A Semantico-Pragmatic Adaptation of English Loanwords in Mosuli Arabic

Section: Research Paper
Published
Jun 24, 2025
Pages
19-36

Abstract

Under the tremendous effect of globalization and the hasty changes happening in the world added to them the intensive exposure to media and internet, some English loanwords have become very familiar in the Mosuli community. Another major reason for the appearance of these words is the technological revolution which presents a large amount of lexical items the wage of which indicates the need to present a linguistic study of the English loanwords. By loanwords we mean words that are transferred from a donor language to a recipient language (Haspelmath, 2008:40). As for borrowability we mean making reference to what can be borrowed and what cannot be borrowed (Tyson, 1993:30). Linguistically speaking, some lexical items can be borrowed more easily than others. That is to say lexical items are more likely to be borrowed than grammatical items. By lexical items we mean content words, mainly nouns. They are usually related to human life's needs. Less likely to be borrowed one verbs and adjectives. Grammatical items like helping verbs, articles, etc. cannot be easily borrowed they are language specific (see Haspelmath, 2008:45 and Sankoff, 2001:50) not like content words that can be easily identified and understood across languages.

Download this PDF file

Statistics

How to Cite

Ali, W., وفاء, Husein, D., & دنیا. (2025). A Semantico-Pragmatic Adaptation of English Loanwords in Mosuli Arabic. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 48(73), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.33899/radab.2017.164688