wohlfeld (2006). What has been compared is the etymological information 

provided by this author with the information from three dictionaries of Polish 

language and a dictionary of foreign words and phrases by Jan Tokarski (1995). 

The differences showed in Table 5 may have come about because of various 

reasons. One of these includes again possible inconsistencies connected with 

different views regarding the language which served as the final source of the 

borrowing. Examples of these are such entries as kangur, kojot, karaoke, milady, 

milord, described by other dictionary authors as coming from other languages 

than English. In other cases, the differences may again be connected 

with new senses of the same lexeme, as in the case of horror having the sense 

of a film genre (Mańczak), or simply different meanings of the same loanword 

like kres in the sense of a type of knife (Mańczak). 

Finally, other cases of such disputable entries which have been found include 

the following samples: 

[1] grafityzować: WSWO PWN Bań: English, SWO PWN Tok: French, English; 

[2] gibon: SJP PWN Szym, SWJP Wilga Dun: English, other dictionaries: French; 

[3] inkulturacja: WSWO PWN Bań: English, one may doubt whether the word stems from 

acculturation or enculturation; 

[4] karibu: USJP: English, SJP PWN Szym, SWO PWN Tok, SWJP Wilga Dun: Algonkin,

244 

Kamila Biniek 

[5] kajak: USJP PWN Dub, APKJ Mańczak, SWO PWN Tok: English, not present in 

WSWO PWN Bań; SJP PWN Szym: Eskimo; 

[6] klomb: SWJP Wilga Dun, APKJ Mańczak, SWO PWN Tok: English, USJP PWN Dub: 

German-Austrian; 

[7] klub: APKJ Mańczak, SWJP Wilga Dun: English; USJP: German of French origin (Klub, 

club), SWO PWN Tok gives German and French before English as the origin of the word 

and mentions a Danish word Klub as the source language. 

Table 5. Comparison of selected entries from the list of APKJ Mańczak, SJP PWN Szym, 

SWO PWN Tok and USJP PWN Dub 

Number 

Entry 

APKJ 

Mańczak 

source 

language 

SWJP 

Wilga Dun 

source 

language 

SJP PWN 

Szym 

source 

language 

SWO PWN 

Tok 

source 

language 

USJP PWN 

Dub 

source 

language 

1 horror English no data Latin Latin Latin 

2 hulk English no data Greek Greek Greek 

3 info English no data no data no data Greek 

4 kampus English English no data no data Latin 

from Latin 

5 kangur English no data French French French 

6 karaoke English no data no data no data Japanese 

7 kojot English no data Spanish Spanish no data 

8 kombajn English no data no data Russian no data 

9 kompilat English English French French 

10 koncern English English English German German 

from 

English 

11 kres English no data German German German 

12 kuter English no data no data no data German 

13 LSD English no data no data no data German 

14 ludyzm English no data no data no data Latin 

15 mahoń English English no data no data German 

16 metal English English no data no data German 

17 milady English no data no data no data French 

18 milord English no data no data no data French 

Concluding remarks 

In conclusion, the research results of quantitative analysis may be summarized 

in the following statements: 

(1) 20,5% of the sample from SJP PWN Szym shows different etymology because 

of the author’s approach to establishing the source language of the 

borrowing;


(2) Words of disputable origin constitute about 2,6% of the APKJ Mańczak 

sample, 2,6% of the SWJP Wilga Dun sample, 2,38% of the ESWO Trzaski 

sample and 1,4% of the WSWO PWN Bań sample; 

(3) Differences in etymological information occur almost in every analyzed 

dictionary. Therefore, it is clear that more research is needed in the field of 

etymology of the loanwords in Polish, especially those which are borrowed 

through English language. 

References 

Dictionaries 

Arct, Michał 1939 /1882/: Słownik wyrazów obcych Michała Arcta [Dictionary of foreign words 

by Michał Arct]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo M(ichała) Arcta (revised in 1939) = SWO Arct. 

Bańko, Mirosław (ed.) 2005: Wielki słownik wyrazów obcych [Great dictionary of foreign words]. 

Warszawa: PWN = WSWO PWN Bań. 

Doroszewski, Witold (ed.) 1958–1969: Słownik języka polskiego [Dictionary of Polish language]. 

11 vols. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy/Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 

(Repr. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1997) = SJP Dor. 

Dubisz, Stanisław and Elżbieta Sobol (eds.) 2005: Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego. [Universal 

dictionary of Polish language]. Warszawa: PWN = USJP PWN Dub. 

Dunaj, Bogusław (ed.) 1995: Słownik współczesnego języka polskiego [Dictionary of Modern 

Polish]. Warszawa: Wilga = SWJP Wilga Dun. 

Lam, Stanisław (ed.) 1939: Trzaski, Everta i Michalskiego encyklopedyczny słownik wyrazów 

obcych [Encyclopeadic dictionary of foreign words by Trzaska, Evert and Michalski]. Warszawa: 

Ewert, Trzaska i Michalski 1 = ESWO Trzaski. 

Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta 2006: Angielsko-polskie kontakty językowe [English-Polish language 

Encounters]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego = APKJ Mańczak. 

Saloni, Zygmunt, Włodzimierz Gruszczyński, Marcin Woliński, Robert Wołosz 2007: Słownik 

gramatyczny języka polskiego [Grammatical dictionary of Polish]. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna 

= SGJP Sal. 

Szymczak, Mieczysław (ed.) 1978–1981: Słownik języka polskiego. [Dictionary of Polish]. 3 vols. 

Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe = SJP PWN Szym. 

Tokarski, Jan (ed.) 1995 /1971/: Słownik wyrazów obcych. [Dictionary of Foreign Words]. PWN: 

Warszawa (Second edition, ed. Elżbieta Sobol 1995) = SWO PWN Tok. 

Cited works 

Haspelmath, Martin 2003: Loanword Typology: Steps toward a systematic cross-linguistic study 

of lexical borrowability, position paper published online in the framework of the crosslinguistic 

project on loanwords and lexical borrowability co-ordinated by the Max Planck Institute 

for Evolutionary Anthropology (1003–2007). In: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~haspelmt- 

/LWT-text.pdf ED 06/2009. 

1 

Known under the names „Trzaska, Evert i Michalski”, the publishing house „Księgarnia i 

Dom Wydawniczy TEM”, specializing in dictionaries and encyclopedias, was organized by 

Władysław Trzaska, Jana Michalski, Ludwik Józef Evert in 1920 (editor’s note).

246 

Kamila Biniek 

Jeleńska Kamila 2011: Selected Anglicisms in dictionaries of Polish (entries G–N). In: Zdzisław 

Wąsik (ed.) 2011: Dissertationes Philologicae Wratislavienses. Wybrane prace seminaryjne 

studentów anglistyki z lat 2009–2010 [Selected seminar works of the students of English 

from the period 2009–2010]. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Filologicznej we 

Wrocławiu, 169–184. 

Piotrowski, Tadeusz 2008: Zapożyczenia leksykalne w języku polskim jako ślady relacji kulturowych 

[Lexical borrowings in Polish as traces of cultural relations]. In: Stanisław Gajda (ed.) 

2008: Język polski w europejskiej przestrzeni kulturowo-językowej. Opole:. Opolskie Towarzystwo 

Przyjaciół Nauk. Uniwersytet Opolski – Instytut Filologii Polskiej, 375–399. 

Strazny, Philipp (ed.) 2005: Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Volume 1. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 

New York: Oxon. 

Witaszek-Samborska, Małgorzata 1992: Wyrazy obcego pochodzenia we współczesnej polszczyźnie 

(na podstawie słowników frekwencyjnych) [Borrowings from English in contemporary Polish 

(on the basis of frequency dictionaries)]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo „Nakom”.

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