Loan words

Loan-word (loan, borrowing, borrowed word etc) a word of one language adopted into another and naturalized, i.e. a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm, and/or meaning according to the standards of the English language, (opp. to native). E.g. river (f. French), intelligentsia (f. Russian),

What does one language take over from another? - Words, phrases affixes or meanings. So we differentiate borrowing of words and affixes. The classification of loans depends on the aspect of the borrowed word or phrase. We distinguish a) loan-words proper (bor­rowing proper, phonetic borrowing, true borrowing) - a word was borrowed aa a whole complex of sounds: table (f. French), sputnik (f. Russian).

b) semantic loans (semantic borrowing, loan shift) - development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another languages e.g. pioneer a member of the Young Pioneers Organization from the Russian pioner. The English word PIONEER means an explorer, a person who comes first.

c) loan translation - a word-for-word translation from another language: self-criticism, socialist democracy, worker’s faculty, wall newspaper from Russian, fifth column f, Sp. quinta columna, masterpiece f. G. Meister Stuck.

A number of affixes appeared in English as a result of borrowing. E.g. a number of French affixes expressing a certain generalized meaning; -able (the possibility of performing an action denoted by the stem - readable, eatable), re- has the meaning of repeated performances of action denoted by the stem: rewrite, rebuild etc. Is there any difference in the borrowing of words and the borrowing of affixes?

The derivational affix was not borrowed as such (language never borrows bound morphemes as separate elements), It occurred as an integral part of various whole words, and only the latter were actually borrowed. At first each of the following words - agreeable, excusable, variable - must have functioned in English as a single morpheme. But English has also borrowed a number of verbs which in French underlay the adjectives, and in due time there came to be a large enough number of pairs of borrowed words for the recurrent morpheme to take on the function of a derivational affix.

This is shown by the subsequent use of the suffix -able with the native English stems: bearable, drinkable (OE beran, drinkan),

When does one language start to take elements over from another What kind of languages are they? What are the conditions and motives for borrowing?

When two languages come into contact both may be modified. In case of face-to-face communication both languages may be modified/ When the contact is indirect, as in reading, the influence can of course pass in one direction only.

Thus contact of languages accounts for borrowing. But if two languages are so divergent that the speakers cannot understand each other, borrowing is unlikely.

In fact, borrowing is probable in two cases; a) two idiolects share a common core (under these conditions we speak of dialect borrowing;

b).there is no common core, but there exist some degree of bilingualism (in this case we speak of language borrowing),

Extensive borrowing from Scandinavian can be referred to the first case. A.I.Smirnitsky suggests speaking of English and Scandi­navian languages of the time of Scandinavian conquest as two dia­lects of one and the same language and not two different languages. They borrowed from Scandinavians words denoting common, ordinary objects, necessary in everyday life. These words did not denote any­thing new, but turned out to be more convenient for communication. That is why Sc. they ousted E. hi (heo, he). Words like angry, fellow, hit, leg, sky, skill, take, till, want, weak got into English.

A single, individual act of borrowing will not affect the language. The future of the language is not affected unless the newly imported word passes into general use. So when we speak of a single borrowing we mean thousands of individual acts of borrowing.

What are the motives for borrowing? Gh.Hockett points out two

motives: a) need filling, b) prestige.

The need filling motive is the most obvious. New experiences, new objects and practices bring new words into a language. E.g. Tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar, cocoa, chocolate, tomato have spread all over the world in recent times along with the objects to which they refer.

The prestige motive can be illustrated by upper- and Middle-class Englishman using French expressions in their English after the Norman conquest because French was the language of the new rulers of the country.

There were three great language troves - Latin, French and Greek. The borrowing of English from Latin, French and Greek accounts for more than half the words of Modern English vocabulary

Latin words were adopted by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes even before they invaded the British Isles in the fifth century. For years these Germanic tribes had been in contact with the Romans.This intercourse usually took the form of war, trade, hence com­mercial words like cheap (L. caupo) & military like camp (L. cam­pus). A more direct Latin influence on the English language occurred during the Roman occupation of Britain in the 1st century. With the introduction of Christianity into England came a great number of Latin words into English. E.g. of English word families based on Lat. root words: amateur, amiable, amicable, amity (L, amare – love), docile, doctor, document (L. docere - teach), libel, library, li­bretto (L, liber - book, bark of a tree).

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 resulted in a major up­heaval of the English language. Until the beginning of the XIII century French was the official language of the English upper classes. French words gradually filtered into the vocabulary of the common people as well. Many of those French words were the political terms (government, member, parliament), military terms (officer, soldier). In the field of art the French have given words like beauty, colour, design, ornament. Culinary terms of French origin include roast, pastry, jelly, feast.

While fewer Greek words have been adopted into English than Latin or French words, Greek has had an appreciable indirect i nfluence on English. This indirect influence came about because English has borrowed from Latin, which in its turn had earlier borrowed from | Greek, E.g. chaos, climax, enthusiasm, school.

Etymology of English words is often reflected in their sound and graphic form. E.G, recently there appeared in English the sound 131 which did not exist in O.E. This happened because of the nu­merous borrowings from French, containing the sound Izjl: pleasure, usual, Izjl changed into 131 and made later borrowings easier - bourgeois, rouge, garage. (words with letter su are of earlier borrowings, and with g of later).

In OE the Initial sk were turned into II. Later on this combination of sounds appeared in English again under the influence of Scandinavian borrowings. That is why we have in English skirt-shirt, sky - shy. The stress in words like machine, police points to their French origin. The letter combination au (aunt, haunt) from French, etc.

4.ETYMOLOGICAL DOUBLETS.

E.G., the Latin word vinum was borrowed into English twice, once into pre-English, giving OE Iwi*nl (wine), and later via Norman French, giving ME Ivijn I (vine). Wine and vine in Modern English are etymological doublets. Etymological doublets are two words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. Theywere borrowed into English twice either during different periodsof his­tory from one and the same language, or came through different languages (i,e, the source of borrowing is different but the origin is the same). E.g. break (Lat.) - breach (Fr.), canal (Lat.)- channel (Fr.).circle (Lat.) - search (Fr.) shirt (E..) - skirt (Sc,).

5. ASSIMILATION OF LOAN WORDS

Degree of assimilationof loanwords:

1. Completely assimilatedwords cannot be distinguished from nativewords either phonetically, graphically, morphologically or semantically.

E.g., street, sport, spouse

2. Partially assimilatedwords

A. Phonetically and/or graphically non-assimilatedwords possess phonetic and/or spelling features of the source-word.

E.g., garage, machine, zucchini, café

B. Morphologically (grammatically) non-assimilatedwords retain their foreign plurals.

E.g., crisis – crises; erratum – errata; formula – formulae

C. Semantically non-assimilated words denote phenomena of a foreign culture.

E.g., the Kremlin, kasha, blini (Russ.)

2. Words resisting assimilation (non-assimilatedloanwords)

E.g., i. e. (that is) (Lat.); Sturm und Drang (Germ.); Mon ami (Fr.)

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