English-Malay Loanblends and the Indices of Adaptability
Universiti Putra Malaysia
ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the English-Malay Loanblends. The realm of Contact Linguistics is concerned with the consequences when languages come into contact (Blake, 2008). However, among the inevitable consequences is the emergence of pidginized forms, creoles, code-switching, code-mixing and also lexical borrowings (Hoffer, 2002; Christopher, 2005; Durkin, 2011). This study focuses on loanblends as discovered by Haugen (1950) as forms of hybridized borrowings consisting of both importation and substitution. These are borrowings whose mode of adaptability into the recipient language (Weinreich, 1953) employs both native and foreign elements. The researcher employed survey and observation of different instances of loanblends from the English-Malay borrowings in daily use among the Malay speakers in Serdang. The findings of the study demonstrate that the Malay speakers use some loanblends of English-Malay morphemic fusions. In these loanblends, the last morphemes are mostly substituted with native expressions but the meanings remain the same with the original words in the donor language. As a conclusion, the researcher is convinced that the English-Malay borrowing is a rich area of academic investigation and he finally recommends further researches on phonemic substitution in English-Malay loanwords.
KEYWORDS
English-Malay, Loan-blends, Indices, Adaptability.