BORROWINGS IN ENGLISH
I. Causes and ways of borrowings.
In its 15
century long history recorded written manuscripts the English language happened
to come in and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French
and Scandinavian.
The great
influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of
historical causes. Due to the great influence of the civilization Latin was for
a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion.
Borrowings
of later periods became the object investigation only in recent years. These
investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and
uninterrupted. The greatest number has come French. They refer to various
fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of
borrowings (41%) is scientific and technical terms. The number and character of
borrowed words tell us of the relations between the people, the level of
their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been
called the milestones of history.
Some borrowings,
however, cannot be explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions, they do not come along with
any new objects or ideas. Such were for instance the words air, place, brave, gay borrowed from
French.
Borrowings enter
the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between the
people) and through written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.):
·
Oral borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history,
whereas in recent times written borrowing gained importance. Words borrowed
orally (e.g. L. inch, mill, street) are usually short and
they undergo considerable changes in the act of adoption.
·
Written borrowings (e.g. Fr. Communiqué,
belles-lettres, nai'vete) preserve their spelling and some peculiarities of
their sound - form, their assimilation is a long and laborious process.
II. Criteria
of Borrowings.
Though
borrowed words undergo changes adopting language they preserve some of their
former peculiarities for a comparatively long period. In some cases the
pronunciation of the word (strange
sounds, sound combinations, position of stress, etc.).
The
initial position of the sounds [v], [dsL [5] or of the letters x, j, z is a I sign that the
word has been borrowed, e.g. volcano (It.), vase
(Fr.), vaccine jungle (Hindi), gesture (L.), giant (OFr.), zeal (L.), zero (Fr.), zinc (G.), etc.
Morphological
structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being
adopted from another language. Thus the suffixes in the word neurosis (Gy.) and ut'o/oncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words.
The same
is true of the irregular plural forms papyra (from papyrus, Gr.),
beaux (from beau, Fr.), bacteria
(from
bacterium, L.).
Some
early borrowings have become so thoroughly assimilated that they are
unrecognizable without a historical analysis, e.g. chalk, mile (L.), ill, ugly (Scand.), enemy, car (Fr.), etc. It must also
be taken into consideration that the closer the relation between the languages,
the more difficult it is to distinguish borrowings.
III. Assimilation of Borrowings.
All the changes
that borrowed elements undergo may be into two large groups. On the one hand
there are changes specific of borrowed only. These changes aim at adapting
words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e.g. the
consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology, Ptolemey of Greek origin
were simplified into [n], [s], [t], the consonant combinations [ps], [pt],
[pn], very frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were
never, used in the initial position. For the same reason the initial [ks] was
changed into [z] (as in Gr. xylophone).
The suffixes -ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced
by the highly productive Old English suffix -ere, as in L. Caesar>OF'. Casere, L. sutor>OE.siitere.
By analogy with the great majority of nouns that form their plural in -s, borrowings, even very recent ones, have assumed this inflection
instead of their original
plural endings. The forms Soviets, bolsheviks, kolkhozes, sputniks illustrate the process.
On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words. These changes are due to the development of the word
according to the laws of the given language. Under the influence of the
so-called inflexional
levelling borrowings like la5U, (MnE. law), feolaga (MnE. fellow),
straet (MnE. street), disc (MnE. dish) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English acquired only
three forms in Middle English: common case and possessive case singular and
plural (fellow,
fellowes, fellowes). It is very
important to discriminate between the two processes-the adaptation of borrowed
material to norms of the language and the-, development of these words
according to the 1 of the language. This differentiation is not always easily
discernible. In most cases we must 'resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite
conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words procession and progression
to show the former was already used in England
in the 11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The
history of these words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of
changes alongside with other English words (change in declension,
accentuation, structure, sounds),-whereas
the word progression
underwent some changes by analogy with the word procession and other similar words already at the time of its appearance in the language.
·
Phonetic assimilation.
Phonetic assimilation comprising changes in sound-form and stress is perhaps the most conspicuous. Sounds that
were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For
instance, the long [e] and [e] in recent French borrowings, alien to English speech, are rendered with the help of [ei]
(as in the words communique, chaussee, cafe). Familiar sounds or sound combinations the position of which was
strange to the English language, were replaced by other sounds or sound
combinations to make the words conform to the norms of the language, e.g. German spitz [Jpits] was
turned into English [spits]. Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones
usually takes place in the very act of borrowing. But some words retain their
foreign pronunciation for a long time before the unfamiliar sounds are replaced
by similar native sounds.
·
Grammatical Assimilation.
Usually as
soon as words from other languages introduced into English they lost their
former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired new grammatical categories
and paradigms by analogy other English words, as in Corn. sing. Sputnik Poss. sing. Sputnik's
Corn. pi. Sputniks Poss. However, there are some words in Modern
English that have for centuries retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a
considerable group of borrowed nouns, all of them terms or literary words
adopted in the 16th century or later, have preserved their original plural
inflexion to this day, e.g. phenomenon (L.) -phenomena; addendum (L.) -addenda;
parenthesis (Gr.) parentheses.
Other
borrowings of the same period have two plural forms-the native and the foreign,
eg. vacuum (L.) - vacua,
vacuums, virtuoso (It.) - virtuosi, virtuosos. The French reflexive pronoun s- has
become fixed as an inseparable element of the word. The former Italian diminishing
suffixes -etto,
-otta, -ello(a), -cello in the words ballot, stiletto, umbrella cannot be
distinguished without special historical analysis. The composite nature of the
word portfolio is not seen either (c/. //. portafogli < porta - imperative
of 'carry' + fogli-'sheets of paper').
·
Lexical Assimilation.
Lexical assimilation includes changes in semantic structure and the
formation of derivates. Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or
two of their meanings. Thus the word timbre that had a number of
meanings in French was borrowed into English as a musical term only. The words cargo
and cask, highly polysemantic in Spanish, were adopted only in one of their meaningw-“the
goods carried in a ship”, “a barrel for holding liquids respectively.
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