Contact between Languages: the case of English and Spanish

Abstract

[Abstract] The relationship of language contact is characterized by historical phenomena such as internal borrowing, loanblend, loanword, loan translation, loanshift and semantic borrowing, indicating the proximity and identity with other languages in different historical stages. This work provides a clear analysis of such phenomena as language convergence in grammatical borrowing. Language contact can be traced in different linguistic areas but in this Bachelor’s thesis I will focus on the lexical component of two languages: English and Spanish. In this particular case I will look into this direction, from English to Spanish, what Spanish absorbes from English and why through anglicisms. The role of anglicisms reconnects the contact between these two languages. The lexical setting is assumed to be a good scenario to reflect upon the nature of contact and its effects. Most of the examples found in this analysis have a structural effect on the receiving language (Spanish) and form a collection of data in a privileged position to discover the nature of language contact phenomena between English and Spanish.