Latvian and Lithuanian loan translation examples in the studies of foreign linguists

In order to highlight foreign linguists’ interest of borrowings in the Baltic languages, as well as some linguistic theories on loan translation, this article discusses three studies published in German, French and English during the 19-20th century – namely, the monograph Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (1886) by German linguist Hermann Paul, the article Notes sur les calques linguistiques (1912) by Danish linguist Kristian Sandfeld Jensen, and the doctoral thesis German Loan Translations in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian (1980) by English linguist Douglas Pauley. These authors have also included Latvian and Lithuanian loan translation examples in their research. The Latvian and Lithuanian examples quoted in these sources represent all the main types of loan translations or calques described by these authors. Among them are: semantic calques or loan meanings (e.g. Latv. gailis and Lith. gaidys ‘detail of a gun’, cf. Germ. Hahn, Eng. cock, Rus. kurok); loan creations (e.g. Latv. uzdevums and Lith. užduotis ‘task’, cf. Germ. Aufgabe), and phraseological and syntactic calques (e.g. Lith. kas per žmogus ‘what kind of person’, cf. Germ. was für ein Mann). The largest amount of examples illustrates loan creations. Besides, this article includes some other Latvian and Lithuanian examples where the similarities of morphosyntactic and semantic structures allow to speak about calques (e.g. Ital. dente di latte, Span. diente de leche, Germ. Milchzahn, Rus. moločnyj zub, as well as Latv. piena zobs and Lith. pieninis dantis)