Borrowing of Linguistic Rules

Linguists of all persuasions agree that language contact becomes a source of structural changes as long as the right speakers happen to be found in the right place at the right time. Despite this agreement, views differ as to what it can change in which contact ecologies. A number of scholars assert that there are no constraints other than those emerging in the contact situation itself over what can be transferred from an alien system: anything – including linguistic patterns and rules in isolation – can travel across linguistic boundaries provided that sociopolitical conditions are right. Other scholars are wary of this claim. Linguistic patterns, according to them, can only be transferred in shift situations, if at all. Still others assert that contact can only cause a shift in frequencies of already existing patterns, and that the ab ovo changes claimed in the literature to have taken place with pattern or rule transmission turn out to be, under careful review, ordinary language‐internal changes. This chapter reassesses all these positions, along with their evidence. In doing so, it decomposes the notions ‘pattern’, ‘rule’, and ‘borrowing’. The major focus of this chapter is on the transfer of morphosyntactic patterns or rules in maintenance and shift situations.