It is often argued that there is a strong relationship between intensity of language contact, and the linguistic level of borrowings: whilst lexical borrowings often require little more than light contact, some forms of... [ view full abstract ]
It is often argued that there is a strong relationship between intensity of language contact, and the linguistic level of borrowings: whilst lexical borrowings often require little more than light contact, some forms of morphosyntactic borrowing will only occur in cases of extremely intense contact. Even among lexical borrowings, however, differing levels of language contact can have different consequences – more intense contact leading both to a greater linguistic integration of lexical borrowings, but also to a greater likelihood that core cultural concepts are borrowed. In this paper, we focus on food-related borrowings. Food forms an important part of (evolving) local culture, ranging from the formal (e.g. ceremonial feasts) to the informal (everyday meals and snacks). We argue that borrowing of culturally important food-related words will be more common when there is more intense sociolinguistic contact.
Our research site is the Republic of Palau in the Western Pacific, where the Austronesian language, Palauan, is spoken. Since 1885, however, Palau has been ruled by four colonial powers – Spain, Germany, Japan and the US, before gaining independence in 1994. Consequently, Palauan has come into contact with four colonial languages, but only during the Japanese period, however, was Palau used as a settlement colony.
Rather than simply extracting borrowings and their meanings from dictionaries, we combined analyses of these and other sources with our own ethnography alongside discussions with Palauans. Our analysis shows that much everyday food-related vocabulary is borrowed from Japanese, but relatively little from English, despite US control over Palau being both longer and more recent, and despite its considerable economic and political influence on Palau since independence. We will present evidence that the success of Japanese food-related lexical borrowing into Palauan results from the sheer intensity of cultural and thereby language contact with Japanese during their colonial rule, whereas in the case of the American period, cultural and linguistic contact was simply too fleeting to have had a considerable core lexical impact. Furthermore, we are able to examine the way in which the meanings of food-related loanwords into Palauan have, over time, been restricted, expanded or totally shifted.
