1.The main focus of the synchronic analyses has been to identify the grammatical constraints on borrowing, and to describe the phonological, syntactic and morphological integration of borrowed words.The importance of the role of lexical and structural borrowing for language change has however only fairly recently been recognised, as until the publication of Thomason and Kaufman's (1988) book on contact-induced change, historical linguists used to emphasise internal causes of language change.In addition, researchers have tried to delimit borrowing from other language contact phenomena, such as code-switching and transfer, and they have developed different classifications of borrowing.Introduction

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