Borrowings in the English Language
In its 15 century long history the English language has come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or 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 Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion, e.g.: absolute < absolutus, algebra < algebra, arm < armare, autumn < autumnus, beast < bes-tia, calculate < calculus, habit < habitum, intelligence < intelligentia, machine < machina, number < numerum, propaganda <propagare, recommend < re-
comendare, sentence < sentential, square < quadrus.
Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the llth century. Examples of Scandinavian borrowings are: anger < anger, angr (горе, печаль), fellow < fellawe, felagi (товарищ, компаньон, парень), fit < fitten, fitja (устраивать, связывать), fro < fro, fra (от, из), hap < hap, happ (случай, везение, счастье), hit < hitten, hitta (попадать в цель, ударять, поражать), leg < leg, leggr (нога, кость ноги; ствол), low < low, lagr (низкий, невысокий), swain < swayn, sveinn (мальчик, парень, молодой человек), sky < skye, sky (об-
лако, небо), skill < skile, skil (отличие, мастерство, различие, понятие), take < taken, taka (брать, хватать, начинать), they < they (они), want < want(e), vant (недостаток, нужда, недостающий).
French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system - developed feudalism, it was the language of the upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century: action < accioun, accusation < accusacioun, agreable < agreable, arms < armes, baron < baron, baroun, chamber < chambre, chivalry < chyval(e)rie, crown < coroune, duke < duk, empress < emperesse.
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Assimilation of Borrowings
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Assimilation - the process of adaptation of foreign words to the norms of the language.
Types of assimilation - phonetic, grammatical, lexical.
Degree of Assimilation
Completely assimilated words do not differ from the native ones in pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. It is difficult to distinguish them from words of Anglo-Saxon origin, e.g.: pupil, master, city, river, window, dish, box. The majority of early borrowings have acquired full English citizenship.
Partly assimilated loan words fall into subgroups:
- words not assimilated semantically, e.g.: sari, sombrero, shah, radja,
-sfeih; bei, toreador, rickshaw/picksha;
- loan words not assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from
Latin or Greek preserve their original plural inflexion: phenomenon - phe
nomena, addendum - addenda, radius - radii, antenna - antennae;
- loan words not assimilated phonetically: communique, chaussee, cafe ;
machine, cartoon, police; bourgeois, camouflage, prestige, regime, sabotage,
memoir/(Fr.); spits (G.); pneumatics, psychology, ptolomey (Gr.);
- loan words not completely assimilated graphically: ballet, buffet, corps,
cafe, cliche, bouquet, brioche( Fr.).
Completely unassimilated words, or barbarisms, e.g.: addio, ciao (It.), af-fiche (Fr.) - «placard», ad libitum (Lat.) - «at pleasure».
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PART I. WORD-STRUCTURE AND WORD-FORMATION
WORD-FORMATION IN GENERAL
1. Morphemes. Their structural and semantic classifications.
2. Historic changeability of word structure.
3. Productive and non-productive ways of word-formation.
Morphemes. Their Structural and Semantic Classifications
A great many words have a composite nature and are made up of smaller units each having sound form and meaning. These are called morphemes, e.g. teach-er, help-less-ness, sports-man.
Like a word, a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern.
Unlike a word, a morpheme is not an autonomous unit and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word.
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Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units, without losing their constitutive meaning.
So, according to the complexity of the morphemic structure the words fall into segmentable (child-hood) and non-segmentable (dog).
Semantic Classification of Morphemes
Root morphemes - they are lexical centres of the words, the basic constituent parts of the words: black-ness, London-er;
affixational morphemes (prefixes/suffixes) - they have a generalized lexical meaning and the part-of-speech meaning: -er, -ist, -ее = doer of an action (N-forming suffixes).
Structural Classification of Morphemes
Free morphemes (those which coincide with the stem) - root morphemes: friend, day, week.
Bound morphemes (occur only as constituent parts of words) - affixes: dis-; re-; -ment; -hood.
Semi-bound (semi-free; can function both as an affix and as a free morpheme): half an hour - half-done, half-eaten; do well - well-known; sleep well - well-done.
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