Borrowing within Malayic; The role of exotericity
Abstract
This paper presents a general survey of borrowing within the Malayic language family, in which both the source and the recipient languages are either varieties of Malay/Indonesian, or other closely-related Malayic languages. The survey provides empirical evidence for a generalization governing the directionality of borrowing, specifying that the donor variety tends to be higher than the recipient variety on a scale of exotericity, making reference to a set of features of a broadly sociolinguistic nature. In terms of a sociolinguistically-based typology of Malayic varieties, the most frequent instances of borrowing within Malayic are from Standard Malay and Indonesian into koin & eacute; varieties and traditional dialects, as well as from koin & eacute; varieties into traditional dialects.