The Infinitival Phrase As a Syntactic Calque in the Slovene of the Littoral Area

Abstract

Contact between languages and cultures inevitably gives rise to linguistic borrowing. In some instances, borrowing is unacceptable in terms of the norms of the recipient language (“interference” or “negative transfer”). The paper aims to explain the source of the productive infinitival construction in the variety Slovene spoken on the Mediterranean coast (“Slovene of the Littoral”). In order to better understand its actual use, a corpus of written and spoken texts produced by speakers of the area was analysed, along with three Slovene language corpora (Nova beseda, Gigafida, and GOS). The analysis of the texts produced by the local speakers has shown a high frequency of the construction in question, while, on the other hand, it is hardly attested in the three Slovene language corpora, except in certain contexts in final clauses. The relatively high frequency of the construction in a variety of contexts is an indicator of its productivity, which is in turn characteristic of syntactic calques. The results seem to corroborate the hypothesis that an Italian syntactic pattern has indeed been borrowed in the Slovene of the Littoral. The analysis also highlights the need for further research on the Italian syntactic interference, and potentially that of other languages, on (standard) Slovene more generally.