INTERFERENCE IN TAGALOG AS A RESULT OF BORROWING Ekaterina Baklanova * While deeply assimilating various words borrowed from other languages, Tagalog was getting more and more permeable to new foreign elements. The large layers of well-adopted loanwords, which were not recognized as "foreign" any more, began to influence the recipient language, gradually extending the limits of its structure. I refer to this process as interference. The present paper is a brief analysis of the shifts in Tagalog caused by the interference at the different levels of the language system. Thus: (1) Semantic borrowing, among others, may be related to lexical interference; (2) Phonetic interference as manifested in the phonological sub-system emerged within the frames of the loanwords, with its own phonetics (eg. combinations ts, dy, ly, ny, sy) and distribution. Moreover, the phonetics of the borrowings from different donor languages started to affect each other within the Tagalog system; (3) Morphological interference is largely shown in such phenomena as hyper-interpretation by the Filipino natives of a loan's morphemic structure; hybrid loanwords; hybrid creations. Modern Tagalog is notable for its enormous number of borrowed lexical elements, which have inevitably affected the recipient. This influence still requires a broad and thorough investigation. To make research on the loanwords in Tagalog more comprehensive, I propose to add analysis of interference to the traditional set of problems related to borrowing. * Paper presented at the 7 th ICOPHIL CONFERENCE, June 2004, Leiden, the Netherlands. Ekaterina Baklanova (Novojenova), MA. Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, 11, Mokhovaya Street, Moscow, Russia. Chair of SEA philology. E‐mail: langit7@yandex.ru I would like to express my gratitude to the Filipinists Dr. David Zorc and Prof. Ernesto Constantino, and to my supervisor Prof. Vladimir Makarenko for their valuable remarks on my research. Pilipinas #42 March 2004