This chapter examines the behaviour of compounds in language contact situations. Preliminaries about compounds and language contact are presented in section 1, focusing largely on questions of simplification versus complexification in language contact and of nativisation of borrowed elements as opposed to adoption without adaptation. This is followed by case studies involving Greek influence on English (section 2), Western European languages, especially English, on Russian (section 3), Western European languages, especially French, on Greek (section 4) and French influence on English (section 5). Key lessons to take away from these case studies are first that in the borrowing of compounds and compounding structures, languages seem not to engage in adaptation to native language patterns, and second that once a new structure enters a language via borrowing it takes on a life of its own, so to speak, and can take on forms that are quite different from their form in the source language.

Preliminaries on compounds and on contact

Vital to any serious discussion of word formation is a consideration of compounding, the process (or processes) by which complex words are created out of elements that are already words or word-like along various parameters. Compounding presents an interesting analytic conundrum for linguistic theory in general, in that it is a conceptually simple operation that is nonetheless quite complex at various levels of analysis. That is, while compounding often seems to involve nothing more than simply the juxtaposition of two (or more) elements, together with the possibility of some concomitant phonological or morphophonological adjustments, it also interacts with aspects of both argument structure and lexical semantics. Moreover, given the fact that it essentially stands at the nexus of syntax, in that it involves phrasal representations, and morphology, in that it involves word-level representations, compounding raises questions as to the analytic status of the composite form as a whole as well as the status of the parts that make up the composite.

These various issues fall within the realm of theoretical problems raised by language-internal considerations. But there are important questions as well that can be asked about compounding within any framework of language contact and contactinduced change.