5.Assimilation of borrowings. Types and degrees of assimilation

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.

The term type of assimilation refers to the changes an adopted word may undergo:

phonetic assimilation;

graphical assimilation;

grammatical assimilation;

semantic assimilation.

The degree of assimilation depends upon the period of time during which the word has been used in the receiving language, its communicative importance and frequency:

completely assimilated loans;

partially assimilated loans;

non-assimilated loans (barbarisms).

Completely assimilated loan-words are found at all the layers of older borrowings: cheese, street, wall, wine; gate, wing, die, take, happy, ill, low, odd, wrong.

Partially assimilated loan-words:

not assimilated semantically: sheik, sherbet;

not assimilated grammatically: crisis – crises, formula – formulae;

not assimilated phonetically: the final syllable is stressed (machine, cartoon, police); /ʒ/ - beige, prestige, regime; /wα:/ – memoir;

not assimilated graphically: last consonant is not pronounced (ballet, buffet, debut); a diacritic mark (café, cliché); have specific diagraphs (bouquet, brioche).

Barbarisms are words not assimilated in any way and for which there are corresponding English equivalents: It. addio, ciao; Fr. tête-à-tête.

6.Latin borrowings. Periods of borrowings from Latin.

Periodisation:

Early Latin loans, e.g. cup, kettle, dish, plum, butter, wall etc.;

Later Latin loans (Christianity), e.g. lily, pearl, palm, choir, library, fiddle, peach, marble etc.;

Latin loans in Middle English (the Norman conquest+the Renaissance), e.g. animal, legal, simile, gesture, spacious, interest etc.;

The latest Latin influence, e.g. cf., i.e., ib., viz., etc.

Features of Latin loans:

polysyllabic words with prefixes: commission, induction, accelerate;

prefixes with final consonants: ad-, ab-, com-, dis-, ex-, in-, ob-: admix, abnormal, compare, disclose, inattention;

reduplicated consonants: abbreviation, occasion, illumination, immobility, difference, opportunity, resurrection, assimilation;

suffixes –ate, -ute in verbs: locate, irritate, abbreviate, execute;

suffixes –ant, -ent, -ior in adjectives: reluctant, evident, superior;

Latin plural endings are preserved: memorandum – memoranda; datum – data; formula – formulae, formulas; focus – focuses or foci.

7.Celtic elements in the English vocabulary.

The fifth century A. D. Several of the Germanic tribes (the most numerous amongst them being the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes) migrated across the sea now known as the English Channel to the British Isles. There they were confronted by the Celts, the original inhabitants of the Isles. The Celts desperately defended their lands against the invaders, but they were no match for the military-minded Teutons and gradually yielded most of their territory. They retreated to the North and South-West (modern Scotland, Wales and Cornwall). Through their numerous contacts with the defeated Celts, the conquerors got to know and assimilated a number of Celtic words (Mod. E. bald, down, glen, druid, bard, cradle). Especially numerous among the Celtic borrowings were place names, names of rivers, bills, etc. The Germanic tribes occupied the land, but the names of many parts and features of their territory remained Celtic. For instance, the names of the rivers Avon, Exe, Esk, Usk, Ux originate from Celtic words meaning "river" and "water". Ironically, even the name of the English capital originates from Celtic Llyn + dun in which llyn is another Celtic word for "river" and dun stands for "a fortified hill", the meaning of the whole being "fortress on the hill over the river".

place-names: Kent ‘coastal district’ or ‘land of the hosts or armies’, London ‘hill surrounded with water’, Carlisle (caer ‘fortified place’), Dover ‘water’, York ‘Yew-Tree Estate’ (тисове дерево) etc.;

river-names: Thames ‘the dark one’, Avon ‘river’ etc.;

elements: -comb ‘deep valley’ as in Batcombe, -torr ‘high rock’ as in Torcross, -llan ‘church’ as in Llandaff;

hybrids:

Celtic + Latin: Manchester, Glouchester, Lancaster etc.;

Celtic + Germanic: Yorkshire, Canterbury ‘the fortified town of Kentish people’, Salisbury, Cornwall ‘peninsula people’, in O.E. the name Wealhas (Mod.E. Wales, Welsh) was a common noun meaning ‘strangers’ given by the newcomers to the unfamiliar Celtic tribes.

common nouns survived in regional dialects:

bard (Gael.& Ir.) ‘poet, minstrel’, loch (Gael.& Ir.) ‘lake’, plaid (Gael.) ‘blanket’, corgi (Welsh cor ‘dwarf’ + gi/ci ‘dog’), whiskey  ‘water of life’, dunn ‘grey’, cross;

via Romanic languages:

budget < O.Fr. bougette, bouge ‘leather bag, wallet’ < L. bulga < Gaulish *bulgā, ‘sack’; modern financial meaning (1733) is from notion of treasury minister keeping his fiscal plans in a wallet;

car < Norm.Fr. carre < L. carrum, carrus, orig. ‘two-wheeled Celtic war chariot’ < Gaulish *karros;

embassy < M.Fr. embassee < It.ambasciata < L.ambactus < Gaulish

*ambactos ‘dependant, vassal’.