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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Zu den Ursachen lexikalischer Transferenz vor dem Hintergrund des deutsch-polnischen Sprachkontaktes in Oberschlesien

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description

Multilingualism and language contact were confirmed as historical phenomena already in ancient times. However, it did not find its way into scientific research until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Since then, a comprehensive terminology has been developed in order to investigate and describe the effects of language contact. A common phenomenon in this field is lexical transfer, which bilingual people often use to bridge their lack of competence in the second language. However, the cause of the transfer of lexemes from one language to the other can also occur from the lesser to the better mastered language in the case of asymmetrical bilingualism, which therefore indicate reasons other than linguistic inadequacy. This will be demonstrated with reference to the example of transfers from Polish into the German-language „Chronicle of the Parish of Zawada Ks.“ by Ewald Pelka, whose author had German as his mother tongue and at the time of writing the text – i.e. as an adult – had only recently learned Polish by virtue of language immersion.