MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY
The English and Literature department
«The borrowed words process development in English»
Gulistan‑2006
Introduction
Borrowing as means of replenishing the vocabulary of present-day Uzbek is of much greater importance and is comparatively active only in the field of scientific terminology and social-political terminology as many terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes, mostly morphemes from classical languages.
The part played by borrowings in the vocabulary of a language depends upon the history of each given language, being conditioned by direct linguistic contacts and political, economic and cultural relationships between nations. Uzbek history contains innumerable occasions for all types of such contacts. It is the vocabulary system of each language that is particularly responsive to every change in the life of the speaking community.
The development of the contacts between nations and the dominance of English language as business language cause a big flow of words into Uzbek language, thus enriching its word – stock.
The influence which English exerted on our language is seen in all aspects of life, social, political and hardly any walk of live was unaffected by it. The first point to be emphasized is that here we are not dealing with completely new ideas introduced from a different type of civilization and culture, but rather the imposing by a dominant race of their own terms for ideas which were already familiar to the subject race. Such a state of affairs obviously means that there will arise pairs of words the native and the foreign term for the same idea and a struggle for survival between the two, so that one of the words was eventually lost from the language, or survived only with some differentiation of meaning.
Borrowed words have been called «The milestones of philology» – said O. Jesperson – because they permit us (show us) to fix appreciatively the dates of linguistic changes. They show us the course of civilization and give us information of the nations». The well-known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed. Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes of factors; linguistic and extra-linguistic.
Borrowed words have been considered in many scientific works, monographs and publications. But detailed analysis of words borrowed into Uzbek from English in detail hasn’t been done so far.
The main constituent part of the vocabulary system of any language is formed by borrowed words. Only borrowed words which were loaned from English into Uzbek have been considered in the qualification paper.
The actuality of the qualification paper is determined by increased interest of linguistic in studying the origin of words and the source of borrowings. Still much is left to investigate.
The purpose of the qualification paper is to reveal borrowed words that were loaned from English into Uzbek and determine the origin and the source of them.
The tasks of the investigation include:
· to reveal English borrowings in Uzbek language.
· to determine the reasons of enriching the vocabulary of any language.
· to investigate the correlation of borrowings with native words.
The problem under consideration in the qualification paper possesses definite theoretical value, for, fist of all, it is based on the principles of approach, which is, revealed on all the stage of investigation. The results of the investigation present interest for a number of fields of contemporary linguistics: linguistic typology, theory of translation, languishing, lexicology, theoretical grammar, lexicography.
Practical significance of the results of investigation consists in the fact they can be used in:
1. in teaching English for Uzbek and Russian students.
2. in compiling practical courses of English.
3. in compiling bilingual dictionaries.
4. in writing lectures on lexicology and theory of translation.
Investigations have been carried out on a vast language material, based on lexicographic sources. We used mainly monolingual, bilingual and encyclopedic dictionaries.
The structure of the qualification paper.
It includes introduction, chapters, conclusion, list of used literature.
Chapter I «Borrowed words and their properties» is dedicated to the study of borrowed words, their origin and their significance.
In the 2nd Chapter the problem of assimilation of borrowed words has been discussed.
1. Borrowed words and their properties
1.1 Etymological survey of the word-stock of a language
Etymologically the vocabulary of any language consists of two groups – the native words and the borrowed words. E.g., in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The etymological linguistic analysis showed that the borrowed stock of words is lager than the native stock of words. Uzbek language, as well as English has been in long and close touch with other languages, mainly Arabic, Persian, Russian.
A native word is a word which belongs to the original stock. An English native word is a word which belongs to Anglo-Saxon origin. To the native words we include words from Common Germanic language and from Indo-European stock.
A borrowed word, a loan word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the language.
The native words in English are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin. The native words of Uzbek language belongs to Turkic language family, the origin of which based on Altay-Yenisey manuscripts. It has been noticed that native words readily fall into definite semantic groups. Among them we find terms of kinship: father‑ота, mother‑она, son‑угил, daughter‑киз, brother‑ака etc; words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature: Sun‑куёш, moon‑ой, star‑юлдуз, wind‑шамол, water‑сув; names of animals and birds: bull‑хукиз, cat‑мушук, goose‑гоз; parts of human body: arm‑кул, ear‑кулок, eye‑куз, heart – юрак
Words belonging to the subsets of the native word – stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word – building power and enter a number of set expressions, e. g., watch DE Weccan is one of the 500 most frequent English words. It may be used as a verb in more than ten different sentence patterns, with or without object and adverbial modifiers and combined with different classes of words.
1.2 Borrowed words, kinds of borrowed words
Borrowed words are words taken over from other languages. Many linguists consider foreign influence plays the most important role in the history of any language.
But the grammar and phonetic system are very stable and are not often influenced by other languages.
For example, in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages mainly Latin, French and Old Norse. The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who nudged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors. Who brought with them a lot of new nations of a higher social system developed feudalism it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.
Uzbek language also developed under the influence of Persian, Arabic and later Russian languages. Persian language spread in our territory in 500–300BC, since that time peoples of Central Asia have been in close contact with Iran, the birthplace of Persian language. Till 15th century it was «Fashion» and desirable to write poems and prosaic works in Persian, though old Turkic language was also used among nation, mainly by ordinary people. In the VII century Arabs conquered Central Asia, carrying their religion and language to the peoples. Thus, Arabic language was predominant till XI–XII centuries. Books were written in Arabic language too. e.g. outstanding scientists and scholars Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Farabi, Beruni created their works in Arabic language. Only in XV century Alisher Navoi, great writer and statesman proved the beauty and importance of the Turkic language, starting to write his best masterpieces in this language, though he knew Persian and Arabic languages very well. And starting with XVIII century Uzbek language was under the influence of Russian language. In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a ruled placed on the middle English period and in Uzbek it is middle Turkic language.
Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in resent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. They refer to various fields of social – political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of them (41%) is scientific and technical terms.
When we speak about the role of native and borrowed words in the language we must not take into consideration only the number of them but their semantic, stylistic character, their word building ability, frequency value, collocability (valency) and the productivity of their word-building patterns.
If we approach to the study of the role of native and borrowed words from this point of view we see, though the native words are not numerous they play an important role in the English and Uzbek languages. They have value, great word – forming power, wide collocability high frequency, many meanings and they are stylistically neutral. Almost all words of native origin belong to very important semantic groups. The number and character of the borrowed words tell us of the relations between the peoples, the level of their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of history.
The well known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed.
It must be pointed out that while the general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of through the purely linguistic reasons for borrowings are still open to investigation. The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.
Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes or factors: linguistic and extra-linguistic. Economic, cultural, industrial, political relations of speakers of the language with other countries refer to extra-linguistic factors.
For example, due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse of the Scandinavian tribes was the language of the conquerors. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system, developed feudalism. It was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school. The same is in Uzbek language. Due to the expansion of Islam religion, Arabic was used for centuries in Central Asia as the language of science and religion[1]. For about two centuries Russian language hold a dominant position in the nations of former Soviet Union. It was priority to know Russian and it was a language of communication and friendship. These factors are extra-linguistic ones.
The absence of equivalent words in the language to express new subjects or a phenomena makes people to borrow words. E.g. the words football, volleyball, pitchman in Uzbek; to economize the linguistic means, i.e. to use a foreign word instead of a long native expressions and others are called linguistic causes.
The closer the two interacting languages are in structure the easier it is for words of one language to penetrate into the other.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways through oral speech (by immediate contact between the people) and through written speech by indirect contact through books) Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adopter. Written borrowings are often rather long and they are unknown to many people, speaking the language.
We distinguish translation loans, borrowings proper and semantic loans. Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the language but according to patterns taken from another language, by way of literal morpheme – for – morpheme translation, e.g. wall-newspaper – деворийгазета.
The term «semantic loan» is used to denote the development in a word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language. The English word pioneer meant «explorer» and «one who is among the first in new fields of activity.» now under the influence of the Russian word «Пионер» it has come to mean «a member of the Young Pioneers’ Organization»
Borrowings proper are words which are taken from another language with their sound graphic forms and their meaning.
1.3 The influence of borrowings on the vocabulary of the language
The number of borrowings on Old English was meager. In the Middle English period there was an influx of loans. It is often contended, that since the Norman conquest borrowing has been the chief factor in the enrichment of the English vocabulary and as a result there was a sharp decline in the productivity and role of word-formation. Historical evidence, however, testifies to the fact that throughout its entire history, even in the periods of the mightiest influxes of borrowings, other processes no less intense, were in operation – word – formation and semantic development, which involved both native and borrowed elements. If the estimation of the role of borrowings is based on the study of words recorded in the dictionary, it is easy to overestimate the effect of the foreign words, as the number of native words is extremely small compared with the number of borrowings recorded. The only true way to estimate the relation of the native to the borrowed element is to consider the two as actually used in speech. If one counts every word used, including repetitions, in some reading matter, the proportion of native to borrowed words will be quite different. On such a count, every writer uses considerable more native words than borrowings. Shakespeare, for example has 90%, Milton 81%, Tennyson 88%. This shows how important is the comparatively small nucleus of native words. Different borrowing are marked by different frequency value. Those well established in the vocabulary may be as frequent in speech as native words, whereas other occur very rarely. The great number of borrowings in English left some imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the volume of its vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary. But the adoption of foreign words must not be understood as were quantities change. Any importation into the lexical system brings about semantic and stylistic changes in the words of this language and changes in its synonymic groups.
It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already in English the adopted word very often displaced the native word. In most cases, however, the borrowed words and synonymous native words (or words borrowed earlier) remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and use. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. The synonymic groups became voluminous and acquired many words rarely used. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.
As a result of the differentiation in meaning between synonymous words many native words or words borrowed earlier narrowed their meaning or sphere of application.
Abundant borrowing intensified the difference between the word stock of the literary national language and dialects as well as between British English and American English. On the one hand a number of words were borrowed into the literary national language which are not to be found in the dialects. In a number of cases the dialects have preserved some Anglo-Saxon words which were replaced by borrowings in the literary language. On the other hand, a number of words were borrowed into dialects are not used throughout the country.