Siirtoperäinen

Siirtoperäinen is a term used in Finnish linguistics to describe a class of linguistic elements that originate outside the recipient language and are incorporated through contact, then adapted to the recipient’s phonology, morphology, and syntax. The concept emphasizes transfer-based derivation rather than invention within the language and is used to describe how influence from one language can shape multiple levels of structure, not just individual words.

Etymology and scope: The word is formed from siirto meaning transfer and peräinen indicating origin. It is used to refer to borrowings that retain or reproduce source-language patterns at various levels. Siirtoperäisiä elements can be lexical items with a shifted meaning (semantic loans), calques—word-for-word translations of multiword expressions—and syntactic calques that affect word order or construction.

Characteristics and subtypes: Calques reproduce source-language phrases or syntactic patterns, semantic loans adopt the meaning of a source term, and morphological reanalysis adapts borrowed forms to the recipient’s inflectional system. In contrast to simple loanwords, which are typically adopted as units, siirtoperäiset patterns may preserve original sequencing or semantics when integrated.

Applications: Researchers study siirtoperäinen to understand language contact, bilingual influence, and the diffusion of linguistic schemas. It helps explain why some languages show parallel constructions or idiom translations that are not easily explained by direct borrowing alone.

See also: loanword, calque, language contact, lexical borrowing, semantic loan.