Chapter: lexicology and its object subject matter of Lexicology

4. Assimilation of borrowed words in English
When a word comes into another language it adapts the phonetic, grammatical, lexical system of that language. This process is considered as the assimilation of a borrowed word. The assimilation of borrowed words may be: 1) grammatical, 2) phonetic; 3) lexical. In phonetic assimilation we speak about the changes of a word in its sounds and stress. For example. Modern English «change» came from French «changer» [faun3ar]. We can see the following changes of it in the English language. [[] is changed into [tj]; [au] into [ei]; [5] j nto [ds] The stress in French words falls on the final syllable where as in English on the initial. , For example. F'.: hist'oir.-E. 'history.
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. For example, sputnik, sputnik's, sputniks, sputnik. Sometimes the foreign inflexions are fallen off. For example. Lat. consultare (V) Eng.consult.
The borrowed word very often undergoes simplification. For example. F salade. Eng. salad.
In French «-ade» was a suffix but in English-ad is not a suffix. If many words with the same suffix or prefix are borrowed the speaker of the language thinks that they are word—building elements. A borrowed suffix is joined to a native word. This brings about the creation of hybrid words like «shortage», lovable, understandable. 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 meanings. For example. Lat. «bilingual» had 4 meanings, but in-English it has one meaning. Besides a word will develop new meanings. For example. F. «movet> has many meanings in English. Such meanings as «внести предложения,вращаться в определенном кругу,двигаться »» are not found in French .
According to the degree of assimilation the borrowings are divided into:
1) fully assimilated borrowings. They are such borrowings which are not differed (distinguished) as borrowings. English people will surprise if they hear that the words table, chair, people take, get are borrowed words.
2) partially assimilated borrowings: they have undergone very small changes, For example, garage, which, still has three pronunciations [gaerasd3],[ga:ra3],[g' A ra:3].
3) unassimilated borrowings or barbarisms. These words are used by the English people, when they speak about the customs and the life of other nations. For example, rickshaw (Chinese), sherbet (Arabian), caique (Turkish), khan (Arab), khakan (Turkish) etc.
The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.
Completely or fully assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language, cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, For example, correct -corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, For example gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one.
Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, For example, the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.
Partially assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups: a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, For example, sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc. b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, For example, nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc. c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds hi and it], For example, voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds If and /s/ (loss - lose, life - live ). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, For example, /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», For example, shirt); sounds fk/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized For example, girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization , For example. German, child.
Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, For example, police, cartoon. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, For example. /a:3/ in the words : camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard, d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, For example, in Greak borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound [f] (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound [tj] (chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).