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The English vocabulary contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Words that came to English from other languages and constantly used in it as the original are called borrowings. One of the main way of enlarging the lexical system of the language is represented by borrowings.
The role of borrowings is different in various languages and it depends on certain development conditions.
The quantity of borrowed words in English is much higher than in other languages.
Introduction
Chapter I. Historical Contacts between Russia and Britain
1.1 Russian Loan Words in English
1.2 The Lexical Category of the Russian borrowings
1.3 The Meanings and the Etymological Characteristics of the Borrowings
1.4 Words of Foreign Origin Borrowed from Russian
1.5 Subcategories of Nouns
1.6 Folk Etymology
1.7 Morphological Features of the Russian Borrowings
1.8 Orthographic Features of the Russian Loan Words
1.9 Thematic Classification of the Russian Borrowings
1.10 The Meaning Changes of the Russian Borrowings
Chapter II. Borrowings as a way of replenishment of the vocabulary.
1.1 Assimilation of borrowings.
1.2 Phonetic assimilation.
1.2 Grammatical assimilation.
1.4 Lexical assimilation.
Conclusions
Bibliography
Being an adaptive system, the vocabulary is constantly adjusting itself to the changing conditions of human communication. New notions appear, requiring new words to name them.
New words, expressions or neologisms are created for new things. The neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word. There is a problem of denomination. It is not still clear which words to consider new?
The most rational point is that new words are the ones that appeared in the last years of the previous generation.
The borrowed words are taken from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English.
They came in diffirent times. Early Latin borrowings were adopted in the 1st century BC (butter, chalk, kitchen). In the 5th century AD there penetrated a few Celtic words into English (cradle, London). In the 7th century AD, during the Christianisation, there were adopted many religious terms from Latin (priest, nun). From the end of the 7th century till the middle of the 11th century there penetrated Scandinavian words into the English language (window, husband, law, ugly, weak, call, take, die).
The Scandinavian words are similar in pronunciation to the Anglo-Saxon ones. Many Scandinavian words start with the sk-cluster: skill, skin, ski, skirt, sky. In 1066 when the Norman Conquest took place, England became a bilingual country. French was officially introduced into the life of the people.
The French words borrowed at that period are of the following layers: administrative, military terms (army, officer), educational (pupil, pencil, library), words of everyday life (dinner, river, uncle). In the Renaissance period there were borrowed numerous words from Latin and Greek connected with science (university, professor), Italian (piano, opera, violin etc.).
In the 18th-20th centuries the basis of the words became different due to the colonial expansion: Indian (pundit), Arabic (sherbet), Chinese etc. The Russian borrowings in the English language are of the following layers: prerevolutionary (before 1917 vodka, valenkis, pelmenis), sovietisms (preserve only Russian meaning: polit-bureau, 5-year-plan) and the perestroika period.
1.1 ASSIMILATION OF BORROWINGS
It is now essential to analyse the changes that borrowings
have undergone in the English language and how they have adapted themselves
to its peculiarities.
All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two
large groups.
On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words 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, Ptolemy of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since 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 inGr. xylophone).
The suffixes -ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced by the highly
productive Old English suffix -ere, as in L. Caesar>OE. Casere, L. su
It is very important to discriminate between the
two processes — the adaptation of borrowed material to the norms
of the language and the development of these words according to the
laws of the language.
1.1 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 [ε] in recent French
borrowings, alien to English speech, are rendered with the help of [ei]
(as in the words communiqué, chaussée, café).
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 [∫pits] 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.
Even when a borrowed word seems at first sight to
be identical in form with its immediate etymon as OE. skill < Scand. skil; OE
1.3 GRAMMATICAL ASSIMILATION
Grammatical Assimilation. Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired hew grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words, as in
им. спутник Com. sing. Sputnik
род. спутника Poss. sing. Sputnik’s
дат. спутнику Com. pl. Sputniks
вин. спутник Poss. pl. Sputniks’
вин. спутником
предл. о спутнике
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.) — phenome
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible simple words, unless there were already words with the same morphemes
in it, e.g. in the word saunter the French infinitive inflexion -er is retained (cf. OFr. s'aunter), but it has changed its quality, it is preserved in all the other grammatical forms of the word (cf. saunters, sauntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English. 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, unless one knows the Italian language.
The composite nature of the word portfolio is not seen either (cf. It. portafogli < porta — imperative of ‘carry’ + fogli — ’sheets of paper’).
This loss of morphological seams in borrowings may
be termed simplification by analogy with a similar process in native
words.1
It must be borne in mind that when there appears in a language a group
of borrowed words built on the same pattern or containing the same morphemes,
the morphological structure of the words becomes apparent and in the
course of time their word-building elements can be employed to form
new words.2
Thus the word bolshevik was at first indivisible in English, which is seen from the forms bolshevikism, bolshevikise, bolshevikian entered by some dictionaries. Later on the word came to be divided into the morphological elements bolshev-ik.
The new morphological division can be accounted for by the existence of a number of words containing these elements (bolshevism, bolshevist, bolshevise; sputnik, udarnik, menshevik).
Sometimes in borrowed words foreign affixes are replaced
by those available in the English language, e.g. the inflexion -us in Latin adjectives was replaced in English with
the suffixes -ous or -al: L. barba
1.4 LEXICAL ASSIMILATION
Lexical Assimilation. When a word is taken over into another language, its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes.
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 meanings — ‘the goods carried in a ship’, ‘a barrel for holding liquids’ respectively.
In some cases we can observe specialisation of meaning, as in the word hangar, denoting a building in which aeroplanes are kept (in Frenchit meant simply ’shed’) and revue, which had the meaning of ‘review’ in French and came to denote a kind of theatrical entertainment in English.
In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic structure.
For instance, the verb move in Modern English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French mouvoir does not possess.
The word scope, which originally had the meaning of ‘aim, purpose’, now means ‘ability to understand’, ‘the field within which an activity takes place, sphere’, ‘opportunity, freedom of action’.
As a rule the development of new meanings takes place 50 — 100 years after the word is borrowed.
Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word is retained throughout its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning.
Thus the Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained their primary meanings
to the present day, whereas in the OE. fēolaze (MnE. fellow)
Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound but which are not at all related.
This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected, e.g. the French verb sur(o)under had the meaning of ‘overflow’.
In English -r(o)under was associated by mistake with round —круглый and the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘enclose
on all sides, encircle’ (MnE. surround). Old French estandard (L. estendere
Folk-etymologisation is a slow process; people first attempt to give
the foreign borrowing its foreign pronunciation, but gradually popular
use evolves a new pronunciation and spelling.
CONCLUSIONS
Permanent diplomatic and cultural contacts between Russia and England were established in the 16th century.
The visits of the different ambassadors and trades-men to Russia were depicted in the works of various English authors. In this way the English got knowledge of Russia and its culture. In addition, for a long time an exchange of ideas has taken place.
Russia imported many skilled English specialists and the works of some Russian authors were known in England.
Cultural contacts between the two countries included art, science, literature etc. After the October Revolution many Russians immigrated to England and they published their newspapers and magazines there.
As a result of these cultural contacts many Russian words were borrowed into English. All Russian words chosen for analysis from the two dictionaries are nouns.
Among them there are both proper and common nouns. There are also some common nouns that converted from proper nouns. The majority of the nouns analyzed have -s as the plural suffix just like most English nouns.
However, there are also nouns that have two endings: the Russian -i/y ending and the English -s ending.
Some words have only the Russian plural ending. Among words borrowed from Russian there are also terms which originally belonged to other languages. Russian borrowings belong to a variety of the thematic groups, which can be explained by the fact that contacts between the two countries covered various aspects of life.
Russian borrowings developed their meanings in a variety of ways. Many words have new meanings in English and they do not denote only Russian phenomena anymore.
Taking into account the analyzed facts it is not possible to agree with the opinion that the Russian borrowings are few and that they denote only Russian phenomena and are not naturalized.
Unfortunately, the very restricted character of this work makes it impossible to analyze all Russian words borrowed into English and their morphologic and semantic features. However, the analyzed facts are enough to understand the character of the development of the Russian borrowings in English.
BIBLIOGRAPHY