4. Types of borrowings

There are three types of borrowing:

• Phonetic loans (borrowings proper): glasnost, sputnik. These are words transplanted from one language into another and modified in their phonetic shape according to the standards of the receiving language.

• Translation loans are formed by means of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation, e.g., «Верховный Совет» – Supreme Soviet, «колхоз» – collective farm, «ударник» – shock-worker.

• Semantic loans are words, which borrowed a new meaning into an already existing word, e.g., the noun pioneer in the meaning «member of the children's organization».

5. Assimilation of borrowings

Being adopted by a language, words undergo some changes in their spelling, pronunciation, and paradigm and meaning – they become assimilated. Assimilation of borrowings is their conformation to the phonetic, graphical, morphological, semantic standards of the receiving language. There are 4 types of assimilation:

• Phonetic assimilation, comprising changes in sound form and stress. Alien sounds and clusters of sounds are rendered by those existing in the receiving language, e.g., верста – verst; spitz – [ʃpits] > [spits]. Stress can be shifted, too: e.g., rendezvous ['rɔndɪvu:] – the word has become forestressed. But sometimes foreign pronunciation is preserved for a long time, e.g., nazi ['na:tsi], garage [gə'ra:ʒ]

• Grammatical, or morphological, assimilation. Words acquire the paradigm of the receiving language, e.g.: спутник, спутника, спутнику, etc., but sputnik, sputniks, sputnik's, sputniks'. There are some words in English which are not assimilated morphologically, e.g., datum (pl. data), criterion (pl. criteria).

• Lexical (semantic) assimilation: borrowings become part of the lexico-semantic system of the receiving language, i.e. they develop a new system of meanings, enter various semantic relations with other words, and serve as word-building bases. E.g., the verb to move, borrowed from French is highly polysemantic, has synonyms (shift, wander, travel, etc.), enters a large word-building family (movement, moving, movable, etc.). This word is lexically assimilated.

• Unassimilated words (bei, shakh, sari) stand apart, they are isolated from the vocabulary system because they denote foreign realia.

According to the degree of assimilation borrowings may be assimilated completely or partially. Assimilation is complete when all its types have taken place, as, for example in the early French loans sport, spy. If at least one type of assimilation has not occurred, the assimilation is partial, e.g., regime is unassimilated phonetically, perestroika and glasnost are unassimilated semantically. Completely unassimilated words, or barbarisms, are not part of English, e.g., bambino, ciao (Ital.).

6. Etymological Doublets

Etymological doublets are two or more words of the same language having a common word as a source of their development. E.g.,

Etymological doublets can also proceed from two dialectal forms of the same word, e.g., OE share, OSc scar. They may also be the result of successive borrowing of one and the same word at different periods, e.g., travel, travail (from French), or of different routs of development of the word in different meanings, e.g., flower and flour.

Many etymological doublets are due to shortening, e.g., espy (n) – spy; estrange (n) – strange; history – story.