The present study attempts to gauge the extent of lexical-copying from English into Punjabi, and the degree of phonetic and phonological assimilation of the copied items. It clarifies a number of terminology issues, including highlighting the fact that the traditional terms like loan-word, loan-translation, loan-blend and lexical-borrowing are out-and-outmisonmers, and )as the metaphor of copying is more appropriate than that of borrowing for representing these linguistic phenomena) they must be replaced with the terms copied-word, copied-translation, copied-blend and lexical-coping respectively: Since the definitions of these terms too were found to be highly unsatistactory, these terms have also been defined afresh. While the main concern of this study is to highlight the contrastive features of the copied-words from both the phonetic and the phonological points of view, it also throws illuminating sidelights on matters like (i) influence of English on Punjabi, (ii) attitude of Punjabis towards lexical-copying from English into Punjabi, (iii) deficiencies in the so-called ‘standard’ dictionaries of the Punjabi language and in the language of the All-India radio Punjabi news-bulletins in respect of the usage of English copied-words, (iv) exclusion of several commonly used English words from two of the highly acclaims, namely of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English and The Oxford English Dictionary. And (V) the deficiencies in the Punjabi orthography.
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