Lexical borrowing from Chinese languages in Malaysian English

Abstract

This paper explores how contact between English and Chinese has resulted in the incorporation of Chinese borrowings into the lexicon of Malaysian English (ME). Using a corpus-based approach, this study analyses a comprehensive range of borrowed features extracted from the Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus (MEN Corpus). Based on the contexts of these features, the specific processes that shape the patterns of changes in ME are deduced. Haugen's analysis of lexical borrowing is employed in the description of the linguistic changes. It is proposed that the preservation of traditional Chinese culture and practices by a multilingual society that maintains a local variety of English has created the stimulus for this type of contact phenomenon. Borrowers are conditioned not only by their need to expand the communicative and expressive powers of English but also by their need to integrate the borrowed features into the linguistic system of the English language. The outcomes of this phenomenon, as represented in the relatively formal genre of newspaper English, are mainly loanwords, compound blends and loan translations, although some inflected and derived forms based on these borrowings are also observed.

Modelling loanword success – a sociolinguistic quantitative study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

“…Studies of loanwords typically gauge borrowing rates by reporting raw frequencies of use of loanwords (Imm 2009;Kouega 2009;Furiassi 2011;among others). This is problematic because a loanword's use depends not only on the very act of being borrowed from one language into another, but also on a speaker's (or writer's) desire to use the concept that the word denotes.…”

A corpus‐based approach to Chinese English lexis

“…Lexical features arising from the historical and contemporary contact ecologies between English and indigenous languages have always been a fruitful area within the paradigm of world Englishes (Baumgardner, 1998; Biermeier, 2014, 2017; Cannon, 1988; Chan & Kwok, 1985; Dako, 2001; Tan, 2009; Tent, 2001; Yang, 2009). Commonly delineated structural features of varietal lexis encompass chronology, etymology, semantics, grammar and word‐formation (Biermeier, 2008; Cannon, 1988; Evans, 2015; Moody, 1996; Qin & Guo, 2020; Tent, 2001; Yang, 2005, 2009).…”

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“…Interestingly, youngsters 1 often create novel meanings when using languages on the Internet as ‘teenagers are well-known for introducing innovations into language, and indeed are generally regarded as prime agents of language change’ (Palacios Martínez, 2018: 363). Many linguistic studies have dealt with the mechanisms of the evolution of word meanings in past decades (Kachru, 1983; Qin & Guo, 2020; Tan, 2009; Yang, 2005). Much evidence indicates that meanings and usages of words are variable and composite, and may turn out differently depending on how words are used in contexts.…”