Morpholological Borrowing and Genetic Relationship: A Review Article of Johanson, and Robbeets (eds). 2012:'Copies Versus Cognates in Bound Morphology'

This edited volume adds to the literature on language contact. It specifically deals with the borrowing of morphology, and addresses the methodological issue of how to distinguish resemblances that represent borrowing (here called copying) from those that reflect cognation within genealogically related languages. Several studies offer empirical data on the scales of borrowability (or copiability in the terminology of this volume) that have been discovered-comparing morphological to lexical borrowing, inflectional to derivational, and distinguishing the likelihood of various kinds of inflectional borrowing. A number of papers attempt explanations for the scales in terms of semantic, structural or frequency factors. Proposals are also made regarding factors other than borrowing or cognation that may result in the sharing of morphological forms between languages. The findings concerning morphological borrowing are applied to several difficult and unresolved issues of genealogical relationship in languages of Eurasia and the Americas.