Borrowing

Borrowing as a means of replenishing the vocabulary of present-day English is of much lesser importance and is active mainly in the field of scientific terminology. It should be noted that many terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes, mostly morphemes from classical languages ²

1) The present-day English vocabulary, especially its terminological layers, is constantly enriched by words made up of morphemes of Latin

1 See 'Introduction', § 5, p. 10; 'Various Aspects.', § 12, p. 196.

² See 'Etymological Survey', § 5, p. 164.

and Greek origin such as words with the morphemes -tron used chiefly in the field of electronics, e.g. mesotron, cyclotron, etc.; tele-, e.g. telecast, telelecture, telediagnosis, -in, e.g. protein, penicillin; -scope, e.g. iconoscope, oscilloscope; meta-, e.g. meta-culture, metaprogram; para- meaning 'related to, near¹, e.g. paralinguistic, parabiospheric; video-, e.g. videodisk, videophone, etc.

But though these words consist of borrowed morphemes they cannot be regarded as true borrowings because these words did not exist either in the Greek or in the Latin word-stock. All of them are actually formed according to patterns of English word-formation, and many function in Modern English as new affixes and semi-affixes.¹ Words with some of them can be found in the vocabulary of various languages and reflect as a rule the general progress in science and technology.

It is noteworthy that a number of new affixes appeared in Modern English through different types of borrowing. This can be exemplified by the Russian suffix -nik which came within the words sputnik, lunnik and acquired the meaning of 'one who is connected with something', but which under the influence of beatnik¹ acquired a derogatory flavour and is now a slang suffix. It is used to denote 'person who rejects standard social values and becomes a devotee of some fact or idea', e.g. folk-nik, protestnik, Klmnik, etc. The prefix mini- is now currently used with two meanings: a) 'of very small size', e.g. minicomputer, minicar, mini-war, ministate, and b) 'very short', as in minidress,minicoat, miniskirt, etc.; the prefix maxi- was borrowed on the analogy of mini- also in two meanings: a) 'very large¹, e.g. maxi-erder, maxi-taxi, and b) 'long, reaching down to the ankle', e.g. maxicoat, maxi-dress, maxilength. The suffix -nautis found in, e.g., astronaut, aquanaut, limarnaut, etc.

Numerous borrowed root-morphemes remain bound in the vocabulary of Modern English but acquire a considerable derivative force and function as components of a specific group of compounds productive mainly in specialized spheres, e.g. acoust(o)—acousto-optic, acousto-electronics; ge(o)-, e.g. geowarfare, geoscientist, multi- e.g. multi-cultural, multi-directional, mottispectral, etc.; cosm(o)-, e.g. cosmodrome, cosmonautics, cosmonaut, etc.

2) There are true borrowings from different languages as well. They, as a rule, reflect the way of life, the peculiarities of development of the speech communities from which they come. From the Russian language there came words like kolkhoz, Gosplan, Komsomol, udarnik, sputnik, jak, etc.

The words borrowed from the German language at the time of war reflect the aggressive nature of German fascism, e.g. Blitzkrieg», Wehr-

1 See C, Barnhart. A Dictionary of New English, 1963—1972. Longman, 1973. p, 316; see also 3. M. MednuKoea, T. 10. KapasKtma, op. cit.

² See 'Word-Structure', § 3, p. 92.

³ 'aggressive war conducted with lightning-like speed and force' ⁴ 'Germany's armed forces' ⁵ 'the air force of the Third Reich'

As most of these words remain unassimilated in present-day English, they are all the time felt as foreign words and tend to drop out from the language.

3) Loan-translations also reflect the peculiarities of the way of life of the countries they come from, and they easily become stable units of the vocabulary, e.g. fellow-traveller, self-criticism, Socialist democracy, Worker's Faculty, etc. which all come from the Russian language.

§ 11. Semantic Extension Semantic extension of words already available in the language is a powerful source of qualitative growth and development of the vocabulary though it does not necessarily add to its numerical growth; it is only the split of polysemy that results in the appearance of new vocabulary units thus increasing the number of words.' In this connection it should be remembered that the border-line between a new meaning of the word and its lexical homonym is in many cases so vague that it is often difficult to state with any degree of certainty whether we have another meaning of the original word or its homonym—a new self-contained word,² e.g. in the verb to sit-in—'to join a group in playing cards' and a newly recorded use of to sit-in—'to remain unserved in the available seats in a cafe in protest against Jimcrowism¹, or 'to demonstrate by occupying a building and staying there until their grievances are considered or until the demonstrators themselves are ejected'—the meanings are so widely apart that they are definitely felt as homonyms. The same may be said about the word heel (si.) —'a traitor, double-crosser' and heel—'the back part of a human foot¹. On the other hand, the meaning of the verb freeze—'to immobilize (foreign-owned credits) by legislative measures' and its further penetration into a more general sphere seen in to freeze wages and the correlated compound wage-freeze is definitely felt as a mere development of the semantic structure of the verb (to) freeze. The semantic connection is felt between the meanings of such words as hot: I) (mus.) 'having an elaborate and stimulating jazz rhythm' 2) (financ.) 'just Jsued' and 3) (si.) 'dangerous because connected with some crime' as in the phrase hot money; to screen—'to classify by means of standardized test, to sdect methodically' (of. the original meaning of the verb (to) screen—'to separate coal into different sizes', 'to pass through a sieve or screen'). All these meanings may serve as further examples of qualitative -growth of Modern English vocabulary.

A great number of new meanings develop in simple words which belong to different spheres of human activity, New meanings appear mostly in everyday general vocabulary, for example a beehive — 'a woman's hair style'; lungs (n pl]—'breathing spaces, such as small parks that might be placed in overpopulated or traffic-congested areas'; a bird— 'any flying craft'; a vegetable—'a lifeless, inert person'; clean (si.) — free from the use of narcotic drugs'; to uncap (sl.)— 'to disclose, to re-

¹ The above died counls shew that new meanings of the words already existing in the language and new homonyms account for 1/4 of the total number of new items.

² See 'Semasiology'. § 4, p. 47; 'Various Aspects...', § 12, p. 195—196.

veal. There is a strong tendency in words of specialized and terminological type to develop non-specialized, non-terminological meanings as, for example, the technical term feedback that developed a non-terminological meaning 'a reciprocal effect of one person or thing upon another', parameter that developed a new meaning 'any defining or characteristic factor¹, scenario—'any projected course or plan of action'. It is of interest to note that many new meanings in the sphere of general vocabulary are stylistically and emotively non-neutral and marked as colloquial and slang, for example juice (US si.)— 'position, power, influence; favourable standing'; bread (si.) —'money'; straight (si.)— 'not deviating from the norm in politics, habits, conventional, orthodox', etc.

On the other hand scientific and technical terminological meanings appear as a result of specialization as in, e.g., read (genetic)— 'to decode'; messenger—'a chemical substance which carries or transmits genetic information*.

New terminological meanings also appear as a result of expansion of the sphere of application, i.e. when terms of one branch of science develop new meanings and pass over to other branches, e.g. a general scientific term system (n) in cybernetics developed the meaning 'anything consisting of at least two interrelated parts'; logic acquired in electronics the meaning 'the logical operations performed by a computer by means of electronic circuitry'; perturbance in astronomy— 'disturbances in the motions of planets', etc.

It should be noted that new meanings appear not only as a result of semantic development of words but also as a result of semantic development of affixes. Thus, the adjectival prefix a- in such adjectives as awhir = whirring; aswivel = swivelling, aclutter = cluttered; aglaze = glazed developed a new meaning similar to the meanings of the participles but giving a more vivid-effect of the process than the corresponding non-prefixal participles in -ing and -ed.

The prefix anti- developed two new meanings: 1) 'belongng to the hypothetical world consisting of the counterpart of ordinary matter', e.g. anti-matter, anti-world, anti-nucleus, etc.; 2) 'that which rejects or reverses the traditional characteristics', e.g. anti-novel, anti-hero, anti-electron, etc.; the prefix non- developed a new meaning 'sham, pretended, pseudo', e.g. non-book, non-actor, non-policy, etc.¹

It follows from the foregoing discussion that the principal ways of enriching the vocabulary of present-day English with new words are various ways of productive word- format ion and word-creation. The most active ways of word creation are clippings and acronyms. The semantic development of words already available in the language is the main source of the qualitative growth of the vocabulary but does not essentially change the vocabulary quantitatively.

¹ See C. Barahart, op. cit.

Поиск по сайту: