Assimilation of loan words. Types of assimilation

Words when they migrate from one language into another adjust themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language. They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their foreign features, and, finally, they are assimi­lated. Sometimes the process of assimilation develops to the point when the foreign origin of a word is quite unrecognisable (dinner, cat, take, cup). Others, though well assimilated, still bear traces of their foreign background. Distance and development, for instance, are identified as borrowings by their French suffixes, skin and sky by the Scandinavian initial sk, police and regime by the French stress on the last syllable.

The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system, i.e. the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage.

Phonetic assimilation comprises changes in sound form and stress. Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds, e.g. In the recent French borrowings communique, cafe the long [e] and [c] are rendered with the help of [ei]. The accent is usually transferred to the first syllable in the words from foreign sources.

The lasting nature of phonetic adaptation is best shown by comparing Norman French borrowings to later ones. The Norman borrowings have for a long time been fully adapted to the phonetic system of the English language: such words as table, plate, courage, chiv­alry bear no phonetic traces of their French origin. Some of the later (Parisian) borrowings, even the ones borrowed as early as the 15^th c, still sound surprisingly French: regime, va­lise, matinee, cafe, ballet. In these cases phonetic adaptation is not completed.

The three stages of gradual phonetic assimilation of French borrowings can be illus­trated by different phonetic variants of the word garage:

ge'ra:3>'gara:3> 'gerid3 (Amer.).

The degree of phonetic adaptation depends on the period of borrowing: the earlier the period is the more completed is this adaptation.

Grammatical adaptation consists in a complete change of the former paradigm of the borrowed word (i. e. system of the grammatical forms peculiar to it as a part of speech). If it is a noun, it is certain to adopt, sooner or later, a new system of declension; if it is a verb, it will be conjugated according to the rules of the recipient language. Yet, this is also a lasting process. The English Renaissance borrowings as datum (pi. data), phenomenon (pi. phenomena), criterion (pi. criteria) whereas earlier Latin borrowings such as cup, plum, street, wall were fully adapted to the grammatical system of the language long ago.

By semantic adaptation is meant adjustment to the system of meanings of the vocab­ulary. Borrowing is generally caused either by the necessity to fill a gap in the vocabulary or by a chance to add a synonym conveying an old concept in a new way. Yet, the proc­ess of borrowing is not always so purposeful, logical and efficient as it might seem at first sight. Sometimes a word may be borrowed "blindly", so to speak, for no obvious reason, to find that it is not wanted because there is no gap in the vocabulary nor in the group of syno­nyms which it could conveniently fill. Quite a number of such "accidental" borrowings are very soon rejected by the vocabulary and forgotten. But there are others which manage to take root by the process of semantic adaptation. The adjective large, for instance, was bor­rowed from French in the meaning of "wide". It was not actually wanted, because it fully coincided with the English adjective wide without adding any new shades or aspects to its meaning. This could have led to its rejection. Yet, large managed, to establish itself very firmly in the English vocabulary by semantic adjustment. It entered another synonymic group with the general meaning of "big in size". At first it was applied to objects character­ised by vast horizontal dimensions, thus retaining a trace of its former meaning, and now, though still bearing some features of that meaning, is successfully competing with big hav­ing approached it very closely, both in frequency and meaning.

The adjective nice was a French borrowing meaning "silly" at first. The English change of meaning seems to have arisen with the use of the word in expressions like a nice dis­tinction, meaning first "a silly, hair-splitting distinction", then a precise one, ultimately an attractive one. But the original necessity for change was caused once more by the fact that the meaning of "foolish" was not wanted in the vocabulary and therefore nice was obliged to look for a gap in another semantic field.

Thus the process of semantic assimilation has many forms:

1) narrowing of meanings (usually polysemantic words are borrowed in one of the mean­ings);

2) specialization or generalization of meanings,

3) acquiring new meanings in the recipient language,

4) shifting a primary meaning to the position of a secondary meaning.

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