Was verbindet uns? Eine Untersuchung zu lexikalischen Gemeinsamkeiten im Deutschen, Litauischen und Ukrainischen

This paper reports of empirical research on borrowings of European origin in three European languages – so-called lexical Europeanisms that have mainly been investigated in the tradition of Eurolinguistics. The aim of the article is thereby to discuss the most significant theoretical and methodological approaches to Eurolinguistics and the research of Europeanisms as well as to analyze types of integration (universals) of Europeanisms. As an example, the paper presents a lexical comparison of three languages: German, Lithuanian und Ukrainian. The research is based on newspaper texts (in total 6.000 tokens of Europeanisms) taken from Lietuvos rytas, Молодь України and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The influence of different linguae francae on European languages thereby reveal how closely related the lexicon of European languages is. The frequency of such lexical elements thereby allow for the postulation of varieties such as Euro-German, Euro-Lithuanian and Euro-Ukrainian.