Some basic notions

The most characteristic features, of English is said to be its mixed character. While it iS wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a while, the composite nature of the English vocabulary cannot be denied.

l) The term native in linguistic literature is used to denote word of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the Britain from the continent in the 5th century by Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes)- Practically, the term is often applied to words, whose origin cannot be traced to any other language, for example, the word path.

2) prof. Smirnitsky A.I, suggested another interpretation of the term: as words which existed in the English word—stock of the 7th century.

3) Ginsburg and her colleagues proceed from a different understanding of the term native as comprising not only the ancient. Anglo-Saxon core bur also words coined later by means of various processed operative in English; namely word-formation, split of polysemy, etc.

The term borrowing is used to denote the process of adopting we words from other languages and also the resulting of this process, the language material itself. Not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English such as -able, -ment, -ity, etc. As well as some word-groups: coup d'etat, vis-à-vis.

In its sec6nd meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in wider sense. It is extended into the so-called translation-loans or loan-translation) and semantic borrowing. Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the material available in he language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e.g. mother tongue/ Latin lingua materna; wall newspaper /Russian стенгазета

Distinction should be made between true borrowings and words made up of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek, e.g. telephone, phonogram. Such words were never part, of those languages.

3) There is also certain confusion between the terms "source of borrowings" and "origin of borrowed words". The term "source of borrowings should be applied to the language from which this or that particular word was taken Into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowing we point out their source,but not their origin. The term "origin of the word" should be applied to the language the word may be traced to. Thus the French borrowing table is Latin by origin (L. tabula), the Latin borrowing school came into Latin from the Greek language (Gr. scole - досуг).

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