NEWS TRANSLATION AS A SOURCE OF SYNTACTIC BORROWING IN ITALIAN* MAIRI MCLAUGHLIN University of California, Berkeley, USA In this article, I present results from an investigation of translation in the press from English into Italian. The investigation combines fieldwork carried out in an international news agency with the linguistic analysis of a corpus of translated news dispatches. The investigation revolves around three case studies concerning adjective position, passive constructions, and verbal -ndo forms. I use the case studies to determine whether (and to what extent) news translation could be a source of syntactic borrowing in contemporary Italian. The results are interpreted in the context of a larger project on syntactic borrowing in French and Italian. By situating the results in this broader context, I am able to draw theoretical conclusions about news translation as a source of linguistic change, and more generally about the linguistic outcomes of language contact. KEYWORDS: Italian, language contact, translation, journalism, syntactic borrowing, French INTRODUCTION After the indigenous dialects of Italy, the English language has represented the strongest influence on the Italian language since the end of the Second World War. This contact naturally leads to the introduction of lexical borrowings into standard Italian. Most scholarly research into English influence focuses on this type of borrowing. 1 One of the most common findings is that lexical borrowings are relatively infrequent in Italian. Tesi, for example, finds that just 0 . 55 per cent of all words used during a day’s transmission of three RAI radio stations are borrowings, of which 62 per cent come from English. 2 Results such as this are often used to support the claim that contact with English has a negligible effect on standard Italian. However, not all linguists share this assessment. Tesi, for example, notes that there is diachronic evidence which indicates that the frequency of lexical borrowing is increasing. 3 In addition, lexical borrowings are thought to contribute to borrowing at other levels. Linguists have linked English influence to both phonological and morphological changes in standard Italian. 4 They also recognize the existence of semantic borrowing (e.g. realizzare used with the meaning of rendersi conto). When it comes to syntactic borrowing, however, there has been little research and the question of its significance remains shrouded in uncertainty. The Italianist, 33. 3, 443–463, October 2013 # Italian Studies at the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Reading 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0261434013Z.00000000055