Word Frequency and Lexical Diffusion in Dialect Borrowing and Phonological Change

Abstract

For many years dialectologists have availed themselves of the concept of dialect borrowing in order to explain linguistic phenomena which cannot easily be brought into line with the other facts found in that dialect. In the past few years, however, the use of dialect borrowing as an explanatory device has met with (increasingly) vehement criticism. Chen (1972) has pointed out that dialect borrowing served traditionally as a label by means of which all kinds of exceptions to general laws could be shoven under the rug. He argues, and convincingly so, that dialect borrowing -in its definition until then- is useless as a scientific explanatory device since it can never be refuted: there is no theory which predicts when, where, and why one dialect will borrow from another, and when, where, and why the borrowing process will not take place. At the same time, Chen (1972) emphasizes the necessity of a theory of dialect borrowing for a theory of language change because of the existence of certain well-attested changes that apparently can only be explained by assuming a process of dialect borrowing.