The "Grammatical Borrowing" database
Background and aims
Generalisations on grammatical borrowing have hitherto been based on either casual observations and intuitions, or on samples limited to a particular area (e.g. Mesoamerica, Pacific) or linguistic-genetic group (e.g. Turkic, Romani). The aim of the database project is to collect and evaluate data on borrowing in all areas of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax, and grammatical function words) from a variety of languages, representing genetic, typological, and geographical diversity as well as sociolinguistically diverse contact situations. Relevant phenomena to be surveyed include both the replication of substance (concrete morpho-phonological forms), or MATTER, and replication of a construction type, or PATTERN.
The Questionnaire
The questionnaire - a FilemakerPro 6 database file - is organised in chapters that survey the principal structural features: Phonology, nominal and verbal morphology, concord, syntax, other parts of speech. Questions address the presence and absence of contact phenomena in the various structural domains. The information accompanied by general information on the language, e.g. the sociolinguistic situation.
In order to facilitate the search for particular types of contact phenomena, affecting particular types of structures, much of the questionnaire is organised around pre-set boxes. These encode
- The presence or absence of contact-induced change for a given structural category
- Replication of MATTER vs. replication of PATTERN, represented by checkboxes in different colour-codes
- The specific semantics of a functional sub-category that is affected by contact (e.g. "experiencer", "superlative", "adversative", "lower than 5", etc.)
The pre-set categorised boxes are accompanied by text boxes. in which glossed examples are provided