Linguistics is the scientific study of language

The term "semantic loan" is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language. The English word pioneer meant ‘explorer’ and ‘one who is among the first in new fields of activity’; now under the influence of the Russian word пионер it has come to mean ‘a member of the Young Pioneers’ Organization’.

Although the mixed character of the English vocabulary cannot be denied and the part of borrowing in its development is indeed one of great importance, the leading role in the history of this vocabulary belongs to word-formation and semantic changes patterned according to the specific features of the English language system. This system absorbed and remodelled the vast majority of loan words according to its own standards, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell an old borrowing from a native word. Examples are: cheese, street, wall, wine and other words belonging to the earliest layer of Latin borrowings. Many loan words, on the other hand, in spite of the changes they have undergone after penetrating into English, retain some peculiarities in pronunciation, spelling, orthoepy, and morphology.’

Thus, the initial position of the sounds [v], [dz], [z] is a sign that the word is not of native stock. Examples are: vacuum (Lat), valley (Fr), voivode (Russ), vanadium (named by a Swedish chemist Selfstrom from ON Vanadis, the goddess Freya), vanilla (Sp), etc. The sound [dз ] may be rendered by the letters g and j: gem<Lai gemma and jewel<OFr jouel. The initial [з] occurs in comparatively late borrowings: genre, gendarme (Fr). The letters j, x, z in initial position and such combinations as ph, kh, eau in the root indicate the foreign origin of the word: philology (Gr), khaki (Indian), beau (Fr). Some letters and combinations of letters depend in their orthoepy upon the etymology of the word. Thus, x is pronounced [ks] and [gz] in words of native and Latin origin respectively, and [z ] in words coming from Greek: six [siks] (native), exist [ig’zist] (Lat), but xylophone (Gr) is pronounced [’zailafoun].

The combination ch is pronounced [tS ] in native words and early borrowings: child, chair; [S] in late French borrowings: machine [me’Si:n], parachute I’paeraSu:t], and [k] in words of Greek origin: epoch [’i:pok], chemist t’kemist], echo [’ekou].

 

The term “assimilation of a loan” word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system. The degree of assimilation depends upon the length of period during which the word has been used in the receiving language, upon its importance for communication purpose and its frequency. Oral borrowings due to personal contacts are assimilated more completely and rapidly than literary borrowings.

According to the degree of assimilation:

1. completely assimilated loan words

They are found in all the layers of older borrowings (street from stratum, husband from Scandinavian, table, face, animal…). Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent. Suffice it to mention such everyday words as table and chair, face and figure, finish and matter. A considerable number of Latin words borrowed during the revival of learning are at present almost indistinguishable from the rest of the vocabulary. Neither animal nor article differ noticeably from native words. The number of completely assimilated loan words is many times greater than the number of partially assimilated ones.

They follow all morphological, phonetical and orphographic standards. They are frequent, stylistically neutral, active in word-formation, morphologically analyzable, indistinguishable phonetically.

Moreover, their morphological  structure and motivation remain transparent, so that they are morphologically analysable and therefore supply the English vocabulary not only with free forms but also with bound forms, as affixes are easily perceived and separated in series of loan words that contain them. Such are, for instance, the French suffixes -age, -ance and -ment,  and  the English modification of French -esse and -fier, which provide speech material to produce hybrids like shortage, goddess, hindrance, speechify, and endearment. The free forms, on the other hand, are readily combined with native affixes, e.g. pained, painful, painfully, painless, painlessness, all formed from pain<Fr peine<Lat poena >Gr poine ‘penalty’.

Completely assimilated loan words are also indistinguishable phonetically. It is impossible to say judging by the sound of the words sport and start whether they are borrowed or native. In fact start is native, derived from ME sterten, whereas sport is a shortening of disport vt<OFr (se) desporter ‘to amuse oneself, ‘to carry oneself away from one’s work’ (ultimately derived from Lat portare ‘to carry’).

 

2. partially assimilated can be subdivided into subgroups. Not assimilated:

• semantically as denote objects, notions peculiar to the country from which they come (sombrero, sherbet, rouble)

• grammatically, for example nouns from Latin or Greek which keep their original plural forms (phenomenon-na, formula – lae, crisis - crises)
• phonetically. Alongside with peculiarities in stress, the words may contain sounds or combinations of sounds that are not standard for the English language and do not occur in native words. The examples are: [з] — bourgeois, prestige, regime, sabotage. Words with the initial sounds (v), (z) as in voice or zero testify to their foreign origin. In many cases it is not the sounds but the whole pattern of the word’s phonetic make-up that is different from the rest of the vocabulary, as in some of the Italian and Spanish borrowings: confetti, incognito, macaroni, opera, sonata, soprano and tomato, potato, tobacco. Some French borrowings have retained stress on the final syllable – police, cartoon.
• graphically (for example, some keep diacritic mark – café, cliché or in Greek borrowings y can be spelled in the middle of the word, ph, ch, ps). The letters j, x, z in the initial position indicate the foreign origin of the word, e.g. jewel, zest, xylophone. French borrowings that 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).

3. non-assimilated borrowings (the so-called barbarisms)

= words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way and for which there are corresponding English equivalents (ciao – goodbye, coup d’Etat – sudden seizure of state power by a small group).

 

The changes a loan word had had to undergo are the main cause for the existence of the so-called etymological doublets. These are two or more words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage.

Etymological doublets are pairs of words which have one and the same original form, but which have acquired different forms and even different meanings during the course of linguistic development. Ex: the words shirt and skirt etymologically descend from the same root. Shirt is a native word, skirt is a Scandinavian borrowings. Their phonetic shape is different, and yet there is a certain resemblance, which reflects their common origin. Their meanings are also different but easily associated: they both denote articles of clothing.

As an example of the same foreign word that has been borrowed twice at different times the doublets castle and château may be mentioned. Both words come from the Latin castellun ‘fort’. This word passed into the northern dialect of Old French as castel, which was borrowed into Middle English as castle. In the Parisian dialect of Old French, on the other hand, it became chastel (a Latin hard c regularly became a ch in Central Old French). In modern French chastel became chateaux and was then separately borrowed into English meaning ‘a French castle or a big country house’.

Another source is borrowing of different grammatical forms of the same word. Thus, the comparative of Latin super ‘above’ was superior ‘higher, better’, this was borrowed into English as superior ‘high or higher in some quality or rank’. The superlative degree of the same Latin word was supremus ‘highest’. When this was borrowed into English it gave the adjective supreme ‘outstanding, prominent, highest in rank’.

As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it’s natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language. Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words. They play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science, industry and art. The international word-stock is growing due to the rate of change in society (football, tennis, tweed, film come from English; concert, piano, opera come from Italian).

 

The term "source of borrowing" should be distinguished from the term "origin of borrowing". The first should be applied to the language from which the loan word was taken into English. The second, on the other hand, refers to the language to which the word may be traced. Thus, the word paper<Fr papier<Lat papyrus<Gr papyros has French as its source of borrowing and Greek as its origin. It may be observed that several of the terms for items used in writing show their origin in words denoting the raw material. Papyros is the name of a plant; cf. book<OE boc ‘the beech tree’ (boards of which were used for writing).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are questions and tasks for the first seminar below.

 

 

 

 

Test Questions

1. What does lexicology study?
2. What is the theoretical and practical value of lexicology?
1. What types of lexical units do you know?
2. What is the difference between word and word-combination, word and morpheme?
3. What lexical variants do you know? Give examples.
4. What languages and when influenced the English vocabulary?
5. What ways of borrowing do you know? Give examples.

 

Written Tasks

 

1. Read the passage given below. 1) Comment on the difference between the noun "floor" and the stem "floor-“ using examples, taken from the text. 2) Find other examples illustrating the difference between words and morphemes.

Lying on the floor of the flat-car with the guns beside me under the canvas I was wet, cold, and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knee was stiff, but it had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half of the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it turn over on itself, the head was mine, but not to use, not to think with, only to remember and not too much remember.

I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going slowly clickingly, and some light through the canvas, and by lying with Catherine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.

You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets and the small of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but yon loved someone else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly - not so coldly as clearly end emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however, no insurance. You were out of it now. You had no more obligations. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had, then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the store opened again for business. They might seek other employment; if there was any other employment and the police did not get them.

. (E. Hemingway)

 

2. Look up the following words in an etymological dictionary and indicate the languages they are borrowed from:

analysis, ballet, bandit, bloom, canoe, diet, duke, embargo, Koran, liquor, Mammoth