Revisiting the Borrowability Scale(s) of Free Grammatical Elements: Evidence from Modern Greek Contact induced Varieties

Abstract

This article aims to test the general validity of borrowability scales by investigating contrastively two contact induced linguistic varieties of Greek. It tries to elucidate the factors that facilitate or inhibit the borrowability of free grammatical elements, which are usually considered as less amenable to transfer. It argues against the formulation of any borrowability scales of a generalized predictive power, even in cases where there is a common denominator. It suggests that factors such as the (in)compatibility between the two languages in contact, specific re-arrangements brought to the replica language, and the category of the items under investigation play a key role for the adoption of free grammatical elements. It demonstrates that while borrowability of free grammatical elements is not shown to be an exact mirroring of their ranking on the cline of lexicality-grammaticality, general tendencies seem to be at play.