Lexical Borrowing Hierarchies in Kolhari Kurdish: Gender, Age and Educational Background
Journal Title: Journal of Researches in Linguistics - Year 2020, Vol 12, Issue 1
Abstract
Abstract: This study is intended to investigate lexical borrowing in Kalhori Kurdish. The main lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs were examined to find whether native speakers prefer to use native words or loan words (of Farsi). This study was carried out in relation to three social variables as gender, age and educational backgrounds. To collect data, a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 339 items was employed. The results indicate that in all lexical categories, native words (as apposed to loan words) are mainly chosen by the subjects in all groups. In addition, there is no basic difference in all investigated lexical categories. Almost the same amount of borrowing is reported in all lexical categories, while in all borrowing hierarchies (Treffers-Daller, 2010; Muysken, 1988; Thomason and Kaufman, 1988), nouns were easier to borrow than the elements lower in the hierarchy. The results of this study, however, suggest that the reasons for borrowing are beyond the position in the hierarchy. The importance of lexical gap in borrowing is identified as an alternative to hierarchical approaches in the present study. Keywords: Borrowing, Borrowing hierarchy, Kalhori Kurdish, Lexical categories Introduction Language contact is an important issue which has received a lot of attention in the literature (Bloomfield, 1933; Haugen, 1950; Treffers Daller, 2010). In the earlier stage, the focus was on lexical borrowing. However, in recent studies, structural borrowing is also investigated (Matras, 2009). It is an axiom that the lexical borrowing is more common than structural and phonological borrowing. Moreover, it seems that some linguistic elements are easier to borrow than others (Treffers-daller, 2010). Accordingly, some researchers were trying to discover the hierarchy of borrowing of linguistic elements in different languages. Muysken (1981) presented an implicational hierarchy in which he tried to find the degree of ease (or difficulty) of borrowability of different linguistic elements. According to his hierarchy, lexical elements are easier than structural elements to borrow. Another influential study was Thomason and Kaufman (1988) dealing with a wide range of issues including language contact, borrowing, mixed languages, language interference, pidgin and creole languages, code-switching, etc. They focused on the role of external factors such as language contact on language change. Materials and methods This study is intended to investigate borrowing in Kalhori Kurdish. The main lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs were examined to find whether native speakers prefer to use native words or loan words (of Farsi). This study was carried out in relation to three social variables as gender, age and educational backgrounds. To collect data, a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 339 items was employed. Based on gender, age and educational backgrounds, the subjects were divided to eight groups: young male/ female educated; old male/ female educated; young male/ female uneducated; old male/ female uneducated participants. For each group, 10 people were selected randomly. Therefore, a total number of 80 participants were selected to respond to the provided list through interview. For each intended word, different contexts were provided and then the participants were asked to choose either the local word or the borrowed one from Persian. To analyze the data, SPSS (version 23) was employed. As for the statistical test, ANOVA was employed to find any meaningful relation between the three independent variables of the study (age, gender and educational background) and the participants’ choice among the Kurdish words and Persian borrowed ones (dependent variable). Discussion of Results and Conclusions The results indicated that in all investigated categories, native speakers of Kalhori Kurdish used a higher amount of native words rather than Persian borrowed equivalents. However, in all groups, some Persian borrowed words are also used. As for women, the results indicated that educated (both young and old) female participants used the least amount of native words. In contrast, uneducated female participants employed the highest amount of native words of Kalhori Kurdish. In the same way, educated men used a lower amount of native words of Kurdish comparing with their uneducated counterparts. Furthermore, young men tend to use a higher amount of borrowed words comparing their older counterparts. Accordingly, it can be concluded that in the four investigated categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), education and age were found to be statistically effective variables, while the variations due to gender were found to be statistically insignificant. Unlike the predictions of the theory of borrowing hierarchy (Muysken (1987), the results indicated the Kurdish terms were used much more frequently than their (more prestigious) Persian equivalents in Kalhori Kurdish. The results indicated that in all investigated categories, native words (as apposed to loan words) are mainly chosen by the subjects in all groups. In addition, there is no basic difference in all investigated categories. Almost the same amount of borrowing is reported in the investigated categories, while in all borrowing hierarchies (Treffers-Daller, 2010; Muysken, 1988; Thomason and Kaufman, 1988), nouns were easier to borrow than the elements lower in the hierarchy. The results of this study, however, suggest that the reasons for borrowing are beyond the position in the hierarchy. The importance of lexical gap in borrowing is emphasized in the present study as an alternative to hierarchical approaches.
Authors and Affiliations
Shahram Jamali Nesari PhD Candidate, Department of Linguistics, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran sh_jamali32@yahoo. com Habib Gowhari * Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran gowhari@ilam-iau. ac. ir
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP705240
- DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.22108/jrl.2020.120997.1445
- Views 58
- Downloads 0
Effects of Gender Differences on Expressing Pain
Abstract The present paper aims to investigate the role of language and gender in expressing pain. Pain is usually described as a personal subjective experience and sometimes it is believed that language is the only dev...
Comparing the Ability of Perceptual Simulation in Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Typical Children: An Embodied Cognition View
Abstract One controversial issue in embodied cognition is that lower cognitive abilities (e.g. perception) influence higher cognitive abilities (e.g. language). In particular, with regard to this idea, several studies h...
Exploring Cognitive, Situational and Cultural Dimensions of Delvari Figurative Proverbs through Anderson’s Extended Cognitive Proverb Model
Abstract Anderson (2013) believes that Conceptual Blending Theory (Fauconnier and Turner, 1998, 2002) is potentially capable of analyzing proverbs by incorporation of two blending processes to account for the cultural,...
Schematic Meanings of Prepositions “baraye” and “ta” and Their Secondary Grammaticalization
Abstract The present paper is a semantic survey of prepositions "/barāyē/ and /tā/. The aim of study is to identify schematic meaning of the mentioned prepositions with a diachronic view in order to investigate semasiol...
The Role of Construction Similarity and Verb Tense on the Construction of Integrated Syntactic Representations in Bilinguals
Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the role of construction similarity and verb tense in the construction of integrated syntactic representations in Persian and English bilinguals. Bilingual speakers aged...