A contrastive analysis of (-)ish in English and Swedish blogs

Abstract

The aim is to investigate whether (-)ish is employed in the same structures and functions in English and Swedish blog data and to describe the adaptations and changes resulting from borrowing. (-)ish is exceptional because it looks like a suffix but can be taken out of its original context with adjectives and nouns and used as a clitic or an independent word. Based on samples from the two languages it is shown that there are quantitative differences with respect to the uses of (-)ish with different base forms and as a freestanding sentence-final item in the two data sets. The qualitative findings reveal that (-)ish has been borrowed in Swedish as a suffix, a clitic, as a qualifier with hedging function and as a sentence-final pragmatic marker. The change in the position of (-)ish is influenced by the existence of a domestic variant typ (‘sort of’, ‘kind of’) which can be placed more freely in the sentence than the English (-)ish.