SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES IN TRANSITION: A SYNTACTIC APPROACH TO

BORROWINGS
Kelvin Jesus Oliveira Silva
UFMG; Faculdade de Letras, kjosilva9@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION
This study argues about the importance of syntactic category change (i.e., noun, verb, adjective,
etc.) in the study of foreign words, associated with other adaptations, both morphological and
semantic, in the process of incorporating foreign expressions to form a loan word. In our analysis,
this incorporation occurs through a process composed of different stages of adaptation to the target
language (Ramilo & Soalheiro, 2003, apud Massini-Cagliari, 2011), where certain syntactic
properties may be altered in relation to the source language. Based on this, using the theoretical
model of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993), we propose that borrowed terms can
also undergo adaptation of their syntactic categories during this transition, such as we see in, the
term “outdoor” that functions as an adjective in English but solely as a noun in Brazilian Portuguese
(PB)

METHODS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

(Source: developed by the author)
CONCLUSIONS
Although there is no consensus in the literature when it comes to loan words, this work has already
reviewed and compared different criteria, which allowed us to identify the more frequent ones and
group them together in order to build a systematic table that can actually offer a preliminar distinction
between loan words from foreign words based on different linguistic criteria. One of those linguistic
criteria is the adaptation of the syntactic category, in which the borrowed term can lose the original
category as a whole (i.e. short and outdoor) or even preserve one syntactic category from the origin
language, but miss other uses (i.e. necessaire and shopping). In both cases, data shows that what we
borrow from a foreign word may actually be pieces of information, as we see when an item with two
roots is interpreted as one (i.e. blecaute, poltergeist and login), or when the meaning is changed (i.e.
boy, miss and garçom). Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993) approach may help us to
better understand the borrowing process inside the foreign words and provide advances in the study of
linguistic innovation.

SELECTED REFERENCES
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