Файл: Borrowings in the English language.pdf

INTRODUCTION

 The subject of the  work relates to lexicology. As you know, vocabulary is the most dynamic side of the language in any period of time. It represents the smallest degree of abstraction in a language, because the word is always object-oriented; it can be borrowed, formed anew or form the elements available in the language. We consider borrowing in this work as one of the main ways of replenishing the language vocabulary.

The urgency of our work is related to the intense penetration of foreign-language borrowings in the English language and the problem of assimilation. These loans have come into English from other languages, and have been taken in the process of socio-economic and cultural relations between peoples and nations. Such words are called foreign borrowings. Many of them are widely used in various spheres of oral and written speech, others are limited in their use. [Лешева 2001: 127]

Some words were borrowed in the era of Old English and assimilated them as elements of linguistic heritage. In our time, the borrowed vocabulary is very popular and usable.

The subject of the research - methods of translation of foreign borrowings from English into Russian.

The object of the research - foreign borrowings in the system of the English language.

The purpose of the work: to consider foreign borrowings in the English language and how to translate them into Russian.

According to the subject and the object, as well as the purpose of the study the hypothesis was formulated : the main way of transfering the loans occurring in the system of the English language to the Russian language will be the formal lexical transformation.

        Based on the purpose of the subject, object and research hypothesis, the following objectives were formulated:

-to reveal the concept and essence of borrowing words in the English language;

- analyze theoretical materials related to borrowing;

-to carry out the lexical analysis of foreign borrowings in the English language on a material of English-language print media;

- draw conclusions on the topic of the work.

- trace the routes of entry and the main stages of assimilation of borrowings in the English language. [Ахманова 2004: 119]

The scientific novelty of this work lies in the study of group of words among the total number of foreign borrowings in the English language which are not fully assimilated; in determining the types of translation transformations in the system of their classification when translating foreign borrowings from English into Russian.

The theoretical significance of the work lies in an integrated approach to the coverage of the problem of the foreign-language borrowing, : first, the relationship of social and linguistic factors that affect the process of borrowing; secondly, the specific application of translational transformations in the translation of borrowings from English into Russian.

The practical value of the work lies in the fact that scientific research has foreign borrowings and their need to popularize them through a variety of media to contribute to:

-development of linguistic consciousness and culture of separate speakers of the language, and the entire collective language as a whole;

-correct (in quantitative and qualitative terms) use of "foreign" words in the language;

-elaboration of linguistic foundations of language policies, adequate as the present conditions of rapid globalization in all spheres of public life and the conditions of preservation of the identity of the English language as an important component of the national culture.

Contents:

1.Introduction. The nature of borrowings, their classification, sources of borrowing and borrowing process.

     2.The analysis of the ways of transferring borrowings.

     3.The analysis of the foreign loans on the example of the    English-language printed press.

    4.Conclusion.

  The “guests from another language” or borrowed words penetrate the English language. Through linguistic osmosis, these numerous words were taken over from one language by another during the course of the English history mainly through the constant uninvited arrival of invaders to the island.

Borrowings in the lexical system of English

The history of English language and borrowings

Otto Jespersen,(a Danish linguist) in his book “Growth and Structure of the English Language” indicates that the English language is a “chain of borrowings” that was a result of the conquests of Britain by various invaders .

First came the Romans and with their occupancy of England, they introduced Latin to some, but not all, its inhabitants. While the Celts co-existed with the Romans and “continental Germans”, only a few hundred borrowed Latin words were found in Old English, which was substantially a “self-sufficing” language, according to Jespersen. The Christianization of the country in the VI^th century forced more inhabitants to adopt Latin words and phrases through the Church. Once the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived in Britain, and with the Celts displaced, the language literally began revolting as the new-arrivals began settling in. The Celtic influence began quickly decreasing as the so-called “superior” borrowed words began to take hold. Yet, while the Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought us the original English language, the foundation of English as we know it today is Germanic with a solid French impact.

The history of the English language, and its borrowings, is founded on three incursions: Teutonic; Scandinavian (Vikings); and, most importantly, by the Norman conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy in 1066. The Teutonic and Scandinavian invasions apparently affected the mother language. But it was the French-speaking Normans, led by William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquérant), who introduced the greatest, most extensive and most constant collection of borrowed or “loan” words to the English language upon their successful 1066 invasion of the island.

According to Jespersen, many British adopted borrowed French words not only to communicate, but because they felt it was the “fashion” to imitate their “betters”. Again, while some might distinguish this as a form of snobbism, many of us do strive to improve our language skills as our knowledge of borrowed words not only expands our vocabulary but enables us to converse with one another .

This borrowing has also helped swell the size of English dictionaries. The voluminous English dictionaries, as compared to French, German or Dutch dictionaries for example, can credit their size to the borrowings of foreign words the British adopted. If the English were originally concerned that their native language was not up to snuff with the French or Latin tongues, the Britons’ borrowings might give new meaning to “size matters”.

The Renaissance brought a multitude of classical words, particularly from France and Italy, increasing the Latin influence on the language in England. But Italy, along with Spain, contributed few borrowed words because the English language was nearly completely formed by this age. The new words and phrases enriched the British language, but Jespersen believes at somewhat of a cost. Because of the various invasions, the English had, over time, begun to “shrink from consciously coining new words out of native material”. That concept brings us full circle back to the “physical mobility and mental laziness” aspect of borrowing words .

Classification of borrowings

There are the following groups of borrowings: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, and morphemic borrowings. [Ахманова 2004. 576 р]

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 of the borrowing language. In some cases the spellings 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 labor, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenclature, sputnik are 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 word 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), ‘living space’(German), etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, for example Sunday (solis dies).

Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this meaning was borrowed back into English, for example ‘brigade’ was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning ‘a working collective’. 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, for example we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in English word-building system, that is why there are a lot words-hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, for example ‘goddes’, ‘beautiful’, etc.

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

Completely assimilated words correspond to all phonetic, morphological and semantic loans of English and are not felt as the foreign words. Many of them belong to the basic word-stock.

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 non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, for example voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocalic position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss-lose, life-live).

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) and ‘ps’ denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).

The great number of borrowings brought with them new phono-morphological 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, frequency and derivational ability.

Through the history of the English language and the English people borrowing from different languages such as French, German, Italian, Russian considerably enlarged the English vocabulary and brought about some changes in the 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.

 Sources of borrowing in English

              Back in the Middle Ages, the English language has borrowed a lot of new words from the Scandinavian languages when  the English lived side by side with the Danish invaders in the land of England ( the X - the XI century.).

             In the 5th century Germanic tribes - the Angles, Saxons and Jutes migrated to the British Isles. There they met the aboriginal population of the islands - Celts. Celtic tribes were at a low cultural and economic level, so their language did not have a significant impact on the Anglo-Saxon language. In the modern English language preserved a few words from the Celtic languages. They are preserved mainly in dialectal vocabulary of ordinary people: farmers, ranchers, workers from provincial towns.

              For example, the British sheep farmers took advantage of the Cost Accounting numerals occurred from an ancient, long-vanished Cumbric.

              Time system Continuous is a carbon copy of the syntax of the Celtic languages. In other Germanic languages, this system is not currently available. Significantly more Celtic words penetrated into the English language in more subsequent periods of Gaelic (Ireland) and the Scots language. Here are loan words from Celtic language: dun - серовато-коричневый, bard- бард, певец, brat-ребенок, неуч,  bin -мешок, корзина (для вина, пшеницы), brock -барсук. On the same early period in the English moved from Celtic language Latin words, borrowed from the Celts to the Romans during the invasion of the British Isles. But these words are regarded as Celtic borrowing. Here are some of them: bannock-пресная лепешка, cross -крест, pillion-подушка для сидения, plaid -плед, mud-грязь . Among them some place names that are also early Celtic borrowings: Aberdeen , Ben Lomond,  Dunbar , Kildare , Dunstable , Billingshurt .

              The first group of Latin borrowing came into English through trade ties even on the continent, such as ( pepper - перец, wine-вино,  pear -груша).

              The second group of Latin borrowing came into the English language during the propagation of Christianity. ( Mass-месса, devil -дьявол, school - школа, priest -священник).

              In the 11-13 centuries, along with the Norman invasion in the English language there were a lot of Latin words. But many of these words has undergone changes in phonetics system, semantics and grammar. Since they were originally borrowed from Latin into French. A great many Latin words, caught in the English language are the book-borrowings. They were in a language not as a result of live communication, and came along with books, documents and other written sources.

              Book borrowing differ in that they have not changed. First of all, they kept their semantics. This is due to the fact that book borrowings for a long time were used mainly in the literary language. These borrowings mainly relate to abstract concepts, terminologies.

              Most of the book borrowing from Latin fell into English during the Renaissance in England, in the 15 - 16th centuries.

              The texts of the works of Chaucer, Lenglanda, Wycliffe used about a thousand of Latin words that were previously not used in the English language.

              The Renaissance enriched the English language with words from the field of theology, literature, medicine, of Technical Sciences.

              Scandinavian words entered the English language mainly as a result of oral communication. In written records of Old English culture can be found a few words of Scandinavian origin. Written sources appeared towards the end of the 12th century. They reflect dialectal forms, there is evidence of early oral borrowing of the Scandinavian languages. English and Scandinavian languages belonged to the same Germanic group. This enables the speakers at least to understand each other. In this case the mutual influence of languages was maifested. First of all borrowed nouns, adjectives and verbs. These are the words the majority of which were of great importance: the drag , husband , snare , fellow , skirt , leg  , skin , calf , cast , ill ,  low , wrong and many other words. In recent history, the Nordic loans are very rare.

              In English, there are a lot of borrowing from the Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) They came with the development of the history of England's relations with these countries. From the 16th century from Italian to English penetrated many words related to the topic of culture and art. The musical terms : sonata, basso , adagio , trio , allegro , opera , in art and literature entered words: canto , cameo , studio , fresco. British travellers have described Italy, partly using Italian words that were later fixed in the English language: gondola, lava, volcano, casino , cicerone. Into the English language also penetrated and some political and commercial terms: bank , traffic. In our time, there are Italian drawings in the American version, which reflects the ethnic composition of the United States. Here are some recent borrowings: the paparazzi , the pasta , mafia .

              In the16 - 17th centuries there was the blossoming of Spanish literature, the influence of which extended to the whole Europe. At the same time, England was competing with Spain in the political arena. Spanish borrowings of this period: banana, sockets , armada , cigar , barbecue , cocoa , canyon , potato , cargo , the ranch , chocolate , hurricane .

              There are not many Portuguese words in the English language . And they came into the English language from the main languages of Africa, Indochina and India. Here are some of them: cobra , the veranda , mandarin , Madeira .

              Words penetrated into English from the Russian language can be divided into 3 groups: the early period, the Soviet period and the later period, that is the end of the 80s of the 20th century. Borrowings of the early period belong to the field of material culture, describe the nature, reflect the realities of Russian society: boyar , samovar , altyn ,  vodka , taiga , barzoi , tundra , nihilist . Drawings of the Soviet period mainly reflect characteristics of the political regime: the Soviets , artel , komsomol . At the same time from the Russian language passed words related to space issues: sputnik , cosmonavt . At the end of the 20th century English discovered such Russian words as perestroyka , glasnost .

The results of borrowing process

          The process of borrowing affects the development of the language. As a result new words and expressions appear. The borrowing language enriches the vocabulary, develops morphology.

          There appear word-hybrids. These are the words in which a root part of the word addes a borrowing. For example, artless -the root art -borrowed suffix, dislike - borrowed prefix - like .

              There are also exotisms and barbarisms.  Mixed languages like Creole, Pidgin - English appear. There are also pseudo-national and international words. These are all a result of the borrowing process.

Also as a result of borrowing, there are many doublets. Doublets - are the words with similar origin. They differ phonetically and in the meaning, as they moved from different languages.

              Doublets basically have a Latin origin. In English they penetrated through the French language. For example : canal- channel, major- mayor, liquor- liqueur, fact- feat. Doublets appear in different dialects belonging to the same language.

              Doublet steam is formed when an ambiguous word values cease to be bound. For example, from the Latin persona were formed two English words: person, parson. Also, as an exception, there are etymological triplets: cattle – chattel- Capital .

              Another result of this process are secondary loans, in this case in the language a new word appears next to the previously borrowed and already assimilated. A new word has a different meaning - homonyms. In English, there was a borrowed word pilot in the value of the pilot, that is the one who controls the aircraft. In the late 20th century, the word pilot began to be used in the sense of "an athlete, managing high-speed vehicle." Word pilot in the second sense as well come from the French language. word pilot , Used to mean "a trial issue of the print edition," "pilot project", "Trial TV show", that is the meaning of "trial release of something," as well is the latest borrowing of the late 20th century.

              Sometimes borrowing in the host language takes on new meaning. Words formal fell into English from the German via French. It was used in the meaning "print sheet size". Later, word got to "a form of organization and presentation of data in the computer's memory." In such cases, you need to understand: these are the values of homonyms or ambiguous word. There is a principle of having common semantic components.

              Common semantic components suggest different meanings of an ambiguous word. For example, pilot within the meaning and pilot in the meaning of an athlete or pilot is a trial issue of the print edition with respect to the other meanings of the word.

              Borrowing had a very important influence on English grammar. In connection with the borrowing of the French structure of + Noun expressing relations accessories: leg of the table English lost the end.

              Part of native English words, which is about 2/3 of the language came under the influence of borrowing. There are the Anglo-Saxon word options: face, money, war. Part of ancestral words passed into conversational and colloquial, compared with borrowed. Compare the English cow, pig, calf and the corresponding words of Scandinavian origin of beef, pork, veal.

              One of the results of the borrowing process are international words. International is the word, resulting in a borrowing spread in many languages of the world. A group of international words is mainly composed of the Greek words of Latin origin: analysis, Autonomy , system , Latin: volume , Principle , progress , the nation . The group of international words are also the words of the other national languages (Italian balcony , sonata , fazade; French: Gallant , etiquette , an omelette ; Arabic coffee , alcohol , algebra , Indian the verandah , punch , the jungle , Russian nihilist , steppe .)

              In different languages internationalisms are written and pronounced differently. This should be considered when translating. For example the word Ambition. In French and English, the word has a neutral meaning of "the pursuit of goals." In Russian, the word ambition has sharper almost a negative value.