What is being borrowed? Language and script contact in Taiwan 1 Henning Klöter Introduction Many terminological distinctions applied in loanword studies go back to Einar Haugen’s (1906–1994) analysis of the behavior of North American bilinguals (Haugen 1950). Citing an earlier study by Paul (1886), Haugen claims that “[f]or any large-scale borrowing a considerable group of bilinguals has to be assumed. The analysis of borrowing must therefore begin with an analysis of the behavior of bilingual speakers” (1950: β10). In the case of bilinguals, paths of borrowing are bidirectional, from language A to language B and vice versa. The analytical dimensions of linguistic borrowing turn out to be much more complicated when a multilingual community and the written representation of loanwords are taken into consideration. Multilingual speakers have a high degree of fluency in more than two languages, and they may be educated in different scripts. A case in point for this scenario is Taiwan, an island-state located off the southeastern coast of the Chinese mainland. Many people in Taiwan have a high degree of fluency in two or more languages and are familiar, to different degrees, with at least three different scripts. Whereas lexical borrowing between Taiwan’s languages has been analyzed in a number of previous studies (e.g., Chang 1995, Chung β001, Hansell 1989, Li β00γ, Yáo 199β), the effects of “multiscriptualism” on writing behavior and the interplay between language and script contact have largely been neglected. This article claims that this neglect has, in turn, led to terminological insufficiency whenever the analysis of loanwords is integrated with issues of loanword writing. This article neither deals with one particular script nor with one particular language. Instead, by inventorying types of borrowing evidenced in language and script contact situations in Taiwan, it attempts to provide an empirical basis for terminological refinement. My analysis of linguistic borrowing is placed in the sociolinguistic context of the languages and scripts analyzed. Contact between languages and contact between scripts occur under specific sociolinguistic conditions. The coexistence of two or more different languages in one linguistic community is one important condition for languages to attain contact. Coexistence of language does not necessarily entail script contact. One obvious reason is that not all of the languages in contact are necessarily written languages. Another possible reason is the exclusion of an existing script from official language planning. If a script is not being spread through educational institutions, it is unlikely to become established within a linguistic community. The claim that coexistence of languages does not entail script contact may also be reversed: borrowing of a script does not require coexistence of languages within one linguistic community. For instance, alphabetic writing was brought to Taiwan by Western