Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed aspect

There are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, and morphemic borrowings.

Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages; they are called loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc.

Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, «to take the bull by the horns» (Latin), «fair sex» (French), «living space» (German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, e.g. Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from the languages of Indians, such as: «pipe of peace», «pale-faced», from German «masterpiece», «homesickness», «superman».

Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings, e.g. there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Or else the meaning «дар», «подарок» for the word «gift» which in Old English had the meaning «выкуп за жену».

Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was borrowed back into English, e.g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning «a working collective«,»бригада». This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word «pioneer».

Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words - hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, e.g. «goddess», «beautiful» etc.

Due to “the specific historical development of English, it has adopted many words from

other languages, especially from Latin, French and Old Scandinavian, though the number and importance of these borrowings are usually overestimated.

2. The number and character of borrowings in Modern English from

various languages depend on the historical conditions and also on the degree

of the genetic and structural proximity of the languages in question.

3. Borrowings enter the language through oral speech (mainly in early periods of history) and through written speech (mostly in recent times). In spite of the numerous outside linguistic influences and the etymological heterogeneity of its vocabulary the English language is still, in essential characteristics, a Germanic language. It has retained a groundwork of Germanic words and grammar.

2. Borrowing has never been the chief means of replenishing the English vocabulary. Word-formation and semantic development were throughout the entire history of the language much more productive. Besides most native words are marked by a higher frequency value.

3. The great number of borrowings brought with them new phonomorphological types, new phonetic, morphological and semantic features. On the other hand, under the influence of the borrowed element words already existing in English changed to some extent their semantic structure, collocability, frequency and derivational ability.

4. Borrowing also considerably enlarged the English vocabulary and brought about some changes in English synonymic groups, in the distribution of the English vocabulary through spheres of application and in the lexical divergence between the variants of the literary language and its dialects.

2. Assimilation of borrowings.

Assimilation is a process of adjusting in Phonetics and Lexicology. The term Assimilation in Etymology is used to denote a partial or total conformation of a borrowed word to the phonetical (graphical and morphological standards and the semantic system of the receiving language (язык-реципиент).

There are three main types of Assimilation:

1. Phonetic Assimilation – the adjusting of the phonetic structure of a borrowed word to the phonetical system of the recipient language. Loan words not assimilated phonetically retain their foreign pronunciation like most of the French borrowings of the latest time, e.g. police, machine, ballet;

2. Grammatical Assimilation – a conformation of a borrowed word to the morphological standards of the receiving language. Grammatically assimilated loan words acquire English grammatical categories and paradigms, e.g. to count-counted-counting, sputnik-sputniks. Loan words not assimilated grammatically retain their foreign grammatical forms like some nouns borrowed from Latin which keep their original plural inflexions, e.g. phenomenon – phenomena.

3. Lexical Assimilation – a conformation of a borrowed word to the lexico-semantic system of the receiving language. It means that a borrowed word may participate in word building and develop its semantic structure, e.g. sputnik – to out sputniks, sputnikists. Foreign polysemantic words become monosemantic in the receiving language but a borrowed word may develop a new meaning in the receiving language, e.g. palate (the roof of the mouth) has developed a new meaning in English = taste, inclination and interest; and the new derivatives – palatable (tasty) and etc.

There is a noticeable group of words which are not completely assimilated graphically, e.g. ballet, café (with diacritic mark).

Degree of Assimilation

Degree of Assimilation depends on the following factors:

· The time of borrowing. The older the borrowing is, the more thoroughly it’s assimilated

· The frequency of usage

· The way in which the word was adopted. Oral borrowings are assimilated more rapidly and more completely than literary borrowings, e.g. borrowings through writing.

Types of Assimilation

According to the degree of Assimilation, borrowings are subdivided into:

1. completely/fully assimilated words. They correspond to all phonetic, morphological and semantic laws of English and do not felt as borrowings. They are found in all the layers of older borrowings (Latin, Scandinavian, French). Many of them belong to the native word stock of English (cheese, street – Latin; husband, to die, to take – Scandinavian; table – French).

2. partially assimilated borrowed words. They’ve retained:

1. foreign pronunciation (vase, restaurant)

2. foreign morphological characteristics (datum – data)

3. they are not assimilated semantically denoting notion of foreign cultures, nature, customs (steppe, taiga, sombrero). These are foreign realies which have no corresponding equivalents in English.

3. barbarisms (unassimilated borrowed words). These are foreign words used by English people in oral speech or in writing but not assimilated in any way. They usually have corresponding English equivalents, e.g. “Chao” (Italian), “adio”.

3. National variants: American English and British English.

The differences between the English language as spoken in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada are immediately noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these distinctions are confined to the articulatoryacoustic characteristics of some phonemes, to some differences in the use of others and to the differences in the rhythm and intonation of speech. The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation and alien to British literary norms can as a rule be observed in British dialects.

The variations in vocabulary, to be considered below, are not very numerous. Most of them are divergences in the semantic structure of words and in their usage.

The dissimilarities in grammar like AE gotten, proven for BE got, proved are scarce. For the most part these dissimilarities consist in the preference of this or that grammatical category or form to some others.

For example, the preference of Past Indefinite to Present Prefect, the formation of the Future Tense with will as the only auxiliary verb for all persons, and some others. Recent investigations have also shown that the Present Continuous form in the meaning of Future is used twice as frequently in BE as in the American, Canadian and Australian variants; infinitive constructions are used more rarely in AE than in BE and AuE and passive constructions are, on the contrary, more frequent in America than in Britain and in Australia.

Vocabulary

The most noticeable difference between American and British English is vocabulary. There are hundreds of everyday words that are different.

BE AE

flat - apartment

underground subway

lorry truck

pavement sidewalk

post mail

tin-opener can-opener

government administration

leader editorial

teaching staff faculty

Americans go on vacation, while Brits go on holidays

New Yorkers live in apartments; Londoners live in flats.

There are far more examples than we can talk about here. Fortunately, most Americans and Brits can usually guess the meaning through the context of a sentence.

Collective Nouns

There are a few grammatical differences between the two varieties of English. Let’s start with collective nouns. We use collective nouns to refer to a group of individuals.

In American English, collective nouns are singular. For example, staff refers to a group of employees; band refers to a group of musicians; team refers to a group of athletes. Americans would say, “The band is good.”

But in British English, collective nouns can be singular or plural. You might hear someone from Britain say, “The team are playing tonight” or “The team is playing tonight.”

Auxiliary verbs

Another grammar difference between American and British English relates to auxiliary verbs. Auxiliary verbs, also known as helping verbs, are verbs that help form a grammatical function. They “help” the main verb by adding information about time, modality and voice.

Let’s look at the auxiliary verb shall. Brits sometimes use shall to express the future.

For example, “I shall go home now.” Americans know what shall means, but rarely use it in conversation. It seems very formal. Americans would probably use “ I will go home now.”

In question form, a Brit might say, “Shall we go now?” while an American would probably say, “Should we go now?”

When Americans want to express a lack of obligation, they use the helping verb do with negative not followed by need. “You do not need to come to work today.” Brits drop the helping verb and contract not. “You needn’t come to work today.”

Past Tense Verbs

The past tense of learn in American English is learned. British English has the option of learned or learnt. The same rule applies to dreamed and dreamt, burned and burnt, leaned and leant.

Americans tend to use the –ed ending; Brits tend to use the -t ending.

In the past participle form, Americans tend to use the –en ending for some irregular verbs. For example, an American might say, “I have never gott en caught” whereas a Brit would say, “I have never got caught.” Americans use both got and gotten in the past participle. Brits only use got.

Spelling

There are hundreds of minor spelling differences between British and American English. You can thank American lexicographer Noah Webster for this. You might recognize Webster’s name from the dictionary that carries his name.

You can see Webster’s legacy in the American spelling of words like color (from colour), honor (from honour), and labor (from labour). Webster dropped the letter u from these words to make the spelling match the pronunciation.

Other Webster ideas failed, like a proposal to spell women as wimmen. Since Webster’s death in 1843, attempts to change spelling rules in American English have gone nowhere.

4. Local dialects. Cockney.

Cockney speakers have a distinctive accent and dialect, and occasionally use rhyming slang. The Survey of English Dialects took a recording from a long-time resident of Hackney, and the BBC made another recording in 1999 which showed how the accent had changed.^[29][30]

John Camden Hotten, in his Slang Dictionary of 1859, makes reference to "their use of a peculiar slang language" when describing the costermongers of London's East End. In terms of other slang, there are also several borrowings from Yiddish, including kosher (originally Hebrew, via Yiddish, meaning legitimate) and stumm (/ʃtʊm/ originally German, via Yiddish, meaning quiet),^[31] as well as Romany, for example wonga (meaning money, from the Romany "wanga" meaning coal),^[32] and cushty (from the Romany kushtipen, meaning good). A fake cockney accent is sometimes called mockney.

Traditionally a cockney speaker was born within the sound of the ‘Bow Bells’ (St Mary Le Bow Church), the accent is associated with East London – particularly the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. This is not really the case any more, with large parts of modern East London

Typical features[edit]

· Grammatical features:^[45]

· Use of me instead of my, for example, "At's me book you got 'ere". Cannot be used when "my" is emphasised; e.g., "At's my book you got 'ere" (and not "his").

· Use of ain't

· Use of double negatives, for example "I didn't see nuffink".^[73]

Cockney English is also characterized by its own special vocabulary and usage in the form of "cockney rhyming slang". The way it works is that you take a pair of associated words where the second word rhymes with the word you intend to say, then use the first word of the associated pair to indicate the word you originally intended to say. Some rhymes have been in use for years and are very well recognized, if not used, among speakers of other accents.

Examples:

"apples and pears" – stairs
"plates of meat" – feet

There are others, however, that become established with the changing culture.

Example:
"John Cleese" – cheese
"John Major" - pager

5. The problem of word-meaning. Denotation and connotation.