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ABBREVIATIONS OF WORDS

×èòàéòå òàêæå:
  1. ABBREVIATION OF WORDS
  2. Abbreviations
  3. Abbreviations of words
  4. Abbreviations of words.
  5. AND SEMANTIC MOTIVATION OF WORDS
  6. Archaic and Obsolete Words
  7. Be sure you know the following words and their translation
  8. Borrowing of French words.
  9. C) Archaic, Obsolescent and Obsolete Words
  10. CHAPTER IV GRAMMATICAL CLASSES OF WORDS
  11. Chapter5. MORPHEMIC AND DERIVATIVE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS: NAMING BY WORD-FORMATION

 

The fashionable use of abbreviation — a kind of society slang — comes and goes in waves, though it is never totally absent. In the present century, however, it has been eclipsed by the emergence of abbreviations in science, technology, and other special fields, such as cricket, baseball, drug trafficking, the armed forces, and the media. The reasons for using abbreviated forms are obvious enough. One is the desire for linguistic economy — the same motivation which makes us want to criticise someone who uses two words where one will do. Succinctness and precision are highly valued, and abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise style. They also help to convey a sense of social identity: to use an abbreviated form is to be 'in die know' - part of the social group to which the abbreviation belongs. Computer buffs the world over will be recognized by their fluent talk of ROM and RAM, of DOS and WYSIWYG. You are no buff if you are unable to use such forms, or need to look them up (respectively, 'read­only memory', 'random-access memory', 'disk operating system', and 'what you see is what you get'). It would only irritate computer-literate colleagues and waste time or space (and thus money) if a computer-literate person pedantically expanded every abbreviated form. And the same applies to those abbreviations which have entered everyday speech. It would be strange indeed to hear someone routinely expanding BBC, NATO, USA, AIDS, and all die other common abbreviations of contemporary English.

In the process of communication words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extra-linguistic. By extra-linguistic causes changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more i information in the shortest possible time [1:120].

There are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages are assimilated in English they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, e.g. the Latin borrowing «fanaticus» is shortened to «fan» on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc.

There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical.

Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing.

The oldest group of graphical abbreviations in English is of Latin origin. In Russian this type of abbreviation is not typical. In these abbreviations in the spelling Latin words are shortened, while orally the corresponding English equivalents are pronounced in the full form,e.g. for example / (Latin exampli gratia), a.m. - in the morning (ante meridiem), No -number (numero), p.a. - a year (per annum), d - penny (dinarius), lb - pound (libra), i. e. - that is (id est) etc.

Some graphical abbreviations of Latin origin have different English equivalents in different contexts, e.g. p.m. can be pronounced «in the afternoon» (post meridiem) and «after death» (post mortem).

There are also graphical abbreviations of native origin, where in the spelling we have abbreviations of words and word-groups of the corresponding English equivalents in the full form. We have several semantic groups of them:

a) days of the week, e.g. Mon - Monday, Tue - Tuesday etc

b) names of months, e.g. Apr - April, Aug - August etc.

c) names of counties in UK, e.g. Yorks - Yorkshire, Berks -Berkshire etc

d) names of states in USA, e.g. Ala - Alabama, Alas - Alaska etc.

e) names of address, e.g. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. etc.

f) military ranks, e.g. capt. -captain, col. - colonel, sgt - sergeant etc.

g) scientific degrees, e.g. B.A. - Bachelor of Arts, D.M. - Doctor of Medicine. (Sometimes in scientific degrees we have abbreviations of Latin origin, e.g., M.B. - Medicinae Baccalauras).

h) units of time, length, weight, e.g. f. / ft -foot/feet, sec. - second, in. -inch, mg. -milligram etc.

The reading of some graphical abbreviations depends ofi the context, e.g. «m» can be read as: male, married, masculine, metre, mile, million, minute, «l.p.» can be read as long-playing, low pressure.

Initialisms are the bordering case between graphical and lexical abbreviations. When they appear in the language, as a rule, to denote some new offices they are closer to graphical abbreviations because orally full forms are used, e.g. J.V. - joint venture. When they are used for some duration of time they acquire the shortened form of pronouncing and become closer to lexical abbreviations, e.g. BBC is as a rule pronounced in the shortened form.

In some cases the translation of initialisms is next to impossible without using special dictionaries. Initialisms are denoted in different ways. Very often they are expressed in the way they are pronounced in the language of their origin, e.g. ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) is given in Russian as ÀÍÇÓÑ, SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) was for a long time used in Russian as COJIT, now a translation variant is used (ÎÑ -Äîãîâîð îá îãðàíè÷åíèè ñòðàòåãè÷åñêèõ âîîðóæåíèé). This type of initialisms borrowed into other languages is preferable, e.g. UFO -ÍËÎ, ÑÏ-JVetc.

There are three types of initialisms in English:

a) initialisms with alphabetical reading, such as UK, BUP, CND etc

b) initialisms which are read as if they are words, e.g. UNESCO, UNO, NATO etc.

c) initialisms which coincide with English words in their sound form, such initialisms are called acronyms, e.g. CLASS (Computor-based Laboratory for Automated School System).

Some scientists unite groups b) and c) into one group which they call acronyms. Some initialisms can form new words in which they act as root morphemes by different ways of wordbuilding:

a) affixation, e.g. AWALism, ex-rafer, ex- POW, to waafize, AIDSophobia etc.

b) conversion, e.g. to raff, to fly IFR (Instalment Flight Rules),

c) composition, e.g. STOLport, USAFman etc.

d) there are also compound-shortened words where the first component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical reading and the second one is a complete word, e.g. A-bomb, U-pronunciation, V -day etc. hi some cases the first component is a complete word and the second component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical pronunciation, e.g. Three -Ds (Three dimensions) -ñòåðåîôèëüì.

Abbreviation of words consists in clipping a part of a word. As a result we get a new lexical unit where either the lexical meaning or the style is different form the full form of the word. In such cases as»fantasy» and «fancy», «fence» and «defence» we have different lexical meanings. In such cases as «laboratory» and «lab» we have different styles.

Abbreviation does not change the part-of-speech meaning, as we have it in the case of conversion or affixation, it produces words belonging to the same part of speech as the primary word, e.g. prof is a noun and professor is also a noun. Mostly nouns undergo abbreviation, but we can also meet abbreviation of verbs, such as to rev from to revolve, to tab from to tabulate etc. But mostly abbreviated forms of verbs are formed by means of conversion from abbreviated nouns, e.g. to taxi, to vac etc. Adjectives can be abbreviated but they are mostly used in school slang and are combined with suffixation, e.g. comfy, dilly, mizzy etc.

Here we can mention a group of words ending in «o», such as disco (dicotheque), expo (exposition), intro (introduction) and many others. On the analogy with these words there developed in Modern English a number of words where «o» is added as a kind of a suffix to the shortened form of the word, e.g. combo (combination) - íåáîëüøîéýñòðàäíûé àíñàìáëü, Afro (African) -ïðè÷åñêà ïîä àôðèêàíöà etc. In other cases the beginning of the word is clipped. In such cases we have apheresis e.g. chute (parachute), varsity (university), copter (helicopter), thuse (enthuse) etc. Sometimes the middle of the word is clipped, e.g. mart (market), fanzine (fan magazine) maths (mathematics). Such abbreviations are called syncope. Sometimes we have a combination of apocope with apheresis,when the beginning and the end of the word are clipped, e.g. tec (detective), van (avanguard) [2:90]

Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, e.g. «c» can be substituted by «k» before «e» to preserve pronunciation, e.g. mike (microphone), Coke (coca-cola) etc. The same rule is observed in the following cases: fax(facsimile), teck (technical college), trank (tranquilizer) etc. The final consonants in the shortened forms are substituded by letters characteristic of native English words.

This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O. from the United Nations Organization, BBC. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, MP. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings. They are found not only among formal words, such as the ones above, but also among colloquialisms and slang. So, g. f is a shortened word made from the compound girl-friend, ñ The word, though, seems to be somewhat ambiguous as the following conversation between two undergraduates clearly shows:

— Who's the letter from?

— My g. f. I

— Didn't know you had girl-friends. A nice girl?

— Idiot! It's from my grandfather!

It is commonly believed that the preference for shortenings can be explained by their brevity and is due to the ever-increasing tempo of modern life. Yet, in the conversation given above the use of an ambiguous contraction does not in the least contribute to the brevity of the communication: on the contrary, it takes the speakers some time to clarify the misunderstanding. Confusion and ambiguousness are quite natural consequences of the modern overabundance of shortened words, and initial shortenings are often especially enigmatic and misleading.

Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech in general and of uncultivated speech particularly. The history of the American okay seems to be rather typical. Originally this initial shortening was spelt O.K. and was supposed to stand for all correct. The purely oral manner in which sounds were recorded for letters resulted in O.K. whereas it should have been AC. or ay see. Indeed, the ways of words are full of surprises.

Here are some more examples of informal shortenings. Movie (from moving-picture), gent (from gentleman), specs (from spectacles), circs (from circumstances, e. g. under the circs), I. O. Y. (a written acknowledgement of debt, made from / owe you), lib (from liberty, as in May I take the lib of saying something to you?), cert (from certainty, as in This enterprise is a cert if you have a bit of capital), metrop (from metropoly, e. g. Paris is a gay metrop), exhibish (from» exhibition), posish (from position).

Undergraduates informal speech abounds in words of the type: exam, lab, prof, vac, hoi, co-ed (a girl student at a coeducational school or college)

 

 

BORROWINGS Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of Englishthroughout its history More than two thirds of the English vocabulary areborrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French,Italian, Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by theirphonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by theirgrammatical forms. It is also characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically. English history is very rich in different types of contacts with othercountries, that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion,the adoption of Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of theBritish Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade andcultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. Themajority of these borrowings are fully assimilated in English in theirpronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished fromnative words. English continues to take in foreign words, but now the quantity ofborrowings is not so abundunt as it was before. All the more so, Englishnow has become a «giving» language, it has become Lingva franca of thetwentieth century. Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria: a) according to the aspect which is borrowed, b) according to the degree of assimilation, c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed. (In this classification only the main languages from which words wereborrowed into English are described, such as Latin, French, Italian.Spanish, German and Russian.) CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE BORROWED ASPECT There are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans,semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings. Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they arecalled loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling,pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound inthe borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of theborrowing language. In some cases the spelling is changed. The structure ofthe word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very ofteninfluenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigmof the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are alsochanged. Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people are phoneticborrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are phoneticborrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings fromItalian etc. Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme)translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notionis borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexicalunits, «to take the bull by the horns» (Latin), «fair sex» (French),«living space» (German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in Englishfrom Latin already in the Old English period, e.g. Sunday (solis dies).There are translation loans from the languages of Indians, such as: «pipeof peace», «pale-faced», from German «masterpiece», «homesickness»,«superman». Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unitexisting in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have tworelative languages which have common words with different meanings, e.g.there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as themeaning «to live» for the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had themeaning «to wander». Or else the meaning «äàð», «ïîäàðîê» for the word«gift» which in Old English had the meaning «âûêóï çà æåíó». Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into someother language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning wasborrowed back into English, e.g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian andformed the meaning «a working collective«,»áðèãàäà». This meaning wasborrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of theEnglish word «pioneer». Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in thelanguage when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from onelanguage into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed wordsbecomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we canfind a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that iswhy there are a lot of words - hybrids in English where different morphemeshave different origin, e.g. «goddess», «beautiful» etc. CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE DEGREE OF ASSIMILATION The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the followingfactors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the wordbelongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing languagebelongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed:orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilatedquicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greaterthe frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long theword lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated itis. Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated,partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms). Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in thelanguage, cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start».Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct-corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words thestress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one. Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing inthe borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all itsmeanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e.g. theRussian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings. Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups:a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects andnotions peculiar to the country from the language of which they wereborrowed, e.g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc. b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed fromLatin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon -phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc. c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with theinitial sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voicedconsonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds/f/ and /s/ (loss - lose, life - live). Some Scandinavian borrowings haveconsonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e.g./sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have thepalatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g. shirt); sounds /k/and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give, kid,kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization, e.g. German, child. Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable,e.g. police, cartoon. Some French borrowings retain special combinationsof sounds, e.g. /a:3/ in the words: camouflage, bourgeois, some of themretain the combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard. d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greakborrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym),«ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound/k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology). Latin borrowings retain their polisyllabic structure, have doubleconsonants, as a rule, the final consonant of the prefix is assimilatedwith the initial consonant of the stem, (accompany, affirmative). French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retain theirspelling, e.g. consonants «p», «t», «s» are not pronounced at the end ofthe word (buffet, coup, debris), Specifically French combination of letters«eau» /ou/ can be found in the borrowings: beau, chateau, troussaeu. Someof digraphs retain their French pronunciation: ‘ch’ is pronounced as /sh/,e.g. chic, parachute, ‘qu’ is pronounced as /k/ e.g. bouquet, «ou» ispronounced as /u:/, e.g. rouge; some letters retain their Frenchpronunciation, e.g. «i» is pronounced as /i:/, e,g, chic, machine; «g» ispronounced as /3/, e.g. rouge. Modern German borrowings also have some peculiarities in their spelling:common nouns are spelled with a capital letter e.g. Autobahn, Lebensraum;some vowels and digraphs retain their German pronunciation, e.g. «a» ispronounced as /a:/ (Dictat), «u» is pronounced as /u:/ (Kuchen), «au» ispronounced as /au/ (Hausfrau), «ei» is pronounced as /ai/ (Reich); someconsonants are also pronounced in the German way, e.g. «s» before a vowelis pronounced as /z/ (Sitskrieg), «v» is pronounced as /f/ (Volkswagen),«w» is pronounced as /v/, «ch» is pronounced as /h/ (Kuchen). Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used byEnglishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian),tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme afemme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE LANGUAGE FROM WHICH THEY WERE BORROWED ROMANIC BORROWINGS Latin borrowings. Among words of Romanic origin borrowed from Latin during the period whenthe British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as:street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English duringthe Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. At this time the Latinalphabet was borrowed which ousted the Runic alphabet. These borrowingsare usually called classical borrowings. Here belong Latin words: alter,cross, dean, and Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem. Latin and Greek borrowings appeared in English during the Middle Englishperiod due to the Great Revival of Learning. These are mostly scientificwords because Latin was the language of science at the time. These wordswere not used as frequently as the words of the Old English period,therefore some of them were partly assimilated grammatically, e.g. formula- formulae. Here also belong such words as: memorandum, minimum, maximum,veto etc. Classical borrowings continue to appear in Modern English as well. Mostlythey are words formed with the help of Latin and Greek morphemes. There arequite a lot of them in medicine (appendicitis, aspirin), in chemistry(acid, valency, alkali), in technique (engine, antenna, biplane, airdrome),in politics (socialism, militarism), names of sciences (zoology, physics).In philology most of terms are of Greek origin (homonym, archaism,lexicography). French borrowings The influence of French on the English spelling. The largest group of borrowings are French borrowings. Most of them cameinto English during the Norman conquest. French influenced not only thevocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were writtenby French scribes as the local population was mainly illiterate, and theruling class was French. Runic letters remaining in English after the Latinalphabet was borrowed were substituted by Latin letters and combinationsof letters, e.g. «v» was introduced for the voiced consonant /v/ instead of«f» in the intervocal position /lufian - love/, the digraph «ch» wasintroduced to denote the sound /ch/ instead of the letter «c» / chest/before front vowels where it had been palatalized, the digraph «sh» wasintroduced instead of the combination «sc» to denote the sound /sh/ /ship/,the digraph «th» was introduced instead of the Runic letters «0» and «» /this, thing/, the letter «y» was introduced instead of the Runic letter«3» to denote the sound /j/ /yet/, the digraph «qu» substituted thecombination «cw» to denote the combination of sounds /kw/ /queen/, thedigraph «ou» was introduced to denote the sound /u:/ /house/ (The sound/u:/ was later on diphthongized and is pronounced /au/ in native words andfully assimilated borrowings). As it was difficult for French scribes tocopy English texts they substituted the letter «u» before «v», «m», «n» andthe digraph «th» by the letter «o» to escape the combination of manyvertical lines /«sunu» - «son», luvu» - «love»/. Borrowing of French words. There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings: a) words relating to government: administer, empire, state, government; b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier,battle; c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence,barrister; d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat,embroidery; e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl; f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast,to stew. Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly throughFrench literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are notcompletely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of theseborrowings: a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie,brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville; b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage,manouvre; c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau; d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine. Italian borrowings. Cultural and trade relations between Italy and England brought manyItalian words into English. The earliest Italian borrowing came intoEnglish in the 14-th century, it was the word «bank» /from the Italian«banko» - «bench»/. Italian money-lenders and money-changers sat in thestreets on benches. When they suffered losses they turned over theirbenches, it was called «banco rotta» from which the English word «bankrupt»originated. In the 17-th century some geological terms were borrowed:volcano, granite, bronze, lava. At the same time some political terms wereborrowed: manifesto, bulletin. But mostly Italian is famous by its influence in music and in all Indo-European languages musical terms were borrowed from Italian: alto,baritone, basso, tenor, falsetto, solo, duet, trio, quartet, quintet,opera, operette, libretto, piano, violin. Among the 20-th century Italian borrowings we can mention: gazette,incognitto, autostrada, fiasco, fascist, diletante, grotesque, graffittoetc. Spanish borrowings. Spanish borrowings came into English mainly through its American variant.There are the following semantic groups of them: a) trade terms: cargo, embargo; b) names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, habanera,guitar; c) names of vegetables and fruit: tomato, potato, tobbaco, cocoa, banana,ananas, apricot etc. GERMANIC BORROWINGS English belongs to the Germanic group of languages and there areborrowings from Scandinavian, German and Holland languages, though theirnumber is much less than borrowings from Romanic languages. Scandinavian borrowings. By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influenceof Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles.Scandinavians belonged to the same group of peoples as Englishmen andtheir languages had much in common. As the result of this conquest thereare about 700 borrowings from Scandinavian into English. Scandinavians and Englishmen had the same way of life,their culturallevel was the same, they had much in common in their literature thereforethere were many words in these languages which were almost identical, e.g. ON OEModern E syster sweostersister fiscr fisc fish felagi felawefellow However there were also many words in the two languages which weredifferent, and some of them were borrowed into English, such nouns as:bull, cake, egg, kid, knife, skirt, window etc, such adjectives as: flat,ill, happy, low, odd, ugly, wrong, such verbs as: call, die, guess, get,give, scream and many others. Even some pronouns and connective words were borrowed which happens veryseldom, such as: same, both, till, fro, though, and pronominal forms with«th»: they, them, their. Scandinavian influenced the development of phrasal verbs which did notexist in Old English, at the same time some prefixed verbs came out ofusage, e.g. ofniman, beniman. Phrasal verbs are now highly productive inEnglish /take off, give in etc/. German borrowings. There are some 800 words borrowed from German into English. Some of themhave classical roots, e.g. in some geological terms, such as: cobalt,bismuth, zink, quarts, gneiss, wolfram. There were also words denotingobjects used in everyday life which were borrowed from German: iceberg,lobby, rucksack, Kindergarten etc. In the period of the Second World War the following words were borrowed:Volkssturm, Luftwaffe, SS-man, Bundeswehr, gestapo, gas chamber and manyothers. After the Second World War the following words were borrowed:Berufsverbot, Volkswagen etc. Holland borrowings. Holland and England have constant interrelations for many centuries andmore than 2000 Holland borrowings were borrowed into English. Most of themare nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14-th century, such as:freight, skipper, pump, keel, dock, reef, deck, leak and many others. Besides two main groups of borrowings (Romanic and Germanic) there arealso borrowings from a lot of other languages. We shall speak about Russianborrowings, borrowings from the language which belongs to Slavoninclanguages. Russian borrowings. There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowedwords from one language into the other. Among early Russian borrowingsthere are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rouble,copeck, pood, sterlet, vodka, sable, and also words relating to nature,such as: taiga, tundra, steppe etc. There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into Englishthrough Rushian literature of the 19-th century, such as: Narodnik,moujik, duma, zemstvo. volost, ukase etc, and also words which were formedin Russian with Latin roots, such as: nihilist, intelligenzia, Decembristetc. After the Great October Revolution many new words appeared in Russianconnected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them wereborrowed into English, such as: collectivization. udarnik, Komsomol etcand also translation loans, such as: shock worker, collective farm, five-year plan etc. One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, suchas: glasnost, nomenklatura, apparatchik etc.

 

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SPECIALIZATION It is a gradual process when a word passes from a general sphere to somespecial sphere of communication, e.g. «case» has a general meaning«circumstances in which a person or a thing is». It is specialized in itsmeaning when used in law (a law suit), in grammar (a form in the paradigmof a noun), in medicine (a patient, an illness). The difference betweenthese meanings is revealed in the context. The meaning of a word can specialize when it remains in the generalusage. It happens in the case of the conflict between two absolute synonymswhen one of them must specialize in its meaning to remain in the language,e.g. the native word «meat» had the meaning «food», this meaning ispreserved in the compound «sweetmeats». The meaning «edible flesh» wasformed when the word «food», its absolute synonym, won in the conflict ofabsolute synonyms (both words are native). The English verb «starve» wasspecialized in its meaning after the Scandinavian verb «die» was borrowedinto English. «Die» became the general verb with this meaning because inEnglish there were the noun «death» and the adjective «dead». «Starve» gotthe meaning «to die of hunger». The third way of specialization is the formation of Proper names fromcommon nouns, it is often used in toponimics, e.g. the City - the businesspart of London, Oxford - university town in England, the Tower -originallya fortress and palace, later -a prison, now - a museum. The fourth way of specialization is ellipsis. In such cases primaraly wehave a word-group of the type «attribute + noun», which is used constantlyin a definite situation. Due to it the attribute can be dropped and thenoun can get the meaning of the whole word-group, e.g. «room» originallymeant «space», this meaning is retained in the adjective «roomy» and wordcombinations: «no room for», «to take room», «to take no room». Themeaning of the word «room «was specialized because it was often used inthe combinations: «dining room», «sleeping room» which meant «space fordining», «space for sleeping». GENERALIZATION It is a process contrary to specializaton, in such cases the meaning of aword becomes more general in the course of time. The transfer from a concrete meaning to an abstract one is most frequent,e.g. «ready» (a derivative from the verb «ridan» - «ride») meant «preparedfor a ride», now its meaning is «prepared for anything». «Journey» wasborrowed from French with the meaning «one day trip», now it means «a tripof any duration». All auxiliary verbs are cases of generalization of their lexical meaningbecause they developed a grammatical meaning: «have», «be», «do», «shall», «will» when used as auxiliary verbs are devoid of their lexical meaningwhich they have when used as notional verbs or modal verbs, e.g. cf. «Ihave several books by this writer» and «I have read some books by thisauthor». In the first sentence the verb «have» has the meaning «possess»,in the second sentence it has no lexical meaning, its grammatical meaningis to form Present Perfect.

 


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