Native or borrowed, or both—is it possible to have many mothers?

Abstract

Developments and innovations in the history of a language are customarily explained as either “native” or “contact-induced”. Traditionally, these are considered as mutually exclusive, at least in practice. In the case of two competing explanations, some linguists prefer the “native solution”, while some opt for the explanation which is technically more beautiful or better in accordance with other facts (“pattern explanation”). Accepting both and fitting them together is seldom considered.

In this paper, these questions are regarded in the light of some Finnic examples, representing different subsystems of language. Identifying foreign influences can be problematic not only in morphosyntax and phonology but also in the lexicon, as many Finnic word stems have both an IE loan etymology and an “internal” explanation (descriptive words, irregular derivatives).

Combining the competing explanations is actually a stronger version of proposing constraints for borrowing: it implies that (at least in some cases) languages only “receive what suits them”. Thus, accepting dual explanations presupposes a “built-in conservativity”. This fits in with the remarkable structural stability in language (despite and behind the constant changes) which is also shown in research on grammaticalization and historical morphology.