Lexical assimilation of borrowed words

2.3 Lexical assimilation of borrowed words

Loaning words from another language causes some changes in meaning of the word borrowed.

When a word is taken over into another language its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes.

Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their meanings.

Thus the word «timbre» that had a number of meanings in French was borrowed into English as a musical term only. The words cargo and cask, highly polysemantic in Spanish were adopted only in one of their meanings – «the goods carried in a ship», «a barrel for holding liquids» respectively.

In some cases we can observe specialization of meaning, as in the word hangar, denoting a building in which aero planes are kept and revive, which had the meaning of «review» in French and came to denote a kind of theatrical entertainment in English.

In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic structure. For instance, the word move in Modern English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French movoir does not possess. The word scope, which originally had the meaning of ‘aim purpose’, now means ‘ability to understand ‘, ‘the field within which an activity takes place, sphere’, ‘opportunity, freedom of action’. As a rule the development of new meanings takes place 50–100 years after the word is borrowed.

The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways as well. Some meanings become more general, others more specialized, etc. For instance, the word «terrorist» that was taken over from French in the meaning of «Jacobin» widened its meaning to ‘one who governs, or opposes a government, by violent means. The word umbrella, borrowed in the meaning of a sunshade or pares came to denote similar protection from the rain as well.

Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word was a retained throughout its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning. Thus the Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained their primary meanings to the present day.

Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound but which are not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected, e. g. the French sur (o) under had the meaning of «overflow». In English r (o) under was associated by mistake with round – думалок and the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘encclose on all sides, encircle’ Folle – etimologization is a slow process; people first attempt to give the foreign borrowing its foreign premonition, but gradually popular use involves a new pronunciation and spelling.

Another phenomenon which must also receive special attention is the formation of derivatives from borrowed words. New derivatives are usually formed with the help of productive affixes, often of Anglo-Saxon origin.

2.4 The degrees of assimilation

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 this connection tasks of its own, being chiefly concerned with the material and the results of assimilation.

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

Here we are going to concentrated our attention on the assimilation of borrowed words as a way of their interrelation with the system of the language as a whole. The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetically, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system.

Even a superficial examination of borrowed words in the English word-stock shows that there are words among them that are easily recognized as foreign and there are others that have become so firmly rooted in the language, so thoroughly assimilated that it is sometimes extremely difficult to distinguish them from words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Let’s take some examples: «we can easily determine that the words «décolleté», graffito», «chemistry» are loaned words.

But the words like «pupil», «master», «city», «river» which became part of words used at least once a day are also borrowed words. In Uzbek language this kind of situation can be also observed. For example: «Kolxoz», «sputnik», «demokratiya», «efir», etc words can be easily recognized as loan words. But the words like «maktab», «kitob», «muhabbat», «ilm», «badavlat» and etc are not considered to be loan words by ordinary people, because these words are deeply rooted in native lexicon and are commonly used by people. But according to the etymology of these words they are not native words, they were borrowed from Arabic and Persian languages.

Unassimilated words differ from assimilated words in their pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. However, there is no distinct borderline between the two groups.

So far no linguist has been able to suggest more or less comprehensive criteria for determining the degree of assimilation depends in the first place upon the time of borrowing. The general principle is: the older the borrowing the more thoroughly it tends to follow normal language (Uzbek, English) of accentuation, pronunciation, etc. It is but natural that the majority of early borrowings have acquired full language (English or Uzbek) citizenship and that most English speaking people are astonished on first hearing, that such everyday words as «window», «chair», «dish», «box» haven’t always belonged to their language. As you see in the above Uzbek extract there are words which can be easily recognized as loan words, e.g.: банк-bank, стратегия-strategy, сектор-sector, бизнес-business, кредит-credit, инфратузилма – infrastructure.

A classification of loan words according to the degree of assimilation can be only very general as no rigorous procedure for measuring it has so far been developed. The following three groups may be suggested:

1. Completely assimilated borrowed words

2. Partially assimilated borrowed words

3. Unassimilated borrowed words or barbarism.

The group of partially assimilated words may be subdivided depending on the aspect that remains unaltered, i. e. according to whether the word retains features of spelling, pronunciation, morphology or denotation that are not English. The third group is not universally accepted, as it may be argued that words not changed at all cannot form part of the vocabulary of language, because they occur in speech only, but don not enter the language.

Completely assimilated borrowed 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 borrowed 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, chair, face, figure, finish, 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 noticeable from native words.

Uzbek language like English is vulnerable to new nations. It mainly enriches its word stock by loaning words from Persian, Arabic Russian and via Russian from European languages. A large number of words in Uzbek language are the words from Persian. Tajik languages which are completely assimilated and widely used by Uzbek people: дастурхон, даструмол, хокандоз, пояндоз, пойдевор, барг, дарахт, гул, фарзанд, дутор, сетор and etc.

After Arabic invasion of Central Asia a number of Arabic words were borrowed, which became the indivisible part of our daily speech: мактаб, китоб, мактуб, адабиёт, ахолии, оила, Фан, санъат, хизмат, мехнат, раис, идора, давлат and etc.

Starting from XIX century new notions began to penetrate into Uzbek language from Russian and via Russian from European languages. They denote new notions, new inventions which don’t have equivalence in Uzbek that’s why they are completely assimilated borrowings:

Стол, стул, ручка, паровоз, студент, министр, операция, (Latin) грамматика, комедия, театр, музей, опера, (Greek) солдат, галстук, штаб, лагерь, (German) костюм, пальто кабинет, генерал, (French) опера, ария, ложа, топор, (Italian) трамвай, вокзал, митинг, футбол, баскетбол, бокс (English)

The number of completely assimilated borrowed words is many times greater than the number of partially assimilated ones. They follow all morphological, phonetically and orthographic standards. Being very frequent and stylistically neutral, they may occur 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.

To illustrate the frequency of completely assimilated words it is sufficient to mention that many of them are included by E.L. Thorndike and I. Lorge in the list of 500 most frequent words. Some of these are: act (Lat), age(Fr), army(Fr), bill(Lat), case(Fr), cast(ON), cause(Fr), die(Scand).

The second group containing partially assimilated borrowed words can be subdivided into subgroups.

The oppositions are equipollent.

a)  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, bei, toreador; foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese), food and drinks: pillow(Persian) sherbet(Arabian); foreign currency: krone (Denmark), rupee(India), zloty(Poland), peseta(Spain)

b)  Borrowed words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus; bacilli, crisis; crises, formula; formulae, index; indices. 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.

c)  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, police.

d)  Borrowed words not completely assimilated grammatically. This group, as V.I. Balinskaya shows, is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from French in which the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g: battet, buffet, corps. Some may keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche.

It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. One and the same loan word often Shows in complete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.

The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarism, i. e. 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. The examples are the Italian addio, ciao ‘goodbye’, the French affich for’ placard’ and coup or coup d’ Etat ‘a sudden seizure of state power by a small group’, the Latin ad libitum ‘at pleasure’ and the like.

Uzbek language is full of barbarisms which are mainly used by the youth: конечно certainly(Russian), okay (English) and etc.

The incompleteness of assimilation results in some specific features which permit us to judge of the origin of words. They may serve as formal indications of loan words of Greek, Latin, French or other origin. Another factor determining the process of assimilation is the way in which the borrowing was adopted into the language. Words borrowed orally are assimilated more readily, they undergo greater changes, whereas with words adopted through writing the process of assimilation is longer and more laborious. Whenever the need filling motive plays a part, the borrower is being confronted with some new object or practice for which he needs words. Under these conditions three rather distince things may happen, giving rise respectively to «loanwords», «loanshifts», and ‘loanleands’. The borrower may adoptthwedonor’s word along with the object or practice; the new form in the borrower’s speech is then a loanword.

When confronted with a new object or practice for which words are needed, the borrower may somehow adopt material in his own language. A new idiom arises and since it arises under the impact of another linguistic system, it is a «loanshift».

A loanblend is a new idiom developed in the borrowing situation in which both the loanword and the loan shift mechanisms are involved: the borrower imports part of the model and replaces part of it by something already in his own language.

The type of the word borrowed by personal contact would undoubtedly at first be names of objects unfamiliar to the borrowers, or products, and commodities exchanged by way of trade. If the contacts were maintained over a long period then ideas concerned with government, law, religion and customs might be absorbed and perhaps the names of these would be adopted. Only in the case of nations in relatively advanced stages of civilization would there be much influence exerted through the written word; concrete objects would come first, then abstract ideas learnt from what might actually be seen from their effects in everyday life and abstract ideas through the indirect contact achieved by books would come much later.

The international word-stock is also growing due to the influx of exotic borrowed words like anaconda, bungalow, kraal, orang-outang, sari etc. These come from many different sources.

International words should not to be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages.

This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only because many words denoting abstract notions are international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control:контрол (назорат), general: генерал, industry:индустрия (саноат), magazine: магазин (дукон), etc. usually called ‘translator’s false friends.

The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils’ attention to the spread of the English vocabulary into other languages. We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out, match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many international words of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz. At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English and many other languages and thus international should also be mentioned: balalaika, Bolshevik, cosmonaut, czar, kremlin, rouble mammoth, sambo, steppe, vodks.

We should also include here Uzbek language which was under influence of Russian language for a long period of time but didn’t lose its properties and its own word-stock and now being.