7. The influence of borrowings. Hybrids.

Borrowings – words taken from another language and modified according to the patterns of the receiving language. Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanich).borrowed words are different from native once by their phonetic morphological structure and by the grammatical forms. English continues to take in foreign words but now the quantity of borrowings is not so abundant as it was before. English now has become a ‘giving’ language. Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages. They are also called ‘loan words - proper’. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Translation loans are word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme of some foreign words and expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units. Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have 2 relative languages which have common words with different meanings. There are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian English. Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes. We can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word building system. There are a lot of hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin. e.g.: beautiful, goddess. Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words. e.g. sport (Fr.). Incompletely assimilated words: stress in it has been shifted from that last syllable to the last but one. Non-assimilated borrowings (semantically) because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed. e.g.: sari, kvass. Borrowings non-assimilated grammatically: nouns borrowed from Latin ad Greek retain their plural forms. Non-assimilated phonetically: with initial ‘v’, ‘z’. Hybrids are words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages. e.g.: eatable, dentist. When a borrowed word becomes firmly established in the language it enables this word to be used as a stem combined with a native affix. e.g.: countless, senseless (borrowed adj, + native suffix ‘less’). There also exist hybrid compound words. e.g.: schoolboard, blackguard. Affixes are borrowed as parts of words than singled out and added to the native stems. e.g.: suffix ‘-nik’ borrowed after 1957 with ‘sputnik’ is now used in other words: beatnik, folknik.

8. Functional styles and Basic vocabulary.

The term functional style is generally accepted in modern linguistics. Professor I. V. Arnold defines it as "a system of expressive means peculiar to a specific sphere of communication". By the sphere of communication we mean the circumstances attending the process of speech in each particular case. All these circumstances or situations can be roughly classified into two types: formal (a lecture, an official letter) and informal (an informal talk, an intimate letter). Accordingly, functional styles are classified into two groups, with further subdivisions depending on different situations. Basic vocabulary. These words are stylistically neutral, and opposed to formal and informal words. Their stylistic neutrality makes it possible to use them in all kinds of situations, both formal and informal, in verbal and written communication. These are words without which no human communication would be possible as they denote objects and phenomena of everyday importance. The basic vocabulary is the central group of the vocabulary. Basic vocabulary words can be recognised not only by their stylistic neutrality but, also, by entire lack of other connotations (i. e. attendant meanings). Their meanings are broad, general and directly convey the concept, without supplying any additional information. The basic vocabulary and the stylistically marked strata of the vocabulary do not exist independently but are closely interrelated. Most stylistically marked words have their neutral counterparts in the basic vocabulary. (Terms are an exception in this respect.)