Pronoun borrowing

1. Introduction A recurring theme in theoretical discussions of language contact is the question of borrowability—specifically, whether there are any substantive constraints governing the kinds of lexicon and structure that can be borrowed. Nowadays historical linguists are less likely to propose absolute constraints than they used to be, because everyone knows at least a few examples of 'odd' borrowings. Still, the feeling that some things ought not to be borrowed persists among both historical linguists and specialists in language contact. Perhaps the most commonly mentioned hard-to-borrow lexical feature is the category of personal pronouns. The reasoning, usually implicit, seems to be roughly this: personal pronouns comprise a closed set of forms situated between lexicon and grammar; they form a tightly structured whole and are so deeply embedded within a linguistic system that borrowing a new personal pronoun, and in particular a new pronominal paradigm, would disrupt the workings of the system. Therefore, the argument goes, it is extremely unlikely that any language (or rather any speech community) would borrow pronouns. This paper presents evidence that, given appropriate social circumstances , pronouns and even whole pronominal paradigms are readily borrowed. It is certainly more difficult to find examples of borrowed personal pronouns than examples of borrowed nouns denoting newly acquired cultural items; still, pronoun borrowing is nowhere near as rare as one would suppose from reading the literature. The larger goal of the paper is to provide one more piece of evidence in support of the claim that that speakers' deliberate choices may be the most important factor motivating the borrowing of 'hard-to-borrow' features (see Thomason 1999). And this in turn leads to the conclusion that it is rash, in attempts to untangle a complex historical picture, to treat pronominal paradigms as safe markers of genetic linguistic inheritance. 2. Claims about pronoun non-borrowing: a few examples. A fairly typical, and typically cautious, textbook statement about borrowabil-ity is McMahon's formulation (1994:204):