lexicology / 18-19

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borrowings are assimilated more completely and more rapidly than literary borrowings.

The classification of loan words according to the degree of assimilation can be only very general as no rigorous procedures for measuring it have been developed. The following three groups may be suggested: completely assimilated loan words, partially assimilated loan words, and non-assimilated loan words, or barbarisms.

(1) Completely assimilated loan words are found in all layers of old borrowings.

e.g. cheese, street, wall, wine

Among Scandinavian loan words are found such frequent nouns as 'husband, fellow, gate, root, wing'; such verbs as 'call, die, take, want’ and such adjectives as happy, ill, odd, wrong.''

Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent Suffice is to mention such everyday words as 'table, chair, face, figure, finish.'

Latin words borrowed during the revival of learning are at present almost indistinguishable from the rest of the vocabulary, e.g. animal, article, sport, act

The number of completely assimilated loan words is many times greater than the number of partly assimilated ones.

They follow all morphological, phonetical and orthographic standards. Being very frequent and stylistically neutral, they may occur as dominant words in synonymic groups. They arc active in word-formation. Moreover, their morphological structure and motivation remain transparent, so that they are morphologically analyzablc and supply the English vocabulary not only with free forms but also with bound forms, as suffixes and prefixes arc easily perceived and separated in loan words that contain them. Such are. for instance, die French suffixes '-age', '-ance’.

(2) The second group containing partially assimilated loan words can be subdivided into three subgroups depending on the aspect that remains unaltered, i.e. according to whether the word retains features of spelling, pronunciation, grammar or denotation that are not English.

a) Loan words, which arc partially assimilated semantically, denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. These words may be grouped semantically. They may denote foreign clothing.

e.g. mantilla, sombrero, kimono

They may also denote foreign titles and professions.

e.g. shah, radian, sheik, bei, toreador

Here we have words denoting foreign vehicles, e.g. rickshaw

They may denote foreign food and drink, e.g. sherbet, kvas, vodka

Words partially assimilated semantically may denote units of foreign currency.

e.g. krone, shekel, hryvna

b) lxian words, which are partially assimilated grammatically, usually- borrowed from Latin or Greek, keep their original plural form.

e.g. bacillus - bacilli, datum - data, criterion - criteria

c) Loan words, which are partially assimilated phonetically or graphically, preserve some phonetical or graphical peculiarities of the language from which they are borrowed.

(3) The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called 'barbarisms^ (Lat. 'barbarus' 'strange, foreign'), i.e. words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way. Very often they have corresponding English equivalents.

e.g. amour propre (self-esteem), chic (stylish), bon mot (witticism),

entre nous (confidentially), belles letters (fiction) Etymologically, most barbarisms are borrowed from Greek. Latin or French.

Examples of barbarisms from Latin are quite numerous, e.g. homo sapience - the human race

mea culpa - through my fault (a formal acknowledgement of

personal fault or error)

post mortem - occurring or done after death; autopsy

terra incognita - unknown territory: an unexplored country or

field of knowledge

vox populi - voice of people: popular opinion or sentiment Examples of barbarisms from French are as numerous. carte blanche - unrestricted power to act

vis-a-vis - (literally, face to face) face to face with: in relation to bon vivant - (literally, a good liver) a person having cultivated refined and sociable tastes, especially in respect to food and drink

Very often barbarisms represent the words of famous people (real and fictional) that are taken without any changes from the language of the

original.