In a number of Slavic and Germanic languages, various derivational affixes and morphological patterns of Latin origin are relatively common, and bear effects as abstract as deriving event nouns from verbs and property nouns from adjectives. This seems to contradict the general observation that abstract morphology typically is not subject to borrowing. We discuss the status of two Serbo-Croatian (S-C) nominalizing Latinate suffixes, –cija and –itet, complemented by one Germanic suffix, –er. On our analysis, these are not borrowed suffixes and derivational patterns, in the sense that they were present in another language and got copied into S-C, but rather suffixes and patterns which emerged within S-C, more specifically in the borrowed stratum of the S-C lexicon. Crucial factors in their emergence were the shared semantic properties of the nouns ending in the respective sequences (–cija, –itet and –er), and the quantitative properties of these sequences closely matching those of native derivational suffixes. Pragmatic, phonological and prosodic constraints apply to these derivations to the effect that the suffixes that have emerged in the borrowed domain of the lexicon never enter a competition with the native nominalization patterns.