What is it about?
The study quantifies lexical replacement and insertion into Raga speech and finds low incidence of borrowing, especially in comparison with previous studies on four other Vanuatu speech communities. There is some inter-speaker variation and the study reveals that both age and gender affect borrowing patterns.
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Why is it important?
Members of the speech community were generally confident in the vitality of their local language, but some speakers suggested that their language was being replaced by the national language, Bislama. However, the results of this study show that this is not the case and that speakers display an overall low frequency of Bislama loanwords.
Perspectives
I hope this article will prompt further investigations of borrowing in the many other languages of Vanuatu, from Bislama, but also from other Pacific languages, which would inform us on historical contact situations.
Marie-France Duhamel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Borrowing from Bislama into Raga, Vanuatu, Asia-Pacific Language Variation, December 2020, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/aplv.19015.duh.
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