Доклад на тему Заимствованные слова в английском языке

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 15^th 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.