Another phenomenon which must also receive special attention is the formation of derivatives from borrowed words. New derivatives are usually formed with the help of productive affixes, often of Anglo-Saxon origin.
2.4 The degrees of assimilation
The role of loan words in the formation and development of English vocabulary is dealt with in the history of the language. It is there that the historical circumstances are discussed under which words borrowed from Latin, from Scandinavian dialects, from Norman and Parisian, French and many other languages, including Russian, were introduced into English. Lexicology, on the other hand, has in this connection tasks of its own, being chiefly concerned with the material and the results of assimilation.
The main problems of etymology and borrowed words as they concern the English language are comprehensively and consistently treated in Professor A.I. Smirnitskiy deals with these issues mainly in terms of word. Sameness reflecting his methodological approach to word theory.
Here we are going to concentrated our attention on the assimilation of borrowed words as a way of their interrelation with the system of the language as a whole. The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetically, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system.
Even a superficial examination of borrowed words in the English word-stock shows that there are words among them that are easily recognized as foreign and there are others that have become so firmly rooted in the language, so thoroughly assimilated that it is sometimes extremely difficult to distinguish them from words of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Let’s take some examples: «we can easily determine that the words «décolleté», graffito», «chemistry» are loaned words.
But the words like «pupil», «master», «city», «river» which became part of words used at least once a day are also borrowed words. In Uzbek language this kind of situation can be also observed. For example: «Kolxoz», «sputnik», «demokratiya», «efir», etc words can be easily recognized as loan words. But the words like «maktab», «kitob», «muhabbat», «ilm», «badavlat» and etc are not considered to be loan words by ordinary people, because these words are deeply rooted in native lexicon and are commonly used by people. But according to the etymology of these words they are not native words, they were borrowed from Arabic and Persian languages.
Unassimilated words differ from assimilated words in their pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. However, there is no distinct borderline between the two groups.
So far no linguist has been able to suggest more or less comprehensive criteria for determining the degree of assimilation depends in the first place upon the time of borrowing. The general principle is: the older the borrowing the more thoroughly it tends to follow normal language (Uzbek, English) of accentuation, pronunciation, etc. It is but natural that the majority of early borrowings have acquired full language (English or Uzbek) citizenship and that most English speaking people are astonished on first hearing, that such everyday words as «window», «chair», «dish», «box» haven’t always belonged to their language. As you see in the above Uzbek extract there are words which can be easily recognized as loan words, e.g.: банк-bank, стратегия-strategy, сектор-sector, бизнес-business, кредит-credit, инфратузилма – infrastructure.
A classification of loan words according to the degree of assimilation can be only very general as no rigorous procedure for measuring it has so far been developed. The following three groups may be suggested:
1. Completely assimilated borrowed words
2. Partially assimilated borrowed words
3. Unassimilated borrowed words or barbarism.
The group of partially assimilated words may be subdivided depending on the aspect that remains unaltered, i. e. according to whether the word retains features of spelling, pronunciation, morphology or denotation that are not English. The third group is not universally accepted, as it may be argued that words not changed at all cannot form part of the vocabulary of language, because they occur in speech only, but don not enter the language.
Completely assimilated borrowed words are found in all the layers of older borrowings.
They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e, g: cheese, street, wall, or wine. Among Scandinavian borrowed words we find such frequent nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent. Suffice it to mention such everyday words as table, chair, face, figure, finish, matter. A considerable number of Latin words borrowed during the revival of learning are at present almost indistinguishable from the rest of the vocabulary. Neither animal nor article differ noticeable from native words.
Uzbek language like English is vulnerable to new nations. It mainly enriches its word stock by loaning words from Persian, Arabic Russian and via Russian from European languages. A large number of words in Uzbek language are the words from Persian. Tajik languages which are completely assimilated and widely used by Uzbek people: дастурхон, даструмол, хокандоз, пояндоз, пойдевор, барг, дарахт, гул, фарзанд, дутор, сетор and etc.
After Arabic invasion of Central Asia a number of Arabic words were borrowed, which became the indivisible part of our daily speech: мактаб, китоб, мактуб, адабиёт, ахолии, оила, Фан, санъат, хизмат, мехнат, раис, идора, давлат and etc.
Starting from XIX century new notions began to penetrate into Uzbek language from Russian and via Russian from European languages. They denote new notions, new inventions which don’t have equivalence in Uzbek that’s why they are completely assimilated borrowings:
Стол, стул, ручка, паровоз, студент, министр, операция, (Latin) грамматика, комедия, театр, музей, опера, (Greek) солдат, галстук, штаб, лагерь, (German) костюм, пальтокабинет, генерал, (French) опера, ария, ложа, топор, (Italian) трамвай, вокзал, митинг, футбол, баскетбол, бокс(English)
The number of completely assimilated borrowed words is many times greater than the number of partially assimilated ones. They follow all morphological, phonetically and orthographic standards. Being very frequent and stylistically neutral, they may occur as dominant words in synonymic groups. They take an active part in word-formation. Moreover, their morphological structure and motivation remain transparent, so that they are morphologically analyzable and therefore supply the English vocabulary not only with free forms but also with bound forms, as affixes are easily perceived and separated in series of loan words that contain them.
To illustrate the frequency of completely assimilated words it is sufficient to mention that many of them are included by E.L. Thorndike and I. Lorge in the list of 500 most frequent words. Some of these are: act (Lat), age(Fr), army(Fr), bill(Lat), case(Fr), cast(ON), cause(Fr), die(Scand).
The second group containing partially assimilated borrowed words can be subdivided into subgroups.
The oppositions are equipollent.
a) Loan words not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero; foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador; foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese), food and drinks: pillow(Persian) sherbet(Arabian); foreign currency: krone (Denmark), rupee(India), zloty(Poland), peseta(Spain)
b) Borrowed words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus; bacilli, crisis; crises, formula; formulae, index; indices. Some of these are also used in English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning as in: indices: indexes.
c) Loan words not completely assimilated phonetically. The French words borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. Some of them keep the accent on the final syllable: machine, cartoon, police.
d) Borrowed words not completely assimilated grammatically. This group, as V.I. Balinskaya shows, is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from French in which the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g: battet, buffet, corps. Some may keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche.
It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. One and the same loan word often Shows in complete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.
The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarism, i. e. words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents. The examples are the Italian addio, ciao ‘goodbye’, the French affich for’ placard’ and coup or coup d’ Etat ‘a sudden seizure of state power by a small group’, the Latin ad libitum ‘at pleasure’ and the like.
Uzbek language is full of barbarisms which are mainly used by the youth: конечно certainly(Russian), okay (English) and etc.
The incompleteness of assimilation results in some specific features which permit us to judge of the origin of words. They may serve as formal indications of loan words of Greek, Latin, French or other origin. Another factor determining the process of assimilation is the way in which the borrowing was adopted into the language. Words borrowed orally are assimilated more readily, they undergo greater changes, whereas with words adopted through writing the process of assimilation is longer and more laborious. Whenever the need filling motive plays a part, the borrower is being confronted with some new object or practice for which he needs words. Under these conditions three rather distince things may happen, giving rise respectively to «loanwords», «loanshifts», and ‘loanleands’. The borrower may adoptthwedonor’s word along with the object or practice; the new form in the borrower’s speech is then a loanword.
When confronted with a new object or practice for which words are needed, the borrower may somehow adopt material in his own language. A new idiom arises and since it arises under the impact of another linguistic system, it is a «loanshift».
A loanblend is a new idiom developed in the borrowing situation in which both the loanword and the loan shift mechanisms are involved: the borrower imports part of the model and replaces part of it by something already in his own language.
The type of the word borrowed by personal contact would undoubtedly at first be names of objects unfamiliar to the borrowers, or products, and commodities exchanged by way of trade. If the contacts were maintained over a long period then ideas concerned with government, law, religion and customs might be absorbed and perhaps the names of these would be adopted. Only in the case of nations in relatively advanced stages of civilization would there be much influence exerted through the written word; concrete objects would come first, then abstract ideas learnt from what might actually be seen from their effects in everyday life and abstract ideas through the indirect contact achieved by books would come much later.
The international word-stock is also growing due to the influx of exotic borrowed words like anaconda, bungalow, kraal, orang-outang, sari etc. These come from many different sources.
International words should not to be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages.
This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only because many words denoting abstract notions are international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control:контрол (назорат), general: генерал, industry:индустрия (саноат), magazine: магазин (дукон), etc. usually called ‘translator’s false friends.
The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils’ attention to the spread of the English vocabulary into other languages. We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out, match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many international words of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz. At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English and many other languages and thus international should also be mentioned: balalaika, Bolshevik, cosmonaut, czar, kremlin, rouble mammoth, sambo, steppe, vodks.
We should also include here Uzbek language which was under influence of Russian language for a long period of time but didn’t lose its properties and its own word-stock and now being.
2.5 International words as loan words
As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it is natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language. Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words.
Expanding global contacts result in the considerable growth of international vocabulary. All languages depend for their changes upon the cultural and social matrix in which they operate and various contacts between nations are part of this matrix reflected in vocabulary.
International words play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science, industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the history of world culture. Thus, for example, the mankind’s cultural debt to Italy is reflected in the great number of Italian words connected with architecture, painting and especially music that are borrowed into most European languages: allegro, andante, aria, arioso, barcarole, baritone, concert, duet, opera, piano and many more.
The rate of change in technology, political, social and artistic life has been greatly accelerated in the 20th century and so has the rate of growth of international word-stock. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithms, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic, code, graph, microelectronics etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian, Uzbek and several other languages.
To adapt means to make or undergo modifications in function and structure so as to be fit for a new use, a new environment or a new situation. Being adaptive system the vocabulary is constantly adjusting itself to the changing requirements and conditions of human communications and cultural and other needs. This process of self-regulation of the lexical system is a result of overcoming contradictions between the state of the system and the demands it has to meet. The speaker chooses from the existing stock of words such words that in his opinion can adequately express his thought and feeling. It is important to stress that the development is not confined to coining new words on the existing patterns but in adapting the very structure of the system to its changing functions.
According to F. de Saussure synchronic linguistics deals with systems and diachronic linguistic – with single elements, and the two methods must be kept strictly apart. A language system then should be studied as something fixed and unchanging, whereas we observe the opposite: it is constantly changed and readjusted as the need arises. The concept of adaptive systems overcomes this contradiction and permits us to study language as a constantly developing but systematic whole. The adaptive system approach gives a more adequate account of the systematic phenomena of a vocabulary by explaining more facts about the functioning of words and providing more relevant generalizations, because we can take into account the influence of extra – linguistic reality. The study of the vocabulary as an adaptive system reveals the pragmatic essence of the communication process, i. e. the way language is used to influence the addressee. There is a considerable difference of opinion as to the type of system involved, although the majority of linguists nowadays agree that the vocabulary should be studied as a system. Our present state of knowledge is, however, insufficient to present the whole of the vocabulary as one articulated system, so we deal with it as if it were a set of interrelated systems.