Phono-Semantic Matching

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Phono-Semantic Matching (henceforth, PSM) is a camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign lexical item is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root. The neologism resulting from this source of lexical expansion preserves both the meaning and the approximate sound of the reproduced expression in the Source Language (SL) with the help of pre-existent Target Language (TL) elements. (Neologism is used here in its broader meaning, i.e. either an entirely new lexical item or a TL pre-existent word whose meaning has been altered, resulting in a new sense.) The following figure is a general illustration of this process:

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Such multisourced neologization is common inter alia in two key language groups:

(1) languages using a phono-logographic script that …

A dybtgoing study af nisse-engelsk

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Fra today, you can gense ‘The Julekalender’ on TV2 Charlie! So we bringer an indlæg about the nissers fictive sprog, which is a blanding of engelsk and Danish!

Margaret J. Blake skrev en article i 2007 om nisse-engelsk, som never blev publiceret. She kaldte her study, which she skrev in English, Just what I skut til to say! A description and analysis of NisseEngelsk, a Danish-English Mixed Language. Det er et meget scholarly værk, which toke her three kvart year to skrive.

She læste ikke mindre end sixty articles and bøgs. Manuskriptet is on 125 sider. Og de whole teksts of the three speakers Hansi, Gynter og Frits er analyseret. Optagelserne er from 1991, og of good kvalitet. …