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The reflection of historical language contact in present-day Dutch and Swedish

  • Charlotte Gooskens
  • , Renée van Bezooijen
  • , Sebastian Kürschner

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    In the present study we quantitatively examine similarly constructed samples of formal spoken Swedish and Dutch in order to compare the composition of the lexicons. Results showed that Swedish has many more loans than Dutch, namely 44.4% against 27.9%. Within the Swedish loans there is a large compartment of Low German (38.7%), whereas most loans in Dutch have a French origin (63.8%). The differences in terms of the number and distribution of loanwords between the lexical profiles of Swedish and Dutch appear to be stable, as they were attested both in the present study and in previous studies. They can be attributed to differences in the linguistic distances between source and borrowing languages and to differences in the intensity of the contacts.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationLanguage Contact: New Perspectives
    EditorsMuriel Norde, Bob de Jonge, Cornelius Hasselblatt
    Place of PublicationAmsterdam, Netherlands
    PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
    Pages103-117
    Edition1
    ISBN (Print)9789027288431, 9789027218674
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010

    Publication series

    NameIMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society
    PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
    Number28
    ISSN (Electronic)1385-7908

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