Lexical Transfer from Marshallese to Mokilese: A Case of Intra-Micronesian Borrowing

Nonlinguistic evidence suggests periodic contact between the people of Mokil, an atoll located in the Eastern Caroline Islands, & the people of the Marshall Islands. Linguistic evidence for this contact is sought & found in a large number of Mokilese lexical items that are found to be loanwords from Marshallese. Phonological, morphological, semantic, & distributional criteria are used to support this determination. The linguistic evidence supports the certainty of previous contact between the two peoples. 15 References. B. Annesser Murray