Workshop at 49. Österreichische Linguistiktagung: Native vs. Borrowed Word Formation in Synchrony and Diachrony
Short Title: ÖLT

Date: 05-Dec-2025 - 08-Dec-2025
Location: Klagenfurt, Austria
Contact Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories; Morphology

Submission Deadline: 01-Oct-2025

Coexistence of borrowed and native word formation morphology is a widespread if not universal characteristic of languages (Matras & Sakel 2007; Gardani, Arkadiev & Amiridze 2015). In many cases, foreign derived morphemes occupy specific lexical strata or registers, reflecting a compartmentalisation into native and borrowed subsystems (Matras 2009). For example, English word formation features both native Germanic and borrowed Latinate suffixes (e.g., -ness vs. -ity, respectively), whereby some of the latter ultimately became productive on native bases.

In this workshop we aim to bring together insights on how the contrast between native and borrowed word formation morphology is reflected in speakers’ knowledge of grammar. We are interested in the process of integration of morphologically complex words during language contact, the incorporation of borrowed word forming mechanisms in the recipient language, as well as in the consequences for the synchronic grammar and lexicon. The focus is on the theoretical analysis of the relevant phenomena. We welcome contributions from different theoretical frameworks on topics which include but are not limited to the following:

- Is the distinction between native and borrowed items part of the grammatical knowledge of speakers? How insightful is it to view this coexistence in terms of competition or rivalry?
- What drives the speakers’ perception of ‘nativeness’ and what are the consequences for the process of morphological integration?
- How do languages integrate borrowed word forming morphology from different languages (e.g., Latinate and English borrowing in German), and how does this give rise to different “strata” of word formation patterns?
- How universal are the various proposed “borrowability scales” and what is their status in the different theoretical approaches to word formation?
- What are the differences in the integration or nativization of borrowed morphemes between different morphological types (e.g. compounding vs. derivation vs. inflection) and what might be the morphological reason behind these empirical differences?
- How do borrowed categorizers (e.g. -ier- in German, -eer- in Dutch etc.) arise?
- How do borrowed affixes become native-like diachronically?
- Is there a difference between the development of borrowed vs. native morphology during L1 acquisition at different diachronic stages of ‘integration’?
- Why do languages differ w.r.t. the importance of ‘nativeness’ for morphological productivity and if so, how is this distinction best modelled?
- What role does prescriptism play w.r.t. what counts as ‘native’ or ‘borrowed’ and w.r.t. morphological productivity?

Submission Guidelines:
Presentations should follow a 20-minute talk + 10-minute discussion format. Abstracts must be between 150 and 300 words in length. All abstracts should include references and adhere to the formatting conventions of the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics (https://clas.wayne.edu/linguistics/resources/style).

Please submit your abstract by 1 October 2025 to:
[email protected]

Workshop Organizers:
Laura Grestenberger
([email protected])
Gianina Iordăchioaia
([email protected])
Veronika Mattes
([email protected])
Marko Simonović
([email protected])
Martina Werner
([email protected])

References:
Gardani, F., Arkadiev, P., & Amiridze, N. (Eds.). (2015). Borrowed morphology. De Gruyter Mouton.
Haugen, E. (1950). The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language, 26(2), 210–231. https://doi.org/10.2307/410058
Johanson, L., & Robbeets, M. (Eds.). (2012). Copies versus cognates in bound morphology. Brill.
Matras, Y. (2009). Language contact. Cambridge University Press.
Matras, Y., & Sakel, J. (Eds.). (2007). Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective. Mouton de Gruyter.
Mithun, M. (2012). Morphologies in contact: Form, meaning, and use in the grammar of reference. In M. Vanhove, T. Stolz, A. Urdze, & H. Otsuka (Eds.), Morphologies in contact (pp. 15–36). Akademie Verlag.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2002). Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford University Press.
Seifart, F. (2013). AfBo: A world-wide survey of affix borrowing. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from https://afbo.info
Thomason, S. G., & Kaufman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. University of California Press.
Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact: Findings and problems. Linguistic Circle of New York.