Russian borrowings in english language

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I. Borrowings as a way of replenishment of the vocabulary.

     1.1. The notion of borrowings.

     1.2.Causes and ways of borrowings.

     1.3. Criteria of borrowings.

     1.4. Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed aspect.

     1.5. Assimilation of borrowings.

1.5.1. Phonetic assimilation.

1.5.2. Grammatical assimilation.

1.5.3. Lexical assimililation.

Chapter II. Historical Contacts between Russia and Britain

      2.1. Russian Loan Words in English

      2.1.1. The Lexical Category of the Russian borrowings

2.1.2. The Meanings and the Etymological Characteristics of the Borrowings

      2.1.3. Words of Foreign Origin Borrowed from Russian

      2.1.4. Subcategories of Nouns

      2.1.5. Folk Etymology

      2.1.6. Morphological Features of the Russian Borrowings

      2.1.7. Orthographic Features of the Russian Loan Words

      2.1.8. Thematic Classification of the Russian Borrowings

      2.2. The Meaning Changes of the Russian Borrowings

Conclusions

Bibliography

Appendices  
 
 
 
 
 

      INTRODUCTION

      The English vocabulary contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Words that came to English from other languages and constantly used in it as the original are called borrowings. One of the main way of enlarging the lexical system of the language is represented by borrowings. The role of borrowings is different in various languages and it depends on certain development conditions.

      The quantity of borrowed words in English is much higher than in other languages. The English language had more opportunities to borrow words from other languages due to the great history of England that includes various invaders and battles.

      It is calculated that 30% of all English words are native. That’s why a lot of linguists consider that the English language doesn’t belong to the group of Germanic languages but to the Romano-Germanic group.

      It happens very often that a foreign word comes to English and it is borrowed not only with its lexical meaning but also with its grammar form which makes more difficulties for those people who study and speak English. It allows us to speak that the topic of this project is relevant. The issue of Russian borrowings is very important in terms os sociolinguistics and language interaction developement.

      The aim of this project is to study the usage of Russian borrowings in the English language, to analyze what words of Russian origin have been borrowed into English and to study their thematic groups and find out whether they have undergone some morphological and semantic changes in English or not and compare the received results with the above mentioned postulates.

      The main subject of this study is the Russian words borrowed into English. Various linguists mention Russian loanwords in their works. However, many of them are inclined to think that English has borrowed a very restricted number of such terms. For example, in her article Words in English S. Kemmer mentions only seven words borrowed from Russian (Kemmer, http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kem-mer´-/Words/loanwords.html).

      The object is the English language itself.

      Analysing Slavonic words in English Alarik Rynell (1974:41-42) expresses the same opinion and he mentions only eleven words borrowed from Russian. Furthermore, the author draws the conclusion that words from the above-men-tioned languages denote exclusively Slavic phenomena.

      Moreover, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1993:309) claim that some Russian borrowings are known in English but they have not been naturalized. Simeon Potter (1969: 63) admits that because of the closer contacts with Russia in recent years an augmented use of many old Russian terms is observed. However, the author describes only eighteen words of the Russian origin. Another linguist David Wilton analyses 13 words borrowed from Russian. (Wilton, http://www.-wordorigins.org/loanword.htm).

      Thus the majority of the authors mention only a few Russian words borrowed into English. Even though it is common knowledge that in the new language loan words begin to take inflections and some of them change their meanings, there is no information about the morphological and semantic development of the Russian borrowings in English.

      The object is the English language itself.

      The aim, the subject and the object of this project allow us to state the following research tasks:

      1) to analyze the theoretical literature of the topic of the project;

      2) to study the question of borrowing and their role in English;

      3) to study the types of borrowings in the English language;

      4) to study the ways of assimilation of Russian borrowings in English;

      5) to analyze what words of Russian origin have been borrowed into English and to study their thematic groups and find out whether they have undergone some morphological and semantic changes in English or not and compare the received results with the above mentioned postulates.

      The investigation was done on the base of two dictionaries: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language.

      It is used the descriptive, comparative, etymologycal and analytical methods in this project.

      The theoretical base of this project is stands on the works of such scientists in the sphere of linguistics as Charles F. Hockett, Alarik Rynell, J. A. Sheard, Otto Jesperson, Mitford M. Mathews, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo and others.

      Structurally, this project consists of the introduction, theoretical and practical parts, conclusion and bibliography.

      In the introduction it was explained the aim, the object, the subject, theoretical base of research, theoretical and practical sigificance, methods of research structure of the work, tasks and the relevancy of the project.

      In the theoretical part the questions of borrowings, types of borrowings and ways of their assimilation were examined.

      The theoretical significance of the work lies in the fact, that the investigation of Russian borrowings and its linguistic aspects contribute for the further developement of sociolinguistics theory, Russian studies etc.

      The practical part represents the analysis of 59 words of Russian origin from two dictionaries: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language and illustration of their peculiarities by giving examples from different texts. Since the majority of these words were borrowed during various periods of time from the 16th century until now it is difficult to find such examples from one particular source. Therefore we decided to collect them from different Internet sources.

      All main thoughts are set in the conclusion of the project.

      Bibliography consists of 107 sources.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      Chapter I. BORROWINGS AS A WAY OF REPLENISHMENT OF THE VOCABULARY

      Being an adaptive system, the vocabulary is constantly adjusting itself to the changing conditions of human communication. New notions appear, requiring new words to name them. New words, expressions or neologisms are created for new things. The neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word. There is a problem of denomination. It is not still clear which words to consider new? The most rational point is that new words are the ones that appeared in the last years of the previous generation.

      The borrowed words are taken from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English. They came in diffirent times. Early Latin borrowings were adopted in the 1st century BC (butter, chalk, kitchen). In the 5th century AD there penetrated a few Celtic words into English (cradle, London). In the 7th century AD, during the Christianisation, there were adopted many religious terms from Latin (priest, nun). From the end of the 7th century till the middle of the 11th century there penetrated Scandinavian words into the English language (window, husband, law, ugly, weak, call, take, die). The Scandinavian words are similar in pronunciation to the Anglo-Saxon ones. Many Scandinavian words start with the sk-cluster: skill, skin, ski, skirt, sky. In 1066 when the Norman Conquest took place, England became a bilingual country. French was officially introduced into the life of the people. The French words borrowed at that period are of the following layers: administrative, military terms (army, officer), educational (pupil, pencil, library), words of everyday life (dinner, river, uncle). In the Renaissance period there were borrowed numerous words from Latin and Greek connected with science (university, professor), Italian (piano, opera, violin etc.). In the 18th-20th centuries the basis of the words became different due to the colonial expansion: Indian (pundit), Arabic (sherbet), Chinese etc. The Russian borrowings in the English language are of the following layers: prerevolutionary (before 1917 vodka, valenkis, pelmenis), sovietisms (preserve only Russian meaning: polit-bureau, 5-year-plan) and the perestroika period.  

      

1. THE NOTION OF BORROWINGS

      According to some linguists Borrowed words (loan words, borrowings) are words taken over from another language and modified according to the patterns of the receiving language.

      Nowadays borrowing is not very important in the every day life but it is active in the sphere of science. It is common that a lot of terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes in general from classical languages.

      The most characteristic feature of English is usually said to be its mixed character.Manу linguists consider foreign inf1uence, to be the most important factor in the history of English. This wide-spread viewpoint is supported оn1у bу the evidence of the Еng1ish word-stock, as its grammar and phonetic system аге very stable аnd not easi1y inf1uenced bу other 1anguages. While it is altogether wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a whole, the composite nature of the Eng1ish vocabulary cannоt bе dеniеd.

      То comprehend the nature of the English vocabu1ary and its historical development it is necessary to examine the etymology of its different layers, the historica1 causes of their appearrance, their volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed e1ements in replenishing the Eng1ish vocabulary. Before embarking upon а description of the Eng1ish word-stock from this point of view we must make speica1 mention of some terms.

      1. In linguistic literature the term native is conventional1y used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century bу the Gemanic tribes – the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Practically, however, the term is often applied to words whose origin cannot be traced to аnу other language. Thus, the word path is classified as native just because its origin has not yet been estab1ished with аny degree of certainty. It is possible to conjecture that further progress of linguistic science may throw some light upon its origin and it may prove to have been borrowed at some еarlier period. It is for this reason that Prоfеssоr А.I.Smirnitsky relying оn the earliest manuscripts of the English language available suggested another interpretation of the term nаtive – as words which may be presumed to have existed in the Eng1ish word-stock of the 17th century. This interpretation may have somewhat more reliable criteria behind it, but it seems to have the same drawback – both viewpoints present the native element in English as static.

      2. The term borrowings is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from their languages and аlso the result of this process, the language material itself. It has already been stated that not only words, but аlso word-building аffixes were borrowed into English. It must bе rnentioned that some word-groups, too, were borrowed in their foreign form.

      In its second meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in а wider sense. It is extended onto the so-callеd translation-loans(or loan-translations) аnd semantic borrowing. Translation-loans аге words and expressions fоrmеd from the material avai1able in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influenceof some foreign words andexpressions(wall newspaper < Russ. стенгазета). Semantic borrowing is the appearence of а new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language(the word bureau entered political vocabulary, as Political bureau, under the influence of Russian).

      Further on we shall use the turm borrowings in its second meaning, as a borrowing proper or a word taken over in its material form.

      Distinction should bе made between tгuе borrowings and words formed out of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek, e.g. telephone, pbonogram. Such words were never part of Latin and Greek and they do not reflect any contacts with the peoples speaking those languages.

      It is of importance to note that the term borrowings belongs to diасhrоniс description of the wоrd-stосk. Thus the words wine, cheap, pound introduced bу the Romans into а11 Germanic dialects long before the Ang1es and the Saxons settled оп the British Isles, and such late Latin loans as libi, memorandum, stratum may all be reffered to borrowings from the same language in describing their origin, though in modern Eng1ish they constitute distinctIy different groups of words.

      3. There is also a certain confusion between the terms source of borrowings and origin of the word. This confusion may be seen in contradictory marking of one  and the same word as, say, а French borrowing in оnе dictionary and Latin borrowing in another. It is suggested here that the term sourceof borrowing should bе applied to the language from which thisor that particular word was taken into EngIish. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowings we point out their source but not their origin. The te1rmorigin of the word should be applied to the language the word mау be traced to.

      It should be remembered, however, that whereas the immediate source of borrowing is as а ru1e known and cаn bе stated with some certainty, the actual origin of thе word mey be rather doubtful. Foг example,the word ink was borrowed frоm Old French, but it may be traced back to Latin and stiI1 further to Greek , and it is quite possible that it was borrowed intо Greek from the other 1anguage.

      The immediate source of borrowing is naturally of greater importencafor language students because it reveals the extra-linguistic factors responsible for the act of borrowing, because the borrowed words bear, as a rule, the imprint of the sound and graphic form, the morphological and semantic structure characteristic of the language they were borrowed from. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. CAUSES AND WAYS OF BORROWINGS

      In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to 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 cаn bе accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman сivilixation Latin was for а long time used in England as the languge of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were оn thee same level of socia1 and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first hаlf of the 11th century. French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them а lot of new notions of a higher social system – developed feudalism, it wa the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11^th century to the end of the 14^th century.

      In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a rule placed оn the Midd1e English period. Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in recent years. These investigations have shown that the fIow of of borrowings has been steady and uninterpreted. The greatest number has come from French. They refer to various fields of social-politica1, scientific and cultural life. А large porton of borrowings (41 %) is scientific and technical terms.

      The number and character of borrowed words tell us of the re1ations between the peoples, the leve1 of their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of history. Thus if we gothrough the lists of borrowings in English and arrange them in groups according to their meaning, we shall be able to obtain much valuable information with regard to Egland’s contacts with many nations. Some borrowings, however, cannot be explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions, they do not come along with any new objects or ideas.

      It must be pointed out that whi1e the general historical causes of borrowing from different languages have been studied with а considerablе degree of thoroughness the purely linguistic reasons for borrowing аrе still open to investigation.

      The number and character of borrowings do not only depend оn the historical conditions, оn the nature and length of the contacts, but a1so on the degree of the genetic and stгuсtural proximity of languages соncerned. The closer the languages, the deeper and more versatile is the influence. This largely accounts for the well-marked contrast between the French and the Scandinavian influence on the English language.Thus under the influence of the Scandinavian languages, which were close1y related to Old English;some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages.

      Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples)and through written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.)

      Oral borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowings gained importance. Words borrowed orally are used short and they undergo a considerable changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings  preserve their spelling and some pecularities of their sound-form, their assimilation is а long and laborious process.