Проблема интернациональных слов

The problem of international words /lecture/

They present specific interest for foreign language teaching. They comprise a special stock common to many languages as a result of simultaneous or successive processes form one and the same source. Such words usually convey notions which are significant in the field of communication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. International are: most names of sciences, terms of art — theatre, tragedy, artist, political terms — progress, revolution, democracy, scientific and technological terms — atomic, radio, TV.

The English language contributed a considerable part of international words to world languages (especially sport terms): football, hockey, baseball, tennis.

Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries, became international: coffee, chocolate, banana, grapefruit.

It is important to note that international words are mainly borrowings.

International words /Arnold/

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 lan-guages 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 (and other names for voices), concert, duet, opera (and other names for pieces of music), piano and many 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 interna-tional wordstock. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithm, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant, quasars, pulsars, ribosome, etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian and several other languages.

The international wordstock 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 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 be-cause 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: : контроль; general: : генерал; industry: : индустрия or magazine: : магазин, 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 vocabu-lary 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, intelligentsia, Kremlin, mammoth, rouble, sambo, soviet, sputnik, steppe, vodka.

To sum up this brief treatment of loan words it is necessary to stress that in studying loan 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 neighbours 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.

Гибридные слова

Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages are called hybrids. English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin.

Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French. Moreover, it is not an isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be represented as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable, eatable, likable, usable. Its variant with the native negative prefix un- is also worthy of note: un-+English stem+-able. The examples for this are: unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An even more frequent pattern is un-+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid: unallowable, uncontrollable, unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable and many others. A curious example is the word unmistakable, the ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-(Scand) +-able (Fr). The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be accounted for by the presence of the homographic adjective able [eibl ] with the same meaning.

The suffix of personal nouns -ist derived from the Greek agent suffix -istes forms part of many hybrids. Sometimes (like in artist, dentist) it was borrowed as a hybrid already (Fr dentiste < — Lat dens, dentis ‘a tooth’ + -ist). In other cases the mixing process took place on English soil, as in fatalist (from Lat fatalis) orviolinist (from It violino, diminutive of viola), or tobacconist ‘dealer in tobacco’ (an irregular formation from Sp tabaco).

When a borrowed word becomes firmly established in English this creates the possibility of using it as a stem combined with a native affix. The phenomenon may be illustrated by the following series of adjectives with the native suffix -less: blameless, cheerless, colourless, countless, doubtless, faceless, joyless, noiseless, pitiless, senseless. These are built on the pattern that had been established in the English language and even in Old English long before the corresponding French loans were taken up. Prof. B.A. Ilyish mentions the following adjectives formed from noun and verbal stems: slæ pleas ‘sleepless’; zeliefleas ‘unbelieving’; arleas ‘dishonest’; recceleas ‘reckless’. It goes without saying that there are many adjectives in which -less is combined with native stems: endless, harmless, hopeless, speechless, thankless.

The same phenomenon occurs in prefixation and inflection. The noun bicycle has a Latin prefix (bi-), a Greek root (cycle < — kyklos ‘a wheel’), and it takes an English inflection in the plural: bicycles. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as blackguard (Engl+Fr) or schoolboy (Gr+Engl); сf. aircraft in which the first element came into English through Latin and French about 1600 but is ultimately derived from the Greek word aē r, whereas the second element is Common Germanic.Observation of the English vocabulary, which is probably richer in hybrids than that of any other European language, shows a great variety of patterns. In some cases it is the borrowed affixes that are used with native stems, or vice versa. A word can simultaneously contain borrowed and native affixes.

Этимологические дублеты

/lecture/

Ethymological doublets are words originated from the same ethymological sourse, but differing in phonemic shape and meaning. they may enter the vocabulary by different routes. They are such pairs as shirt (a native word) — skirt (a borrowed word), canal (Latin) — channel (Fr.) — they represent two borrowings from different languages; others were borrowed from the same language twice, but in different periods: cavalry (Norm. Fr.) — chivalry (Par. Fr.).

A doublet may consist of a shortened word and the one from which it was dderived: history — story, defence — fence, shadow — shade, fentasy — fancy.

Ethymological triplets (groups of words of common root) occur rarer, but here are at least two examples: hospital (Lat) — hostel (Norm.Fr.) — hotel (Par.Fr.)

/Arnold/

The changes a loan word had had to undergo depending on the date of its penetration are the main cause for the existence of the so-called etymological doublets.

Etymological doublets (or, by ellipsis, simply doublets) are two or more words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage. Two words at present slightly differentiated in meaning may have originally been dialectal variants of the same word. Thus, we find in doublets traces of Old English dialects. Examples are whole (in the old sense of 'healthy' or 'free from disease') and hale. The latter has survived in its original meaning and is preserved in the phrase hale and hearty. Both come from OE hal: the one by the normal development of OE a into o, the other from a northern dialect in which this modification did not take place. Similarly there are the doublets raid and road, their relationship remains clear in the term inroad which means 'a hostile incursion', 'a raid'. The verbs drag and draw both come from OE dragan.

The words shirt, shriek, share, shabby come down from Old English, whereas their respective doublets skirt, screech, scar and scabby are etymologically cognate Scandinavian borrowings. These doublets are characterized by a regular variation of sh and sc.

As an example of the same foreign word that has been borrowed twice at different times the doublets castle and châ teau may be mentioned. Both words come from the Latin castellun 'fort'. This word passed into the northern dialect of Old French as castel, which was borrowed into Middle English as castle. In the Parisian dialect of Old French, on the other hand, it became chastel (a Latin hard c regularly became a ch in Central Old French). In modern French chastelbecame châ teaux and was then separately borrowed into English meaning 'a French castle or a big country house'.

Another source of doublets may be due to the borrowing of different grammatical forms of the same word. Thus, the comparative of Latin super 'above' wassuperior 'higher, better', this was borrowed into English as superior 'high or higher in some quality or rank'. The superlative degree of the same Latin word wassupremus 'highest'. When this was borrowed into English it gave the adjective supreme 'outstanding, prominent, highest in rank'.

Sometimes the development of doublets is due to a combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic causes. The adjective stationary for instance, means 'not moving' and stationery n — 'writing paper, envelopes, pens, etc.' The first word is a regular derivative from the noun station to which the adjective-forming suffix -ary is added. The history of the second word is more complicated. In Medieval England most booksellers were travelling salesmen. Permanent bookstores were called stations, the salesmen of these were stationers and what they sold — stationery (with the noun suffix -ery as in grocery or bakery).

Not all doublets come in pairs. Examples of groups are: appreciate, appraise, apprize; astound, astonish, stun; kennel, channel, canal. The Latin word discus is the origin of a whole group of doublets:

dais < — ME deis < — OF deis < — Lat discusdish < — ME dish < — OE disk < — Lat discusdisc/disk < — Lat discusdiscus (in sport) < — Lat discus

Other doublets that for the most part justify their names by coming in pairs show in their various ways the influence of the language or dialect systems which they passed before entering the English vocabulary. Compare words borrowed in Middle English from Parisian French: chase, chieftain, chattels, guard, gage with their doublets of Norman French origin: catch, captain, cattle, ward, wage.

Неологизмы Способы образования неологизмов

New notions constantly come into being, requiring new words to name them. Sometimes a new name is introduced for a thing or notion that continues to exist, and the older name ceases to be used. The number of words in a language is therefore not constant, the increase, as a rule, more than makes up for the leak-out.

New words and expressions or neоlоgisms are created for new things irrespective of their scale of importance. They may be all-important and concern some social relationships, such as a new form of state, e. g. People’s Republic, or something threatening the very existence of humanity, like nuclear war. Or again the thing may be quite insignificant and short-lived, like fashions in dancing, clothing, hairdo or footwear (e.g. roll-neck). In every case either the old words are appropriately changed in meaning or new words are borrowed, or more often coined out of the existing language material either according to the patterns and ways already productive in the language at a given stage of its development or creating new ones.

Thus, a neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word, or a word borrowed from another language.

The intense development of science and industry has called forth the invention and introduction of an immense number of new words and changed the meanings of old ones, e. g. aerobic, black hole, computer, isotope, feedback, penicillin, pulsar, quasar, tape-recorder, supermarket and so on.

The laws of efficient communication demand maximum signal in minimum time. To meet these requirements the adaptive lexical system is not only adding new units but readjusts the ways and means of word-formation and the word-building means. Thus, when radio location was invented it was defined as radio detection and ranging which is long and so a convenient abbreviation out of the first letter or letters of each word in this phrase was coined, hence radar. The process of nomination may pass several stages. In other words, a new notion is named by a terminological phrase consisting of words which in their turn are made up of morphemes. The phrase may be shortened by ellipsis or by graphical abbreviation, and this change of form is achieved without change of meaning. Acronyms are not composed of existing morphemes according to existing word-formation patterns, but on the contrary revolutionise the system by forming new words and new morphemes out of letters. The whole process of word-formation is paradoxically reversed.

The lexical system may adapt itself to new functions by combining several word-building processes. Thus fall-out — the radioactive dust descending through the air after an atomic explosion — is coined by composition and conversion simultaneously. Ad-lib ‘to improvise’ is the result of borrowing (Lat. ad libitum), shortening, compounding and conversion. Compare also admass coined by J.B. Priestley and meaning ‘mass advertising in its harmful effect on society’. It is also interesting to mention the new meaning of word-formation patterns in composition (see § 6.9). Teach-in is a student conference or a series of seminars on some burning issue of the day, meaning some demonstration of protest. This pattern is very frequent: lie-in, sleep-in, pray-in, laugh-in, love-in, read-in, sing-in, stay-in, talk-in.

In all the above variants the semantic components ‘protest’ and ‘place’ are invariably present. This is a subgroup of peculiarly English and steadily develop-ing type of nouns formed by a combined process of conversion and composition from verbs with postpositives, such as a holdup ‘armed robbery’ from hold-up ‘rob’, come-back ‘a person who returns after a long absence’.

The intense development of shortening aimed at economy of time and effort but keeping the sense complete is manifest not only in acronyms and abbreviations but also in blends, e.g. bionics < bio+(electr)onics; slintnastics < slim+gymnastics and back-formation. The very means of word-formation change their status. This is for instance manifest in the set of combining forms. In the past these were only bound forms borrowings from Latin and Greek mostly used to form technical terms. Now some of them turn into free standing words, e.g. maxi n ‘something very large’.

Semi-affixes which used to be not numerous and might be treated as exceptions now evolve into a separate set. An interesting case is person substituting the semi-affix -man due to an extra linguistic cause — a tendency to degender professional names, to avoid mentioning sex discrimination (chairperson, policeperson). A freer use of semi-affixes has been illustrated on p. 118. The set of semi-affixes is also increased due to the so-called abstracted forms, that is parts of words or phrases used in what seems the meaning they contribute to the unit. E. g. workaholic ‘a person with a compulsive desire to work’ was patterned on alcoholic; footballaholic and bookaholic are selfex-planatory. Compare also: washeteria ‘a self-service laundry’.

When some word becomes a very frequent element in compounds the discrimination of compounds and derivatives, the difference between affix and semi-affix is blurred. Here are some neologisms meaning ‘obsessed with sth’ and containing the elements mad and happy: power-mad, money-mad, speed-mad, movie-madand auto-happy, trigger-happy, footlight-happy. It is not quite clear whether, in spite of their limitless productivity, we are still justified in considering them as compounds.

Our survey has touched only upon a representative series of problems connected with the functioning and development of the present-day English vocabulary as an adaptive system and of the tendency in coining new words. For a reliable mass of evidence on the new English vocabulary the reader is referred to lexicographic sources. New additions to the English vocabulary are collected in addenda to explanatory dictionaries and in special dictionaries of new words. One should consult the supplementary volume of the English-Russian Dictionary ed. by I.R. Galperin, the three supplementary volumes of “The Oxford English Dictionary” and the dictionaries of New English which are usually referred to as Barnhart Dictionaries, because Clarence Barnhart, a distinguished American lexicographer, is the senior of the three editors. The first volume covers words and word equiva-lents that have come into the vocabulary of the English-speaking world during the period 1963-1972 and the second — those of the 70s.

In what follows the student will find a few examples of neologisms showing the patterns according to which they are formed. Automation ‘automatic control of production’ is irregularly formed from the stem automatic with the help of the very productive suffix -tion. The corresponding verb automate is a back-formation, i. e. ‘re-equip in the most modern and automated fashion’. Re- is one of the most productive prefixes, the others are anti-, de-, un-, the semi-affixes self-, super-and mini- and many more; e. g. anti-flash ‘serving to protect the eyes’, antimatter n, anti-novel n, anti-pollution, deglamorise ‘to make less attractive’, resit ‘to take a written examination a second time’, rehouse ‘to move a family, a community, etc. to new houses’. The prefix un- increases its combining power, enjoys a new wave of fashion and is now attached even to noun stems. A literary critic refers to the broken-down “Entertainer” (in John Osborne’s play) as a“contemporary un-hero, the desperately unfunny Archie Rice”. Unfunny here means “not amusing in spite of the desire to amuse’. All the other types of word-formation described in the previous chapters are in constant use, especially conversion (orbit the moon, service a car), composition and semantic change.

Compounding by mere juxtaposition of free forms has been a frequent pattern since the Old English period and is so now, сf. brains-trust ‘a group of experts’, brain drain ‘emigration of scientists’, to brain-drain, brain-drainer, quiz-master ‘chairman in competitions designed to test the knowledge of the participants’. In the neologism backroom boys ‘men engaged in secret research’ the structural cohesion of the compound is enhanced by the attributive function. Cf. redbrick (universities), paperback (books), ban-the-bomb (demonstration). The change of meaning, or rather the introduction of a new, additional meaning may be illustrated by the word net-work ‘a number of broadcasting stations, connected for a simultaneous broadcast of the same programme’. Another example is a word of American literary slang — the square. This neologism is used as a derogatory epithet for a person who plays safe, who sticks to his illusions, and thinks that only his own life embodies all decent moral values.

As a general rule neologisms are at first clearly motivated. An exception is shown by those based on borrowings or learned coinages which, though motivated at an early stage, very soon begin to function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics ‘study of systems of control and communication in living beings and man-made devices’ coined by Norbert Wiener from the Greek word kyberne-tes ‘steersman’ + suffix -ics.

There are, however, cases when etymology of comparatively new words is obscure, as in the noun boffin ‘a scientist engaged in research work’ or in gimmick ‘a tricky device’ — an American slang word that is now often used in British English.

In the course of time the new word is accepted into the word-stock of the language and being often used ceases to be considered new, or else it may not be accepted for some reason or other and vanish from the language. The fate of neologisms is hardly predictable: some of them are short-lived, others, on the contrary, become durable as they are liked and accepted. Once accepted, they may serve as a basis for further word-formation: gimmick, gimmickry, gimmicky.Zip (an imitative word denoting a certain type of fastener) is hardly felt as new, but its derivatives — the verb zip (zip from one place to another), the corresponding personal noun zipper and the adjective zippy — appear to be neologisms.

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