Курсовая работа: Foreign words in E. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea: semantics, functions, frequency
To find out their functions in the text, their structure and frequency, we have carried out our research of unassimilated borrowings (foreign words, barbarisms) in The Old Man and the Sea. To proceed, we will introduce a short survey of the study of borrowings in the English language.
2. Borrowings in the English language and in the old man and the sea
In its 15-century-long recorded history, the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French, Old Norse (Scandinavian). 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. French was the language of later 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 instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century [5].
In the study of borrowed elements in English the main emphasis is as a rule placed on the Middle English period. Borrowings of later periods became the object of scholarly interest only in recent decades and research has shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number of them has come from French. They refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life.
The number and character of 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 [5]. Thus if we go through the lists of borrowings in English and arrange them in groups according to their meaning we shall be able to obtain much valuable information with regard to England’s contacts with many nations. Some borrowings, however, cannot be explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions, they do not come along with any new objects or ideas. Such were the words air, place, brave borrowed from French [5].
It must be pointed out that while general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of thoroughness, the purely linguistic reasons for borrowing are still open to investigation [5].
The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, but also on the nature and length of the contacts. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between people) and through written speech (by indirect contact through books etc.).
Though borrowed words undergo changes in the adopting language, they preserve some of their former peculiarities. In some cases the pronunciation of the word (strange sounds, sound combinations, position of stress etc.), its spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters are an indication of the foreign origin of the word. Such as the case of waltz (G.), psychology (Gr.), soufflй (Fr.)The initial position of the sounds [v], [dz ], [z ] or of the letters x, j, z is a sure sign that the word was borrowed.
The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another language. Thus the suffixes in the in the words neurosis (Gr.) and violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words.
These criteria are not always helpful. Some early borrowings have become so thoroughly assimilated that they are unrecognizable as adoptions without a historical analysis, e.g. chalk, mile (L.), ill, ugly (Scand.), enemy, car (Fr.).
It must also be taken into consideration that the closer the relation between the languages, the more difficult it is to distinguish borrowings.
The volume of borrowings in English left its imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the growth of the vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary [5].
It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already functioning in English, the adopted word very often displaced the native one. In most cases, however, the borrowings and synonymous native words both remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and in use – for instance the sphere of application and meaning of feed and nourish, try and endeavour, meet and encounter. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.
As said earlier, many borrowings have undergone changes and have adapted themselves to the peculiarities of the English language. 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. Thus the combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt], frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were never used in the initial position.
On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words. These changes are due to the development of the word according to the laws of the given language.
When the highly inflected Old English system of declension changed into the simpler system of Middle English, early borrowings conformed with the general rule. Under the influence of the so-called inflexional levelling borrowings like disc, (MnE. dish), strжt (MnE. street) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English: common case and possessive case singular and plural (street, streets).
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.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage most 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. 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. Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in the very act of borrowing.
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 honor, reason were accented on the same principle as the native father, mother.
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 as in:
Com. sing. Sputnik
Poss. sing. Sputnik’s
Com. pl. Sputniks
Poss. pl. Sputniks’
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible root-words, unless there were already words with the same morphemes in it. Thus in the word saunter the French infinitive inflexion – er is retained (cp. OFr. s’auntrer). But they have changed their quality, preserved in all other grammatical forms of the word (cp. saunters, sauntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English.