THE INFLUENCE OF BORROWINGS

The role of borrowings was so great that they exerted much influence on the development of English and brought about different changes or innovations practically on all the levels of the language system. Borrowed words have influenced: 1) the phonetic structure of English words and the sound system; 2) the word-structure and the system of word building; 3) the semantic structure of English words; 4) the lexical territorial divergence.

1. The influence of borrowings on the phonetic structure of English words and the sound system resulted in:

1) the appearance of a number of words of new phonetic structure with strange sounds or familiar sounds in unusual positions, e.g. waltz, psychology, soufflé. The initial [ps], [pn], [pt] are used in English alongside the forms without the initial sound [p];

2) the appearance of a new diphthong [oi] which came into English together with such French words as point, joint, poise;

3) the reappearance of the initial [sk] mostly due to Scandinavian borrowings;

4) the development of the Old English variant phonemes |f| and / v/ into different phonemes: [v] came to be used initially (vain, valley) and /f/ in the intervocal position (effect, affair);

5) the appearance of the affricate [dз] at the beginning of words, e.g. jungle, journey, gesture.

2. The influence of borrowings on the word-structure and the system of word building resulted in:

1) the appearance of a number of new structural types in which some highly-productive borrowed affixes (e.g. re-, inter-, -er, ~jsm) cancombine with native and borrowed bases. Other borrowed affixes, not so productive (e.g. co-, de-, -ant, -ic), combine only withLatinate bases, i.e. bases of Latin, Greek or French origin, e.g. inform-ant (inform- < Old French < Latin), defend-ant (defend- < Old French < Latin);

2) the ousting of native affixes by borrowed ones, e.g. the prefix pre- has replaced the native prefix fore- which was highly-productive in Middle and Early New English;

3) the appearance of a great number of words with bound mor­phemes, e.g. tolerate, tolerable, tolerance, toleration;

4) the change of the very nature of word-clusters which now unite not only words of the root-morphemes, but of different synonymous root-morphemes, e.g. spring — vernal; sea — maritime.

3. The influence of borrowings on the semantic structure of English words resulted in:

1) the differentiation of borrowed words and synonymous native words in meaning and use, cf.: feed (native) — nourish (L);

2) the narrowing of meaning of native words due to the differentiation of synonyms. For instance, the word stool of native origin in Old English denoted 'any article of furniture designed for sitting on'. Under the influence of the French borrowing chair the word stool came to be used as the name for only one kind of furniture, i. e. 'a seat that has three or four legs, but no back or arms';

3) the extension of meaning of native English words or the acquisition of additional or new meanings, e.g. the political meanings of shock and deviation have come from the Russian ударный and уклон.

4. The influence of borrowings on the lexical territorial divergence resulted in:

1) the intensification of the difference between the word-stock of the literary national language and dialects owing to the borrowing ofwords into the literary national language which are not found in the dialects, and vice versa;

2) the enlargement of the word-stock of different dialects and national variants of English in the UK. For example, Irish English has the following words of Celtic origin: shamrock - трилистник dun — холм colleen — deвушкa, etc. In the Northern and Eastern dialects there are many Scandinavian borrowings, e.g. busk — 'get ready'; mun — 'mouth'; 3) the acquisition by literary national words of a status of dialectal words, e.g. heal —скрывать, покрывать(OE helan).

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