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»
Gulistan2006
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: fatherота,
motherона, sonугил, daughterкиз, brotherака etc; words naming the most
important objects and phenomena of nature: Sunкуёш, moonой, starюлдуз,
windшамол, waterсув; names of animals and birds: bullхукиз, catмушук,
gooseгоз; parts of human body: armкул, earкулок, eyeкуз, 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 “A textbook of translation”
Peter Newmark 1995. 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 – деворий газета.
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.
In spite of the numerous outside linguistic influences and the
etymological heterogeneity of its vocabulary the English language is
still, in essential characteristics a Germanic language. It has retained
a ground work of Germanic words and grammar. A comparative study of the
nature and role of native and borrowed words show that borrowing has
never been the chief means of replenishing the English vocabulary.
Word-formation and semantic development were throughout the entire
history of the English language much more productive than borrowing.
Besides most native words are marked by a higher frequency value. The
great number of borrowings bringing with them new phonon-morphological
types, new phonetic morphological and semantic features left its imprint
upon the English language. On the other hand under the influence of the
borrowed element words already existing in the English changed to some
extent their semantic structure, collectability, frequency and word
forming ability. Borrowing also considerably enlarged the English
vocabulary and brought about some changes in English synonymic groups,
in the distribution of the English vocabulary through sphere of
application and in the lexical divergence between the two variants of
the literary national language and its dialects.
Uzbek language is also under constant influence of borrowings. We are
living in the age of progress and technology. New discoveries new
inventions, bring about new notions which are accepted by languages, and
Uzbek language is also among them. The words connected with development
of technology, sport terms, everyday words have been penetrating into
Uzbek language from other languages, especially from English, Russian
and through Russian or English from many European languages.
In its turn many Uzbek words entered the word stock of world languages,
such as of sport terms: Kurash, halol, chala, the names of quinine:
plov, manti, somsa, the names of clothes: chapan and etc.
When in two languages we find no trace of he exchange of loan words one
way or the other. We are safe to infer that the two nations have had
nothing to do with each other, but if they have been in contact, the
number of the loan-words, and still more the quality of the loan-words,
if rightly interpreted, will inform us of their reciprocal relations,
they will show us which of them has been the more fertile in ideas and
on what domains of human activity each has been superior of the other.
If all other sources of information were closed to us except such
loan-words in our modern North-European languages as «piano», «soprano»,
«opera», «libretto», «tempo», «adagio» etc. we should still have no
hesitation in drawing the conclusion that Italian music has played a
great role all over Europe.
There are many words, one a native word, the other a Romance loan,
originally of lither identical or similar meaning with some distinction
made today, such as «freedom», and «liberty», «happiness», and
«felicity», «help», and «aid», «love», and «charity», and we should find
that the native word has a more emotional sense is homely and unassuming
whereas the loan word is colder, aloof more dignified more formal.
1.4 Recent Translation Theory and Linguistic Borrowing in the Modern
Sino-Chinese
Fascinating developments in the new field of translation studies may
help us advance our understanding of the evolving vocabulary of the
Chinese Revolution in the twentieth century. Indeed, there has been an
unconscious theoretical convergence between translation studies outside
the China field and modern Chinese cultural history. The key concept is
«culture» writ large in both cases.
Translation theory has been virtually unknown in China until recent
times. It is not that the Chinese historically have never been forced to
confront the issue; on the whole, however, until the later decades of
the nineteenth century, most of those who came to China were prepared to
communicate in Chinese. The important exceptions were the nativization
of the Buddhist canon and the undoubtedly extensive use of Manchu during
the early decades of the Qing dynasty. Since the Western nations only
tagged on to the long parade of countries coming to China over the
centuries, we need to look first at the other countries of East Asia for
clues about translation theory in an ideographic context. Literary
Chinese was the lingua franca of the East Asian world for two millennia.
Although the Japanese invented a native script as early as the tenth
century, the Vietnamese in the thirteenth, and the Koreans only in the
fifteenth, in all of these cases Chinese remained the primary domestic
language for politics and high intellectual culture until the dawn of
the twentieth century. We shall return to this issue below.
There have been several traditions of translation theory in the West.
The oldest and most long-lasting of them–the transmission of holy
scripture into lands in which its language was
impenetrable–interestingly parallels developments in East Asia. The
story of the Septuagint graphically typifies a whole conception of
translation. When the community of Greek rabbis was called upon,
ostensibly, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, seventy rabbis
separately assumed the task. They reconvened to discover that all
seventy Greek translations were identical. The implication is that only
one true and correct–and implicitly divinely inspired–translation
existed of this text and accordingly any text. The veracity is thus
guaranteed if the translator is properly trained and equipped for the
task. In the case of Bible translation, the translator performs a semi –
divine function–working with God–to spread the holy word to those unable
to master the original, for via translation they will now be assured of
the equivalent experience. God may have spoken in Hebrew, but He also
guided the Greek translators to the one and only possible translation of
His word. By the same token, translation errors were, on occasion,
regarded as blasphemy and punished accordingly.
This conception of translation bespeaks a word-by-word transmission of a
text from one context into another. It was not important that the Greek
rabbis merely conveyed the general meaning of the Hebrew Bible nor that
they simply had the sentences more or less in the same order. The
telling points were two: first, that every word was the same in all
seventy translations, and second, that the unique translation was the
equivalent (though not the equal) of the original Lefevere,
“Translation: Its Geneology in the West,” 18-20 (p. 19, paraphrasing
Schleiermacher).
Despite the multilingual nature of literate culture in Europe through
the turn of the nineteenth century, no specific theory of translation
was forthcoming. Many would write in Latin or translate their ideas
mentally from the vernacular into Latin rather than write them down in
the mother tongue. Few needed translation. George Steiner has suggested
one possible reason for the lack of translation theory: «The
epistemological and formal grounds for the treatment of `meaning’ as
dissociable from and augmentative to `word’ are shaky at best.» In spite
of the absence of theory, translation not only continued, but was deeply
intertwined with the evolution of modern languages: «The evolution of
modern German is inseparable from the Luther Bible, from Voss’s Homer,
from the successive versions of Shakespeare by Wieland, Schlegel, and
Tieck.»
Translation theory began to undergo a radical transformation in the
nineteenth century, as translation began to involve a conscious
manipulation to «move the author toward the reader,» to make literary
texts as palatable in the target language and culture as they were in
the source language and culture. This development marks the effective
realization that precise translation, especially in the case of literary
works, was inconceivable without regard for norms of the target language
and culture. It is also cotemporal with the widespread emergence of
vernaculars as literary mediums, where in the past Latin would have been
more frequently employed. As people became less and less multilingual
and as Latin declined in generic use, the multilingual knowledge
necessary for remaining abreast of «world» literature made translation
all the more crucial.
We have here the emergence of a new understanding of the relationship
between source text (and perhaps author) and target text (and
translator). No longer was a work worthy of translation approached as a
long string of words, but as an entire text. The translator now
performed the all-important function of bringing into one universe a
text from another which often might have remained unknown. Without
English or French translations of their work, it is highly unlikely, for
example, that the writings of Ibsen or Strindberg or Kierkegaard or
Tolstoy or, in more recent times, I.B. Singer would have been known
outside the realm of native speakers of their mother tongues; it is
inconceivable, as well, that Singer would have won the Nobel Prize.
This development has now reached the point that readers outside the
native languages of such authors have ceased thinking of their writings
as foreign. The same is true of the King James Bible. Translation has
actually energized the target languages with new themes and genres
deriving from the source languages. The phrase, «Yea, that I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death» – despite the fact that it is
not an entirely correct translation–has so fully entered our discourse
as to make ordinary mortals believe King David spoke English.
Advances over the past two decades in translation studies have evolved
from this trend. We are now in the midst of a «cultural turn.» The
important unit for translation is now seen not as a series of words or
sentences between languages nor even as a text moving from one setting
to another. Rather they themselves are now seen as emblematic of their
contexts, as cultural entities that emerge from one distinctive cultural
universe. Without an appreciation of that enveloping context,
translation into the target language loses much. But traditional
bemoaning of what is «lost in the translation» should also not consume
our efforts excessively, for there are countless instances in which
translation can clarify or elucidate a cryptic original, in which the
target language rises above the source language. Generations of Germans
have turned to the English translations of Kant’s critiques to
understand them, and you have not lived until you have read Tsubouchi
Shy’s translations of Shakespeare: «Yo ni aru, yo ni aran. Sore ga gimon
jya!»
Translators now speak not of source and target languages alone, but of
source and target cultures as well, and the target culture is now
beginning to loom almost as large as the source. There is as well less
talk of good versus bad translations or faithful versus unfaithful ones.
This particular extension of the development of translation studies has
a profoundly dangerous aspect to it. In the hands of theorists
influenced by postmodernist literary criticism, everything becomes
relativized. All texts, translations as well as originals, emerge on an
even plain. While it strikes me that there certainly is much room for
nuance and uncertainty in translation, there are also certain definable
criteria, if not absolutes, that must remain in play. War is not peace,
and love is not hate.
Responsible members of the community of translation studies, however,
are fully aware of such potential pitfalls while remaining sensitive to
the new directions in their field. As Jiri Levy had noted: «A
translation is not a monistic composition, but an interpretation and
conglomerate of two structures. On the one hand there are the semantic
content and the formal contour of the original, on the other hand the
entire system of aesthetic features bound up with the language of the
translation.»
The new realization, then, is that translation is not simply the
transference of meaning from one language system into another with the
able use of dictionary and grammar. Language is at the heart of culture;
it gives voice to culture, and translators must see the source text
within its surrounding cultural context. Texts have images in cultures
and these are not always the same in the source and the target. Images
in turn have power through language.
In this conection, Susan Bassnett-McGuire has argued: To attempt to
impose the value system of the SL [source language] culture onto the TL
[target language] culture is dangerous ground, and the translator should
not be tempted by the school that pretends to determine the original
intentions of an author on the basis of a self-contained text. The
translator cannot be the author of the SL text, but as the author of the
TL text has a clear moral responsibility to the TL readers.
Mary Snell-Hornby goes this one half-step further. She notes that, as we
move toward an understanding of translation that sees it as more a
cultural (rather than a linguistic) transfer, the act of translation is
no longer a «transcoding» from one context into another, but an «act of
communication.» Texts are part of the worlds they inhabit and cannot be
neatly ripped from their surroundings. The new orientation in
translation studies is toward the «function of the target text» rather
than the «prescriptions of the source text.» Hans J. Vermeer has argued
that translation is first and foremost a «crosscultural transfer.» Thus,
the translator must not only be bilingual – that’s a given – but
effectively bicultural as well. «Translation is not the transcoding of
words or sentences from one language to another, but a complex form of
action, whereby someone provides information on a text (source language
material) in a new situation and under changed functional, cultural, and
linguistic conditions, preserving formal aspects as closely as
possible.»
With the misgivings expressed above, I believe that the cultural turn in
translation studies marks a major stride forward, and it can be
especially useful to those of us trying to understand the evolution of
the new vocabulary of the Chinese Revolution. We should note in passing
that the identification of language with culture is elemental in East
Asia where the two words share the same root. This is, of course, not to
say that Chinese and Japanese cultures are the same. Especially (though
not exclusively) at the elite level, however, Neo-Confucian culture–a
core canon of texts, a shared tradition of commentaries on them,
specific family and societal values deriving from them, and the like–had
become strikingly similar in both countries from at least the
seventeenth century forward. Significant differences in social
organization and particularly in the procedures by which men were chosen
for political decision-making jobs remained, making the Japanese and
Chinese cultural contexts similar as opposed to identical, different
strings on the same guitar, different variations on the same theme
http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/literary-theory/a-summing-up.html.
The Japanese descendents of these elite men of the Edo period, men from
the bakumatsu (late Edo) and Meiji eras who were trained initially in
the Confucian classics, would later in their careers learn Western
languages and take upon themselves the formidable tasks of transmitting
Western concepts into Japanese. Had it been the mid – to late twentieth
century, they would surely have conveyed–as their own descendents
have–the new ideas from the West into katakana expressions taken largely
from English. There are two reasons for this shift: English now enjoys
the reputation of an international language, and the new «coiners» lack
the training in Kanbun (literary Chinese) of their forefathers. A brief
trip to any electronics store in Japan will reveal just how dependent on
English the new Japanese terminology is. Because these new terms are not
written in Chinese characters, they cannot easily be imported (let alone
reimported) into China now, as was the case with the Chinese-character
compounds coined by Japanese earlier.
In the Meiji period, however, the only appropriate language for
transmitting new philosophical, literary, and scientific terms was
Chinese. Many of these creators of new terms were famous in their own
right for composing works in literary Chinese. One of the most famous
case is undoubtedly the great liberal thinker, Nakae Chmin (1847–1901),
who translated Rousseau’s Social Contract into Kanbun in the 1880s. Via
such routes, numerous new words were coined in Chinese for the literate
Japanese reading public. Because the terms then existed in Chinese
ideographs, they were ready made for transport into Chinese. The second
stage began roughly from the turn of the century, and, although not all
terms were renativized into Chinese, the carriers were usually Chinese
studying in Japan or those who had taken refuge there.
To make matters even more complicated, the Japanese coiners frequently
derived their neologisms from traditional Chinese texts. The research of
Sanet Keish and its further development in the research of Tam Yue-him
has now documented over 1000 such terms, usually two – or four-character
expressions. Many of these same terms also entered the Korean and
Vietnamese languages in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Although it is not completely exceptional, an ideographic language like
Chinese–and the other East Asian languages that used Chinese and
developed their own vernaculars later–may require a variety of
qualifications in discussing translation, either to or from. Achilles
Fang overstated the case, though he raised some important
considerations.
Another fetish of a group of Sinologists who still think Chinese
(classical Chinese) is a «language» in the conventional sense is their
firm conviction that a perfect dictionary will smooth their way. Alas,
they are whoring after false gods. First, such a dictionary is
impossible to make; next, what earthly use is a two-hundred-volume
dictionary to anyone? After all is said and done, the meaning is
determined from the context in the largest sense of the word, and there
no dictionary will avail him. Moreover, a dictionary is no help if the
wrong entry is chosen.
A great deal of research has been done on the entrance into Chinese and
Japanese of the Meiji-period Japanese neologisms, though it remains
scattered. An entire generation of intellectuals in China tried to read
Yan Fu’s Chinese renderings of Western concepts in his translations of
Mill, Smith, Spencer, and Huxley, though most of his neologisms simply
did not stick. For example, perhaps his most famous term, tianyanlun as
a translation for the «theory of evolution,» was soon replaced in the
new Chinese lexicon by the Japanese created term, shinkaron (Ch.,
jinhualun). Why such terms did not «take» in China cannot simply be
stuffed off on the fact that they were too literary or assumed too
profound a knowledge of classical Chinese lore. When Yan Fu was writing,
there was no widespread vernacular Chinese language in use, and most of
those who were able to read his translations undoubtedly understood his
allusions (even if the Western ideas behind them remained partially
obscured). Was Yan Fu aware of the Japanese translations by Nakamura
Keiu of the same texts he labored over? Has anyone ever compared the
vocabularies devised by Nakamura and Yan to render Western
philosophical, political, and economic concepts?
There is a widespread, but extremely thin understanding of the process
by which the abovementioned 1000 or so Japanese coinages were formed and
entered Chinese. In fact, there are any number of actual, far more
complex routes by which these terms were created and adopted into
modern, vernacular Chinese. Sait Tsuyoshi has examined a number of
fascinating cases in great detail in his major work, Meiji no kotoba
(Meiji words). He is concerned primarily with how a discrete set of
expressions was forged in Meiji Japanese and how it came to be part of
the modern spoken and written Japanese language. Although most of the
terms studied–such as Seiy (Ch. Xiyang, the West), shakai (Ch. shehui,
society), kywakoku (Ch. gongheguo, republic), hoken (Ch. baoxian,
insurance), and other philosophical and academic terms–also found their
way into Chinese, Sait does not examine that phase of the process. He
does, though, discuss many of the terms that were suggested and
subsequently dropped for various Western political institutions and
systems.
In a series of fascinating studies that approaches a similar topic,
though largely from the Chinese side of the picture, Mizoguchi Yz looks
as the numerous Chinese terms that surround the complex of issues
involved in laying out the modern distinctions drawn between the public
(gong) and the private (si). He begins his analysis in Chinese antiquity
and demonstrates the remarkable changes that transpired in the uses to
which these terms were put over time. From the late nineteenth century,
however, these terms became caught up in demands by Chinese
intellectuals for Western-style political institutions. China’s
readiness for such institutions, such as representative government or
democracy, were frequently justified on putative long traditions in
which, for example, the «people were the basis» of the state.
Let me conclude with one small case which should demonstrate succinctly
just how thoroughly complicated this transmission process was: the
particle de (J. teki), used in general to form adjectives from nouns,
adverbs from adjectives, or to create the genitive case. In his
unsurpassed study of the transmission of Western learning to China and
Japan, Masuda Wataru (1903–77) has described part of the story in
discussing the important work of Yanagawa Shunsan (1832–70). Yanagawa
was a scholar of Western learning at the end of the Edo period and head
of the Kaiseijo, the main center for Western studies at the time in
Japan; he also reputedly knew Dutch, French, English, and German. A few
biographical details about the life and work of the coiners of these
neologisms may help us anthropomorphize this process; it puts flesh on
the bones.
Yanagawa was also, though, a punctuator of Kanbun texts, written by
Chinese or translations by Chinese of Western works. His reputation as a
scholar was sufficiently formidable and well known that he appeared as a
character at the very beginning of Nagori no yume (Lingering Dreams) by
Imaizumi Mine (1858–1937), the daughter of Katsuragawa Hosh (1822–81), a
physician to the family of the shogun and a scholar of Dutch learning.
Clearly, the community of Kangaku scholars and that of Western learning
scholars had significant overlap. Among his many works, Yanagawa wrote
Furansu bunten (A Grammar of French), Igirisu nichiy tsgo [Everyday
colloquial English], and Ygaku benran [A manual of Western Learning];
and his skills at Kanbun can be found in the literary Chinese versions
of popular Japanese songs he prepared, his punctuation work on the
Japanese version of the Zhihuan qimeng (The circle of knowledge), a work
comprising lessons on English, Christianity, and natural science, based
on James Legge’s Chinese translation. Yanagawa was also involved in a
project to prepare a complete Japanese translation in twenty
string-bound volumes of the Gewu rumen (Introduction to science) by
W.A.P. Martin.
Among the many terms nativized into Japan by Yanagawa and his associates
was the aforementioned particle teki (Ch. de). In his personal
recollections, tsuki Fumihiko (1847–1928) once described the group of
men who worked together translating so many of these Chinese and Western
texts. The group included: Yanagawa Shunsan, Katsuragawa Hosh, Kurosawa
Magoshir, Mitsukuri Keigo [d. 1871], Kumazawa Zen’an [1845–1906], and
even myself. Odd as it might seem, this group in general [also] enjoyed
reading Chinese novels, such as Shuihu zhuan [Water margin] and
Jinpingmei [Golden lotus]. One day we got together and began chatting,
and someone mentioned inadvertently the following. It was fine to
translate «system» as soshiki (Ch. zuzhi), but it was difficult to
translate the term «systematic.» The suffix «tic» sounded similar to the
character teki (de) as used in [Chinese] fiction; so why not render
«systematic» as soshiki teki (Ch. zuzhi de). Everyone thought it was a
brilliant idea and agreed to give it a try. Eventually, we paid someone
to write out the expression soshiki teki clearly and bring it to the
authorities. «Have you put this into use?» «Yes.» «This is rather
extraordinary, isn’t it?» «Not that I am aware, no.» We joked with these
sorts of comic play-acting, but very often we were only able to escape
difficult [translation] points with this character teki. Ultimately, it
moved from pure invention to fact, and it was used later without a
second thought, as people picked up on this usage.
Again, though, this is only half of our story. We need to know if this
new colloquial usage in Japanese of teki was the source for de as a
comparable particle in colloquial Chinese, or whether de entered modern
baihua directly from its much earlier usage in colloquial Chinese
literary texts of the Yuan and Ming periods. While twentieth-century
spoken Chinese uses de almost exclusively, written vernacular texts
often use de alongside the other genitive-forming particles zhi and di.
Japanese has its own manner of forming the genitive, with the particle
no, not the precise counterpart of teki but the two perform something
more on the order of complementary, and occasionally overlapping, roles.
Most serious scholars of the modern Chinese historical experience, even
those most closely wedded to statistical data, consider
culture–actually, cultural differences – elemental to their
considerations in research and writing. It would be almost impossible to
imagine someone making the claim that study of China could be pursued
without taking culture into account. Thus, the recent turn in
translation studies toward a broader, more cultural appreciation of both
source and target contexts segues neatly with this widespread scholarly
criterion, and concerted attention toward the linguistic Sino-Japanese
innovations over the past century could not have come at a better time.
Before blanket characterizations can be put forth about the nature of
this borrowing – and long before we can generalize or theorize about
it–we need closer examination of as many of the different routes by
which the terminology of the Chinese Revolution entered the modern
Chinese lexicon from Japanese as possible. We need to study the very
texts in which these terms were first used, what Western concepts they
were meant to translate, what they conjured up in the Japanese setting,
the process by which they entered Chinese, and the images (however
different or similar from Japanese) these terms gave rise to in China. I
do not mean to suggest that we conduct 1000 separate studies, but we do
need many separate studies for different clusters of terms.
2. The problem of assimilation of borrowed words
2.1 Phonetic assimilation of borrowed words
It is now our task to see what changes borrowings have undergone in the
English language and how they have adapted themselves to its
peculiarities.
All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two
large groups.
On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These
changes aim at adapting words of foreign origin to the norms of the
borrowing language, e. g. the constant combinations [p n], [p s], [t p
t] in the words «pneumatics», «psychology», «ptolomey» of Greek origin
were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [p
s], [pt], [p n] very frequent at the end of English words (as in
«sleeps», «stopped») were never used in the initial position.
It is very important to discriminate between the two processes the
adaptation of borrowed material to the norms of the language and the
development of these words according to the laws of the language. This
differentiation is not always easily discernible. In most cases we must
resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite
conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words «procession» and
«progression» to show that the former was already used in England in the
11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The history of these
words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of changes
along side with other English words change in declension, accentuation,
structure, sounds, whereas the word «progression» underwent some changes
by analogy with the word «procession» and other similar words already at
the time of its appearance in the language.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in
sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning
and usage linguists distinguish phonetic, grammatical and lexical
assimilation of borrowings.
Phonetic assimilation, comprising changes in sound-form and stress, is
perhaps the most conspicuous. Sounds that were alien to the English
language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For instance, the long
[e] and [E] in recent French borrowings, quite strange to English
speech, are rendered with the help of [e i] (as in the words
«communique», «chaussee», «cafe») Familiar sounds or sound combinations
the position of which was strange to the English language, were replaced
by other sounds or sound combinations to make the words conform to the
norms of the language, e.g. German spits [spits] was turned into English
[spits].
Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in
the very act of borrowing. But some words retain their foreign
pronunciation for a long time before the unfamiliar sounds are replaced
by similar native sounds.
In words that were added to English from foreign sources, especially
from French or Latin, the accent was gradually transferred to the first
syllable. Thus words like «honour», «reason» were accented on the same
principle as the native «father», «mother».
2.2 Grammatical assimilation of borrowed words
Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into
English they lost their former grammatical categories and inflexions and
acquired new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other
English words.
If a borrowed word loses its former grammatical categories and
inflexions and gets new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy
with other English words we say the word is undergone grammatical
assimilation. Sometimes the foreign inflexions are fallen off.
E. g. sputnik, sputniks, sputnik’s
Lat. consutare (v) English consult.
However there are some words in Modern English that have for centuries
retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a considerable group of borrowed
nouns, all of them terms or literary words adopted in the 16th century
or later, have preserved their original plural inflexion to this day,
e.g.
Phenomenon-phonomena
Addendum-addenda
Other borrowings of the same period have two plural forms the native and
the foreign, e. g. vacuum-vacua, vacuums, virtuoso-virtuosi, virtuosos.
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language
appeared in English as indivisible roat-words, unless there were already
words with the same morphemes in it, e. g. in the word «saunter» the
French infinitive inflexion-er is retained, but it has changed its
quality, it is preserved in all the other grammatical forms of the word.
(saunters, suntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of
the stem in English.
It must be borne in mind that when there appears in a language a group
of borrowed words built on the same pattern or containing the same
morphemes, the morphological structure of the words becomes apparent and
in course of time their word-building elements can be employed to form
new words I.G. Koshevaya “The theory of English Grammar” “Просвешение”,
1982.
Sometimes in borrowed words foreign affixes are replaced by those
available in the English language, e. g. the inflexion – us in Latin
adjectives was replaced in English with the suffixes – ous or – al
Barbarus-barbarous
Botanicus-botanical
Balneus-balneal
2.3 Lexical assimilation of borrowed words
Loaning words from another language causes some changes in meaning of
the word borrowed.
When a word is taken over into another language its semantic structure
as a rule undergoes great changes.
Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their
meanings.
Thus the word «timbre» that had a number of meanings in French was
borrowed into English as a musical term only. The words cargo and cask,
highly polysemantic in Spanish were adopted only in one of their
meanings – «the goods carried in a ship», «a barrel for holding liquids»
respectively.
In some cases we can observe specialization of meaning, as in the word
hangar, denoting a building in which aero planes are kept and revive,
which had the meaning of «review» in French and came to denote a kind of
theatrical entertainment in English.
In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes
acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic
structure. For instance, the word move in Modern English has developed
the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and
others that the French movoir does not possess. The word scope, which
originally had the meaning of ‘aim purpose’, now means ‘ability to
understand ‘, ‘the field within which an activity takes place, sphere’,
‘opportunity, freedom of action’. As a rule the development of new
meanings takes place 50–100 years after the word is borrowed.
The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways as well. Some
meanings become more general, others more specialized, etc. For
instance, the word «terrorist» that was taken over from French in the
meaning of «Jacobin» widened its meaning to ‘one who governs, or opposes
a government, by violent means. The word umbrella, borrowed in the
meaning of a sunshade or pares came to denote similar protection from
the rain as well.
Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word was a retained throughout
its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning. Thus the
Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained
their primary meanings to the present day.
Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words
with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound but which are
not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often
changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it
nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected, e.
g. the French sur (o) under had the meaning of «overflow». In English r
(o) under was associated by mistake with round – думалок and the verb
was interpreted as meaning ‘encclose on all sides, encircle’ Folle –
etimologization is a slow process; people first attempt to give the
foreign borrowing its foreign premonition, but gradually popular use
involves a new pronunciation and spelling.
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
«decollete», 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, пальто кабинет, 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:
cafe, cliche. 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.
The language of independent Uzbekistan is contributing to the world
languages enriching them with new notions: kurash, chap, halol, chala,
(sport terms), bazar, sumalak etc.
To sum up this brief treatment of loan words it is necessary to stress
that in studying borrowed words a linguist cannot be content with
establishing the source, the date of penetration, the semantic sphere to
which the word belonged and the circumstances of the process of
borrowing. All these are very important, but one should also be
concerned with the changes the new language system into which the loan
word penetrates causes in the word itself, and on the other hand, look
for the changes occasioned by the newcomer in the English vocabulary,
when in finding its way into the new language it pushed some of its
lexical neighbors aside. In the discussion above we have tried to show
the importance of the problem of conformity with the patterns typical of
the receiving language and its semantic needs.
Conclusion
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. Smirnitsky’s book on lexicology. Professor A.I.
Smirnitsky deals with these issues mainly in terms of word sameness
reflecting his methodological approach to word theory.
In the present paragraph attention must be concentrated on the
assimilation of loan words as a way of their interaction with the system
of the language as a whole. The term assimilation of a borrowed 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. The degree of assimilation depends on the length of
period during which the word has been used in the receiving language,
upon its frequency. Oral borrowings due to personal contacts are
assimilated more completely and more rapidly than literary borrowings,
i. e. borrowings through written speech.
The list of used literature
1. «A textbook of translation» Peter Newmark 1995
2. A course in theoretical English Grammar M.Y. Blokh.
3. Блумфилд Л «Язык» М. 1968
4. Смирницкий А.И. «Синтаксис английского языка». Москва 1957
5. Bryant M.A. «Functional English Grammar». N.Y. 1945
6. Strang B. «Modern English Structure» L.D. 1974
7. Sweet H.A. «New English Grammar Logical and Historical» Pt. 1. Oxf.,
1891. Pt. 2. Oxf., 1898
8. «A Grammar of Present-day English» E.M. Govdon, I.P. Krylova. Москва
1971
9. Francis W.N. «The structure of American English» New York. 1998
10. Information from Internet. http. www.
11. Zandvoort R.W. «A Handbook of English Grammar» 1958
12. Reference Guide top Grammar. A Handbook of English as a second
language USIA Edition first published 1994
13. I.G. Koshevaya «The theory of English Grammar» «Просвешение», 1982
14. Ilyish. «The structure of Modern English» «Просвешение», Ленинград
1971
15. Хаймович, Б.С. Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского
языка. «Высшая школа» Москва 1987
16. Чейф У.Л. «Значения и структура языка» Москва 1975
17. M.A. Ganshina, N.M. Vasilevskaya «English Grammar» Higher school
Publishing House 1964
18. Andre Lefevere, «Translation: Its Geneology in the West,» in
Translation, History amd Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere
(London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990), 14.
19. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation
(London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 265–66, 276–78, citations on
277, 266, respectively. See also Lefevere, «Translation: Its Geneology
in the West,» 16–18; Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London
and New York: Methuen, 1980), 54, 56, 58.
20. Lefevere, «Translation: Its Geneology in the West,» 18–20 (p. 19,
paraphrasing Schleiermacher).
21. Cited in Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 5–6.
22. Lefevere, «Translation: Its Geneology in the West,» 26–27.
23. Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 23.
24. Achilles Fang, «Some Reflections on the Difficulty of Translation,»
in On Translation, ed. Reuben A. Brower (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1966),
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