Term Formation under the Prism of Linguistic Purism: Borrowings in German and Greek

Abstract

Abstract The present study investigates the role of borrowing in specialised language and the connection of this crosslinguistically common phenomenon with the attitude of language purism. German and Greek have been selected for the purpose of this study. The selection of these languages is based on their comparable morphological properties, but also on their different terminological characteristics. The data come mainly from the domain of statistics. However, some examples from a different domain, that of computer science, are also discussed. The different terminological profiles of the selected languages are found to coincide with the specific characteristics of the two domains. These characteristics are also linked to their attitudes towards foreign words and especially borrowing. In this respect, this paper investigates borrowed words from a morphological and a sociolinguistic point of view.