Borrowings: English Language and Word

Introduction

Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogenous. It consists of two layers – the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Numerically the borrowed stock of words is considerably larger than the native stock of words.

The topicality of the investigation is in the fact that native words comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary that is why a borrowing problem is very popular in linguistics and needs to be learned. The native words form the bulk of the most frequent words actually used in speech and writing. Besides, the native words have a wider range of lexical and grammatical valency, they are highly polysemantic and productive in forming word clusters and set expressions. The most effective way of borrowing is a direct borrowing from another language as the result of the contacts with other nations.

Though, a word may be also borrowed indirectly not from the source language but through another language. [12] When analyzing borrowed words one should distinguish between two terms – the source of borrowing and origin of borrowing. The first term is applied to the language from which the word was immediately borrowed and the second – to the language to which the word may be ultimately traced. The closer the two interacting languages are in structure the easier it is for words of one language to penetrate into the other. [6] The subject matter of this Course Paper is to identify types of borrowed elements in Modern English along with the lexico-semantic aspect. There are different approaches to classifying the borrowed stock of words. The borrowed stock of words may be classified according to the nature of the borrowing itself as borrowing proper, loan translation, and semantic loans. The novelty of the problem arises from the necessity of a profound scientific investigation of the existing types of borrowed elements in Modern English.

The main aim of the Course Paper is to summarize and systematize the lexical and semantic peculiarities of borrowing elements in Modern English. The tendency of the English language to borrow extensively can be traced during the centuries [26]. Thus, one can confidently claim that borrowing is one of the most productive sources of enrichment of the English vocabulary.

Part I: Lexico-Semantic Characteristics of Different Types of Borrowed Elements in English

The Definition of the Term “Borrowed Word”

Borrowed words or loanwords are words taken from another language and modified according to the patterns of the receiving language.

In many cases a borrowed word especially one borrowed long ago is practically indistinguishable from a native word without a thorough etymological analysis. The number of borrowings in the vocabulary of the language and the role played by them is determined by the historical development of the nation speaking the language. A substantial amount of all English words have been borrowed from other languages. These words are usually called “loanwords” since they are not native English words. In Merriam- Webster’s Online dictionary the word “loanword” is defined in this way: “a word taken from another language and at least partly naturalized. [17] Naturalized means in this case “to introduce into common use or into the vernacular” Sometimes it is done to fill a gap in vocabulary. When the Saxons borrowed Latin words for “butter”, “plum”, “beet”, they did it because their own vocabularies lacked words for these new objects. For the same reason the words “potato” and “tomato” were borrowed by English from Spanish when these vegetables were first brought to England by the Spaniards. But there is also a great number of words which are borrowed for other reasons.

There may be a word (or even several words) that expresses some particular concept so that there is no gap in the vocabulary, and there does not seem to be any need for borrowing. However, a word is borrowed because it supplies a new shade of meaning or a different emotional coloring though it represents the same concept. This type of borrowing enlarges groups of synonyms and provides to enrich the expressive resources of the vocabulary. That is how the Latin “cordial” was added to the native “friendly”, the French “desire” to “wish”, the Latin “admire” and the French “adore” to “like” and “love”. [29] The historical circumstances stimulate the borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close contact. The nature of the contact may be different. It may be wars, invasions, or conquests when foreign words are imposed upon the conquered nation. There are also periods of peace when the process of borrowing is due to trade and international cultural relations. When words migrate from one language into another they adjust themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language.

They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their foreign features, and, finally, they are assimilated. Sometimes the process of assimilation develops to the point when the foreign origin of a word is quite unrecognizable. It is difficult to believe now that such words as “dinner”, “cat”, “take”, “cup” are not English by origin. Others, though well assimilated, still bear traces of their foreign background. “Distance” and “development”, for instance, are identified as borrowings by their French suffixes, “skin” and “sky” by the Scandinavian initial (-sk), “police” and “regime” by the French stress on the last syllable. [8] Loanwords are often even more widely known than native words since their “borrowing served a certain purpose, for example, to provide a name for a new invention”. An example of such borrowing is “pizza”. Since the Italians were those who introduced pizzas in England, the English borrowed the word from them. The word “loanword” is in fact a type of loanword itself. The word comes from the German word “lehnwort”, which means precisely loanword. In this case, the meaning of the word has been borrowed into the English language, ut instead of using the German words (lehn + wort), the English equivalents are used. This type of borrowing is called a calque. As this example shows us, there are different kinds of borrowings, and they can be divided into subgroups. These subgroups will be discussed later in the essay. [32] The word “borrow” is often used in the literature on loanwords to symbolize that a language uses a word that originally comes from another language. In this paper, the term will also be used, even though the word is somewhat misleading.

The word “borrow,” indicates that the item borrowed will be returned, and since this obviously is not the case, “borrow” may not be the best metaphor in this particular case. In order for loanwords to enter a language, it is necessary that some people of the “borrowing” language are bilingual. These people have to be able to understand and to some extent speak the “lending” language so that words can be borrowed from that language. Borrowings enter a vernacular in a very natural way. The process starts off with those bilingual people of a certain language community start using words from another language.

These people often choose to use certain foreign words because they feel that these words are more prestigious than their natives ones. Borrowed words are adjusted in the three main areas of the new language system: the phonetic, the grammatical and the semantic. [27] The lasting nature of phonetic adaptation is best shown by comparing Norman French borrowings to later (Parisian) ones. The Norman borrowings have for a long time been fully adapted to the phonetic system of the English language: such words as “table”, “plate”, “courage”, “chivalry” bear no phonetic traces of their French origin.

Some of the later (Parisian) borrowings, even the ones borrowed as early as the 15th century, still sound surprisingly French: “regime”, “valise”, “matinee”, “cafe”, “ballet”. In these cases, phonetic adaptation is not completed. Grammatical adaptation consists of a complete change of the former paradigm of the borrowed word. If it is a noun, it is certain to adopt, sooner or later, a new system of declension; if it is a verb, it will be conjugated according to the rules of the recipient language. Yet, this is also a lasting process.

The Russian noun  was borrowed from French early in the 19th century and has not yet acquired the Russian system of declension. The same can be said about such English Renaissance borrowings as “datum” (pl. data), “phenomenon” (pl. phenomena), “criterion” (pl. criteria) whereas earlier Latin borrowings such as “cup”, “plum”, “street”, “wall” were fully adapted to the grammatical system of the language long ago.

The Semantic Features of Types of Borrowed Elements in English

By semantic adaptation is meant adjustment to the system of meanings of the vocabulary.

Sometimes a word may be borrowed “blindly” for no obvious reason: they are not wanted because there is no gap in the vocabulary nor in the group of synonyms which it could fill. Quite a number of such “accidental” borrowings are very soon rejected by the vocabulary and forgotten. But some “blindly” borrowed words managed to establish itself due to the process of semantic adaptation. The adjective “large”, for instance, was borrowed from French in the meaning of “wide”. It was not actually wanted, because it fully coincided with the English adjective “wide” without adding any new shades or aspects to its meaning.

This could have led to its rejection. Yet, “large” managed to establish itself very firmly in the English vocabulary by semantic adjustment. It entered another synonymic group with . the general meaning of “big in size”. Still bearing some features of its former meaning it is successfully competing with “big” having approached it very closely, both in frequency and meaning. [21] Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings, e. g. here are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was borrowed back into English, e. g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning «a working collective«. This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word «pioneer». [18]

Translation Loans

By translation-loans we indicate borrowings of a special kind.

They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation. A form of borrowing from one language to another whereby the semantic components of a given term are literally translated into their equivalents in the borrowing language. English superman, for example, is a loan translation from German Ubermensch. [1] It is quite obvious that it is only compound words (i. e. words of two or more stems). Each stem was translated separately: “masterpiece” (from Germ. “Meisterstuck”), “wonder child” (from Germ. Wunderkind”), ”first dancer” (from Ital. “prima-ballerina”). Translation loans (calque) – words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation: e. g. chain smoker. [14] Calque entails taking an expression, breaking it down to individual elements, and translating each element into the target language word for word. For example, the German word “Alleinvertretungsanspruch” can be calqued to “single-representation-claim”, but a proper translation would result in “Exclusive Mandate”.

Word-by-word translations usually have comic value, but can be a means to save as much of the original style as possible, especially when the source text is ambiguous, or undecipherable to the translator.

Semantic Loans

A semantic loan is a process of borrowing semantic meaning (rather than lexical items) from another language, very similar to the formation of calques. In this case, however, the complete word in the borrowing language already exists; the change is that its meaning is extended to include another meaning its existing translation has in the lending language.

Calques, loanwords and semantic loans are often grouped roughly under the phrase “borrowing”. Semantic loans often occur when two languages are in close contact. The semantic loan is a borrowing where “the meaning of a foreign word is transferred onto an existing native word. An example of a semantic loan is the word “God”. The word is a native English word and existed in Old English as well, but the Christian meaning it has today was borrowed from the Romans and their religion when they came to the British Isles.

One example is the German semantic loan realisieren. The English verb “to realize” has more than one meaning: it means both “to make something happen/come true” and “to become aware of something”. The German verb “realisieren” originally only meant the former: to make something real. However, German later borrowed the other meaning of “to realise” from English, and today, according to Duden[1], also means “to become aware of something” (this meaning is still considered by many to be an Anglicism).

The word “realisieren” itself already existed before the borrowing took place; the only thing borrowed was this second meaning. (Compare this with a calque, such as antibody, from the German Antikorper, where the word “antibody” did not exist in English before it was borrowed. ) A similar example is the German semantic loan uberziehen, which meant only to draw something across, before it took on the additional borrowed meaning of its literal English translation overdraw in the financial sense. Semantic loans may be adopted by many different languages: Hebrew kokhav, Arabic nagm), Russian zvezda, Polish gwiazda, Finnish tahti and Vietnamese sao all originally meant “star” in the astronomical sense, and then went on to adopt the sememe “star”, as in a famous pop or film artist, from English[22].

Etymological Doublets

The words originating from the same etymological source, but differing in phonemic shape and in meaning are called etymological doublets. Doublets or etymological twins (or possibly triplets, etc. ) have the same etymological root but have entered the language through different routes.

Because the relationship between words that have the same root and the same meaning is fairly obvious, the term is mostly used to characterize pairs of words that have diverged in meaning, at times making their shared root a point of irony. [23] Some of these pairs consist of a native word and a borrowed word: “shrew”, n. (E. ) – “screw”, n. (Sc. ). Others are represented by two borrowings from different languages: “canal” (Lat. ) – “channel” (Fr. ), “captain” (Lat. ) — “chieftain” (Fr. ). Still others were borrowed from the same language twice, but in different periods: “travel” (Norm. Fr. ) – “travail” (Par. Fr. ), “cavalry” (Norm. Fr. ) – “chivalry” (Par. Fr. ), “gaol” (Norm. Fr. ) – “jail” (Par. Fr. ). A doublet may also consist of a shortened word and the one from which it was derived: “history” – “story”, “fantasy” – “fancy”, “defence” – “fence”, “shadow” – “shade”. And for example, English pyre and fire are doublets. Subtle differences in the resulting modern words contribute to the richness of the English language, as indicated by the doublets frail and fragile (which share the Latin root, fragilis): one might refer to a fragile teacup and a frail old woman, but a frail teacup and a fragile old woman are subtly different and possibly confusing descriptions. 19] Another example of nearly synonymous doublets is aperture and overture (the commonality behind the meanings is “opening”), but doublets may develop divergent meanings, such as the opposite words, host, and guest from the same PIE root, which occur as a doublet in Old French hospes, before having been borrowed into English. Doublets also vary with respect to how far their forms have diverged. For example, the resemblance between levy and levee is obvious, whereas the connection between sovereign and soprano is harder to guess synchronically from the forms of the words alone.

Etymological twins are usually a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved. An example of this is warranty and guarantee. Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language (usually Latin and some other Romance language). Words which can be traced back to Indo-European languages, such as the Romance “beef” and the Germanic “cow”, in many cases actually do share the same Proto-Indo-European root.

The forward linguistic path also reflects cultural and historical transactions; often the name of an animal comes from Germanic while the name of its cooked meat comes from Romance. Since English is unusual in that it borrowed heavily from two distinct branches of the same linguistic family tree, it has a relatively high number of this latter type of etymological twin. [28] The changes a loan word has had to undergo depending on the date of its penetration are the main cause for the existence of the so-called etymological doublets.

They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage. Two words at present slightly differentiated in meaning may have originally been dialectal variants of the same word. Thus we find in doublets traces of Old English dialects. Examples are whole (in the old sense of ‘healthy’ or ‘free from disease’) and hale. The latter has survived in its original meaning and is preserved in the phrase hale and hearty. Both come from OE Kal: the one by the normal development of OE a into 0, the other from a northern dialect in which this modification did not take place.

Similarly there are the doublets raid and road, their relationship remains clear in the term inroad which means ‘a hostile incursion’, ‘a raid’. The verbs drag and draw both come from OE Dragan. [20] The words shirt, shriek, share, shabby come down from Old English, whereas their respective doublets skirt, screech, scar, and scabby are etymologically cognate Scandinavian borrowings. There are also etymological doublets which were borrowed from the same language during different historical periods. Sometimes etymological doublets are the result of borrowing different grammatical forms of the same word, e. . the Comparative degree of Latin «super» was «superior» which was borrowed into English with the meaning «high in some quality or rank». The Superlative degree (Latin «supremus»)in English «supreme» with the meaning «outstanding», «prominent». So «superior» and «supreme» are etymological doublets. [16]

Hybrids

A hybrid word is a word that etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language The most common form of the hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts.

Since many prefixes and suffixes in English are of Latin or Greek etymology, it is straightforward to add a prefix or suffix from one language to an English word that comes from a different language, thus creating a hybrid word. Such etymologically disparate mixing is considered by some to be bad form. Others, however, argue that, since both (or all) parts already exist in the English lexicon, such mixing is merely the conflation of two (or more) English morphemes in order to create an English neologism (new word), and so is appropriate[25]. Automobile – a wheeled passenger vehicle, from Greek (auto) “self-” and Latin mobilis “moveable” Homosexual – from the Greek (homos) meaning “same” and the Latin sexus meaning “gender” (This example is remarked on in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, with A. E. Housman’s character saying “Homosexuality? What barbarity! It’s half Greek and half Latin! “. ) Hyperactive — from the Greek (hyper) meaning “over” and the Latin activus Hypercorrection — from the Greek (hyper) meaning “over” and the Latin correctio Hyperextension — from the Greek (hyper) meaning “over” and the Latin extensio meaning “stretching out” Liposuction — from the Greek lipos) meaning “fat” and the Latin suctio meaning “sucking” Minneapolis — from Dakota mni meaning “water” and Greek meaning “city” Monoculture — from the Greek (monos) meaning “one, single” and the Latin cultura Monolingual — from the Greek (monos) meaning “one” and the Latin lingua meaning “tongue”; the non-hybrid word is unilingual Mormon — It was alleged by Joseph Smith[citation needed] that Mormon comes from the English “more” and the Reformed Egyptian mon meaning “good”. Neuroscience — from the Greek euron, meaning “sinew,” and the Latin “sciens,” meaning “having knowledge. ” Neurotransmitter — from the Greek neuron, meaning “sinew,” and the Latin, trans meaning “across” and mittere meaning “to send. ” Nonagon — from the Latin nonus meaning “ninth” and the Greek (gonon) meaning “angle”; the non-hybrid word is enneagon Pantheism — from the Greek (pan) meaning “all” and Latin deus meaning “God”; the non-hybrid word is pantheism Sociology — from the Latin socius, “comrade”, and the Greek logos) meaning “word”, “reason”, “discourse” Television — from the Greek (tele) meaning “far” and the Latin visio from videre meaning “to see” English further abounds with Hybrid Compounds, i. e. , words made up from different languages. Many of these are due to the use of prefixes and suffixes. Thus in a-round, the prefix is English but round is French; so also in be-cause, fore-front, out-cry, over-power, unable. In aim-less, the suffix is English, but the aim is French; so also in duke-dom, false-hood, court-ship, dainti-ness, plenti-ful, fool-ish, fairy-like, trouble-some, enial-ly, &c. But besides these, we have perfect compounds, such as these: beef-eater, i. e. , eater of beef, where eater is English and beef is French; so also black-guard, life-guard, salt-cellar, smallage.

On the other hand, French is followed by English in eyelet-hole, heir-loom, hobby-horse, kerb-stone, scape-goat. ” An initial wave of hybridization took place in the early Middle Ages between Anglo-Saxon and Danish that included, among many other items, that apparently most English of words, the. A second process began after the Norman Conquest in 1066, . . . hen English mixed with French, and began to draw, both through French as well as directly, on Latin and Greek for a wide range of cultural and technical vocabulary. Indeed, rather than being an exception, such hybridization is a normal and even at times predictable process, and in the twentieth century, a range of such flows of material has been commonplace. [24]

International Words

It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages, not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts that are significant in the field of communication.

Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in “several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source”. Pronunciation and orthography are similar so that the word is understandable between the different languages. [13] Most names of sciences are international (e. g. philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology).

There are also numerous terms of art in this group: music, theatre, drama, tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna, etc. ; and the sports terms: football, volleyball, baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc. It is quite natural that political terms frequently occur in the international group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution, progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism. 20th century scientific and technological advances brought a great number of new international words: atomic, antibiotic, radio, television, sputnik (a Russian borrowing).

Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries often transport their names too and become international: coffee, cocoa, chocolate, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit. The similarity of such words as the English “son”, the German “Sohn” and the Russian “syn” should not lead one to the quite false conclusion that they are international words. They represent the Indo-European group of the native element in each respective language and are cognates, i. e. words of the same etymological root, and not borrowings. [7] It is debated how many languages are required so that a word is an internationalism.

The term is uncommon in English linguistics, although English has contributed a considerable number of words to world languages, e. g. the sport terms: football, baseball, cricket, and golf. Words or the initial or final parts and roots of so-called internationalisms (international words or parts of words) which are widely used in different European languages. Mainly these words consist of word-elements of Latin and/or Greek origin and are widely used with similar spelling and pronunciation in different European languages.

Terms being built on the basis of Latin and Greek elements quickly spread into other languages and become internationally intelligible. These are such terms as appropriation, communication, comparator, control, descriptor, examination, identification, inspection, regulation, technique, technology, and many others. Such terms are either borrowed from the Latin and Greek language or built-in different modern languages on the basis of Latin and/or Greek word-elements.

Due to the same or similar spelling and/or pronunciation these words form that part of vocabulary which translators usually do not use to translate. As a result – these words are transferred from one language into another without translation considering them to be with the same meaning. It creates problems if the meaning differs. Then such “internationalisms” become the so-called false friends of translators. [33] The understanding of the so-called “internationalisms” we can find in the definition which is developed as a result of investigation of this group of borrowings.

Now it is enough to remind only of some aspects of this definition: for to qualify the word in the status of the “internationalism” it is necessary that the word is different (different group of) languages is used with the same or similar spelling and pronunciation and besides – with the same or close meaning as well. The meaning of the word, especially in the function of a term, is very relevant in terminology. In fact, all the requirements put before scientifically motivated term are based on the semantic aspect.

The specific role of the semantic aspect in terminology is underlined by a number of terminologists. The necessity of the unity between concepts and terms (which we spell and pronounce) is one of the characteristic features of terminology at all. But if we compare equivalents given in ISO standards, for instance on energetics, in English, German, Russian and other languages, sometimes we will see that such international terms given as equivalents (for the expression the same concept) are not with the same meaning.

Taking into account that internationalisms on the base of Latin and Greek word-elements are widely used in EU legislative acts and ISO standards, and the semantic discrepancies of such internationalisms cause serious misunderstandings among legislation act users, one of the relevant tasks of nowadays linguists is to find out ways how to bring nearer the semantics of such words in different languages. This task refers to the interlingual level of terminology. [11] One of the ways for bringing nearer the semantics of internationalisms being built on the base of Latin and Greek languages is to respect the meaning of every word-element in the source language. Let us compare meanings of the elements bi- (from Latin bi ‘two’), tri- (from Latin tres ‘three’), multi- (from Latin multus ‘much, many’) given in the Oxford dictionary. As we can see from examples, the elements bi-, tri-, multi- are used in different terms according their meaning in the Latin as the source langauge of these elements.

Consequently, if we use the term bilingual or bilingualist that means that we can to attribute it only to an individual who is able to communicate in two languages, not in three or more languages. Then he would be a multilingual person, or multilingualist. The semantic “creativity” sometimes applied in language practice by some lawyers, clerks or other language users we can qualify only as a deviation which contradicts with the national content of the word and may create misunderstandings. A serious problem, and not only linguistic but political as well, is semantic discrepancies between the same English and Latvian international term in politics. These are such terms as nationalism and nationalist, occupation and occupant, national minority and ethnic minority, integration and assimilation, etc.

These terms are internationalisms on the spelling and pronouncing level but differs on the semantic level. [15] From the one hand, the semantic difference of one and the same internationalism has objective reasons: 1) the polysemy of a word or word-element in the source language; 2) the specificity of the historical development of each national language. From the other hand, such internationalisms are the factor which results in contradictions. The choice of more appropriate form is realized on the base of semantic investigation of each word-element in source language using the appropriate manuals and according appropriate structural-semantic models of internationalisms.

As international models of terms in English, German, Russian and Latvian are stated (examples are given in English only):

1. derivatives with the postfixal element -logy: biology, geology, immunology, lexicology, philology;
2. derivatives with the postfixal element -graphy: geography, orthography;
3. derivatives with the postfixal element -sphere: atmosphere, lithosphere, stratosphere;
4. derivatives with the postfixal element -eme:

Some models are actually in German, Russian and Latvian, but not in English (examples are given in German only):

1. derivatives with the postfixal element -thek: Bibliothek, Diskothek;
2. derivatives with the postfixal element -ur: Doktorantur.

These models are still active for derivation new terms from Latin and Greek word-elements. There are some groups of internationalism which have word-elements with common origin but different structure, for instance, such elements as dermo- and dermato- from Greek derma (dermatos) ‘skin’, or such as ferri- and ferro- from Latin ferrum ‘iron’. The terminology practice shows that there is a tendency to fasten each of these forms for expressing the different content: the element derm[a]- is used for expressing the content of ‘that which is belonging to skins, or that is like a skin’ (dermal), but dermato- is used for expressing the content of ‘that which refers to skin diseases’ (dermatology).

In chemistry different forms ferri- and ferro- are used to express compounds with different iron content (ferrimagnetism; ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism). [9] The meaning of such word-element variables is not the same in different languages. Therefore a very difficult task is to harmonize the semantics of such elements on the international scale. It is necessary to establish an appropriate meaning system for such elements first of all in a particular national language. Considerations expounded do not mean that all internationalisms in a number of European languages must be revised and unified. The main idea is, that common structural-semantic models could help us in unambiguous communication. Therefore it is recommended to fix such models and use them, if necessary, for new derivations.

In cases when the meaning of the same internationalisms is different we can try to bring it nearer to the appropriate meaning in origin. [30] The multilingual investigation of international terminology shows that Latin and Greek word-elements are still vital in new structural-semantic models. These models may induce a positive influence on unambiguous communication process if these models are interlingually coordinated, being a good remedy also in translating EU regulations and ISO standards. If possible, there could be established a special Board or a Committee whose task would be providing unambiguous international term-models with coordinated meaning. A lot of such models are in use in many languages.

Assimilation of Borrowings, It’s Types and Degrees

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is. Accordingly, borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms). [3] Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language if the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e. g. correct -corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e. g. gate- gates.

In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one. Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e. g. the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings. [10] Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups: a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, e. g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass, etc. b) Borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e. g. ouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus – bacilli, phenomenon – phenomena, datum -data, and genius – genii etc. c) Borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, e. g. voice, zero. In native words, these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocalic position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss – lose, life – live) Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e. g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski, etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e. g. shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e. g. irl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words, we have palatalization, e. g. German, child. Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, e. g. police, and cartoons. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, e. g. /a:3/ in the words: camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard. d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e. g. in Greek borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).

Latin borrowings retain their polysyllabic structure, have double consonants, as a rule, the final consonant of the prefix is assimilated with the initial consonant of the stem, (accompany, affirmative). French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retain their spelling, e. g. consonants «p», «t», «s» are not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, debris), Specifically, French combination of letters «eau» /ou/ can be found in the borrowings: beau, chateau, troussaeu. Some of digraphs retain their French pronunciation: ‘ch’ is pronounced as /sh/, e. g. chic, parachute, ‘qu’ is pronounced as /k/ e. g. bouquet, «ou» is pronounced as /u:/, e. g. ouge; some letters retain their French pronunciation, e. g. «i» is pronounced as /i:/, e,g, chic, machine; «g» is pronounced as /3/, e. g. rouge. [31] Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings that are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e. g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc

Part II: Textual Characteristics of Types of Borrowed Elements in Modern English

Most linguists categorize borrowings in this way: Loanwords are words that keep their meaning and phonetic shape when they find their way into another language.

The word “pizza”, for example, which has its origin in Italian, has the same “shape”, in other words, is pronounced and written in the same way in both English and Italian, which makes it a “real” loanword. It is also important that the word is inflected in the same way. The plural forms therefore also have to be identical in both languages. A calque or a “loan translation” is a “one-to-one translation of a foreign model”. An example of a calque is the English word “embody”, which has its origin in the Latin equivalent “incorporate”. The word “loanword” is also a calque. The names of the days of the week are further examples of loan translations. They were borrowed from Latin approximately around 400 A. D.

All Germanic people, except the 10 Gothic, used the Germanic equivalents of the Roman gods when they named the days of the week, and the names are therefore from Germanic mythology. [4] The word “calque” can also stand for a “loan transfer”, which is almost the same as a loan translation, the only difference being that “at least one part is semantically different from the model”. An example of such a calque is the German word “Wolkenkratzer”, which literally means “cloudscraper”. Here “cloud” is used instead of “sky”, while the word “scraper” is correspondingly translated. A loan creation is another form of borrowing. A loan creation is a rather complicated type of borrowing since a word or the meaning of a word is not actually borrowed.

If a new word is created in a language, and there was some sort of influence from other languages, even if only to a small degree, it is called a loan creation. Usually, words that refer to exotic ideas, concepts or objects are borrowed. An example of this is how names of animals that do not inherently come from Great Britain are often loanwords in English. The name of the animal is borrowed from the language that is spoken in the country in which the animal originally comes from or lives in. When we examine loanwords in different languages we will find that most of these borrowings are nouns. Nouns, and lexical words in general, are borrowed more frequently than grammatical words.

The can be explained with the fact that a major reason for borrowing lexica is “to extend the referential potential of a language. Since the reference is established primarily through nouns, these are the elements borrowed most easily”. [5] There are certain structural features which enable us to identify some words as borrowings and even to determine the source language. We have already established that the initial SK usually indicates Scandinavian origin. You can also recognize words of Latin and French origin by certain suffixes, prefixes, or endings.

Conclusions

This paper has shown that linguistic borrowing is an old way of acquiring new vocabulary, and not a new phenomenon of our globalized world.

People of different cultures have always interacted with each other, and there has always been an exchange of lexis due to this interaction. Loanwords enrich a language since the vocabulary gets larger and each word, therefore, acquires a more specific and subtle meaning and this should be kept in mind before one simply criticizes and dismisses borrowings. While writing this Course Paper it was investigated that the actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usage events. Conventionalization is a gradual process in which a word progressively permeates a larger and larger speech community. As part of its becoming more familiar to more people, with conventionalization, a newly borrowed word gradually adopts sound and other characteristics of the borrowing language.

In time, people in the borrowing community do not perceive the word as a loanword at all. Generally, the longer a borrowed word has been in the language, and the more frequently it is used, the more it resembles the native words of the language. English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century A. D. nd continued strongly well after the Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language.

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