Ways of adaptation of borrowing in the English language

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally assimilated quicker;, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, more than assimilated it- is.

Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms)

Completely assimilated borrowings are not as foreign words in language, the French word ‘sport’ and the native word ’start’. Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, for example correct-corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflection, for example gate-gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one. Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, for example the Russian borrowing ‘sputnik’ is used in English only in one of its meaning.

Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups:

Borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, for example sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.

Borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, for example nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus-bacilli, phenomenon-phenomena, datum-data, genius-genii etc.

Borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, for example in Greek borrowings ‘y’ can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), ‘ph’ denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), ‘ch’ denotes the sound /k/ (chemistry, chaos) nad ‘ps’ denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).

French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retain their spelling, for example consonants ‘p’,’t’ ‘s’ is not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, and debris), and Specially French combination of letters ‘eau’ /ou/ can be found in the borrowings: beau, chateau, trousseau. Some of digraphs retain their French pronunciation: ‘ch’ is pronounced as /sh/, for example chic, parachute, ‘qu’ is pronounced as /k/ for example bouquet, ‘ou’ is pronounced as /u:/, for example rouge; some letters retain their French pronunciation, for example ‘I’ is pronounced as /i:/, for example chic, machine; ‘g’ is pronounced as /3/, for example rouge.

Modern German borrowings also have some peculiarities in their spelling: common nouns are spelled with a capital letter for example Autobahn, Lebensraum; some vowels and digraphs retain their German pronunciation, for example ‘a’ is pronounced as /a:/ (dictat), ‘u’ is pronounced as /u:/ (Kuchen), ‘au’ is pronounced as /au/ (Hausfrau), / is pronounced ‘ei’ (Reich); some consonants are also pronounced in the German way, for example ‘s’ before a vowel is pronounced as /z/ (Sitskrieg), ‘v’ is pronounced as /f/(Volkswagen), ‘w’ is pronounced as/v/, ‘ch’ is pronounced as /h/(Kutchen).

Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms)narenborrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, for example addio (Italian), tete-a-tete(French), dolce vita(Italian) denude (Spanish) an home a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.

The role of loan words in the formation and development of English vocabulary is dealt with in the history of the language. It is there that the historical circumstances are discussed under which words borrowed from Latin, from Scandinavian dialects, from Norman and Parisian French and many other languages, including Russian, were introduced into English. Lexicology, on the other hand, has in these connection tasks of its own, being chiefly concerned with the material and results of assimilation.

The main problems of etymology and borrowed words as they concern the English language are comprehensively and consistently treated. It deals with these issues mainly in terms of word sameness reflecting his methodological approach to word theory.

Completely assimilated loan words are found in all the layers of older borrowings. They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e.g. cheese, street, wall or wine. Among Scandinavian loan words we find such frequent nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and wrong. 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 differs noticeably from native words. The number of completely assimilated loan words follow all morphological, phonetically and as dominant words in synonymic groups. They take an active part in word-formation. Moreover, their morphological structure and motivation remain transparent, so that they are morphologically analyzable 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, -ment, and English modification of French –eese and –fier, which provide speech material to produce hybrids like shortage, godless, hindrance, specify 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’. The subject of hybrids has already been dealt with in the chapter on derivation.

The word sport can serve as an illustration. It had a much wider scope in Old French denoting pleasures. Making merry and entertainments in general. It was borrowed into many European languages and became international. This process of semantic specialization in borrowing is even more evident in such loan words from Russian as Soviet and sputnik, whose Russian prototypes are polysemantic. In the light of current ideas, it is convenient to classify and study loan words as oppositions of the words as they exist in the receiving language with their prototypes in the source language, on the one hand, nad with words of the same lexica-grammatical class or (depending on the level chosen) of the same morphological or phonetically pattern in the receiving language.

Specialization is primarily due to the fact that the receiving system has at its disposal words for the older notions, and it is only the notion that needs a new name. Even so, the borrowing of a new word leads as a rule to semantic changes in words already existing in the language. The interaction of linguistic and extra linguistic, i.e. political, economical and cultural factors in this has been investigated.

The conformity of the completely assimilated loan words to morphological patterns of the English paradigms may be illustrated by Scandinavian loans taking the plural ending –s; eggs, gates, laws; or Latin loan verbs with dental suffix of the Past indefinite and Participle II: acted, corrected, disturbed.

To illustrate the frequency of completely assimilated words it is sufficient to mention that many of them are included in the list of 500 most frequent words are: act (Lat), age(F), army(Fr), bill(Lat), case(Fr), die(Scand).

The second group containing partially assimilated loan words can be subdivided into subgroups. The oppositions are equipollent.

Loan words not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero; foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bee, toreador; foreign vehicles: cacique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese); food and drinks: pillow (Persian); sherbet(Arabian); foreign currency: kroner(Denmark), rupee(India), zloty (Poland) peseta(Spain), trouble(USSR), etc.

Loan words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin or Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus-bacilli; crisis-crises; formula-formulae; index-indices; phenomenon-phenomena. Some of these are also used in English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning, as in indices-indexes.

Loan words not completely assimilated phonetically. The French words borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. Some of them keep the accent on the final syllable: machine, cartoon, and police. Others, along side with peculiarities in stress, contain sounds or combinations of sounds that are not standard for the English language and do not occur in native words. The examples are [3]-bourgeois, camouflage, prestige, regime, sabotage; {wa}-as in memoir, or the nasalized [a], [o]-me lunge. In many cases it 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.

The pronunciation of words where the process of assimilation is phonetically incomplete will often vary, as in [‘foiei] or [‘fwaje] for foyer and [‘bu:lva:] [‘bu:hva:], [‘bu:leva:], [‘bu:lva:d] for boulevard.

Loan words not completely assimilated graphically. It is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from French in which the final consonant is riot pronounced, e.g. ballet, buffet, corps. Some may keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, our, etc/) may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche. Some have variant spellings.

It goes without saying that these sets are interesting, i.e. one and the same loan word often shows incomplete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.

The incompleteness of assimilation results in some specific features which permit us to judge of the origin of words.