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Chapter 8. Phraseology in flux

Danish Anglicisms beneath the surface
  • Henrik Gottlieb
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The Anglicization of European Lexis
This chapter is in the book The Anglicization of European Lexis

Abstract

Today, single-word lexical borrowings are merely the tip of the iceberg of English impact. Thus, the notion of Anglicism should encompass all language features either adopted from English, adapted from English, or inspired by English, used in intralingual communication in another language. This article focuses on the subterranean impact of English as expressed through the morpho­syntactic calques found in contemporary Danish, a language influenced until the 20th century mainly by German lexis and phraseology. The linguistic market shares of near-synonymous expressions were measured in Danish text corpora at 5-year intervals between 1990 and 2010. It was found that established Danish expressions tend to lose ground, while expressions based on English models typically gain popularity – a development hitherto lacking empirical documentation.

Abstract

Today, single-word lexical borrowings are merely the tip of the iceberg of English impact. Thus, the notion of Anglicism should encompass all language features either adopted from English, adapted from English, or inspired by English, used in intralingual communication in another language. This article focuses on the subterranean impact of English as expressed through the morpho­syntactic calques found in contemporary Danish, a language influenced until the 20th century mainly by German lexis and phraseology. The linguistic market shares of near-synonymous expressions were measured in Danish text corpora at 5-year intervals between 1990 and 2010. It was found that established Danish expressions tend to lose ground, while expressions based on English models typically gain popularity – a development hitherto lacking empirical documentation.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. The lexical influence of English on European languages 1
  6. Section I. Exploring Anglicisms
  7. Chapter 1. Fair play to them 27
  8. Chapter 2. Proposing a pragmatic distinction for lexical Anglicisms 43
  9. Chapter 3. Investigating gender variation of English loanwords in German 65
  10. Chapter 4. The collection of Anglicisms 91
  11. Chapter 5. Semi-automatic approaches to Anglicism detection in Norwegian corpus data 111
  12. Chapter 6. Lexicographic description of recent Anglicisms in Serbian 131
  13. Chapter 7. Anglicisms in Armenian 149
  14. Section II. English-induced phraseology
  15. Chapter 8. Phraseology in flux 169
  16. Chapter 9. Multi-word loan translations and semantic borrowings from English in French journalistic discourse 199
  17. Chapter 10. Newly-coined Anglicisms in contemporary Spanish 217
  18. Chapter 11. Der Elefant im Raum… 239
  19. Chapter 12. English influence on Polish proverbial language 261
  20. Section III. Anglicisms in specialized discourse
  21. Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis 281
  22. Chapter 14. Incorporation degrees of selected economics-related Anglicisms in Italian 305
  23. Chapter 15. Anglicisms in the discourse of Alitalia’s bailout in the Italian press 325
  24. Author index 343
  25. Language index 347
  26. Subject index 349
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.174.13got

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. The lexical influence of English on European languages 1
  6. Section I. Exploring Anglicisms
  7. Chapter 1. Fair play to them 27
  8. Chapter 2. Proposing a pragmatic distinction for lexical Anglicisms 43
  9. Chapter 3. Investigating gender variation of English loanwords in German 65
  10. Chapter 4. The collection of Anglicisms 91
  11. Chapter 5. Semi-automatic approaches to Anglicism detection in Norwegian corpus data 111
  12. Chapter 6. Lexicographic description of recent Anglicisms in Serbian 131
  13. Chapter 7. Anglicisms in Armenian 149
  14. Section II. English-induced phraseology
  15. Chapter 8. Phraseology in flux 169
  16. Chapter 9. Multi-word loan translations and semantic borrowings from English in French journalistic discourse 199
  17. Chapter 10. Newly-coined Anglicisms in contemporary Spanish 217
  18. Chapter 11. Der Elefant im Raum… 239
  19. Chapter 12. English influence on Polish proverbial language 261
  20. Section III. Anglicisms in specialized discourse
  21. Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis 281
  22. Chapter 14. Incorporation degrees of selected economics-related Anglicisms in Italian 305
  23. Chapter 15. Anglicisms in the discourse of Alitalia’s bailout in the Italian press 325
  24. Author index 343
  25. Language index 347
  26. Subject index 349
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