The signified as a reflex of language contacts
The signified as a reflex of language contacts

Summary/Abstract: The present study joins the series of works aiming to bring up to date, within Romanian linguistics, the theories concerning (Romanian-Hungarian) linguistic interferences manifested in bilingual communities and the research of lexical properties which have entered the Romanian written language either by the influence of the Hungarian dialects, spoken in different regions of the country, or by the translation of Hungarian texts into Romanian. The study will focus on Hungarian loanwords in old Romanian language which are discussed in terms of their changes in meaning. The inventory of the Hungarian loanwords’ meanings listed here was made based on a corpus of old Romanian texts, taking into account the material provided by various dictionaries with etymological concerns. As the few examples analysed in this study show, lexical meaning is impregnated with both intellect and emotional sensibility. The emotional universe, however, is rarely taken over along with the loanword. The emotional content is most often adapted, in its turn, to the sensitivity and spirituality of the speakers who borrowed the word.

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