Assimilation of borrowings
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter I. Historical Contacts between Russia and
Britain
1.1 Russian Loan Words in English
1.2 The Lexical Category of the Russian borrowings
1.3 The Meanings and the Etymological Characteristics of the Borrowings
1.4 Words of Foreign Origin Borrowed from Russian
1.5 Subcategories of Nouns
1.6 Folk Etymology
1.7 Morphological Features of the Russian Borrowings
1.8 Orthographic Features of the Russian Loan Words
1.9 Thematic Classification of the Russian Borrowings
1.10 The Meaning Changes of the Russian Borrowings
Chapter II. Borrowings as a way of replenishment of the vocabulary.
1.1 Assimilation of borrowings.
1.2 Phonetic assimilation.
1.2 Grammatical assimilation.
1.4 Lexical assimilation.
Conclusions
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
The English vocabulary contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Words that came to English from other languages and constantly used in it as the original are called borrowings. One of the main way of enlarging the lexical system of the language is represented by borrowings.
The role of borrowings is different in various languages and it depends on certain development conditions.
The quantity of borrowed words in English is much higher than in other languages.
The English language had more opportunities to borrow
words from other languages due to the great history of England that
includes various invaders and
It is calculated that 30% of all English words are native. That’s
why a lot of linguists consider that the English language doesn’t
belong to the group of Germanic languages but to the Romano-Germanic
group.
It happens very often that a foreign word comes to English and it is borrowed not only with its lexical meaning but also with its grammar form which makes more difficulties for those people who study and speak English. It allows us to speak that the topic of this project is relevant.
The issue of Russian borrowings is very important in terms os sociolinguistics and language interaction development.
The aim of this project is to study the usage of Russian borrowings in the English language, to analyze what words of Russian origin have been borrowed into English and to study their thematic groups and find out whether they have undergone some morphological and semantic changes in English or not and compare the received results with the above mentioned postulates.
The main subject of this study is the Russian words
borrowed into English. Various linguists mention Russian loanwords in
their works. However, many of them are inclined to think that English
has borrowed a very restricted number of such terms. For example, in
her article Words in English S. Kemmer mentions only seven words borrowed
from Russian (Kemmer, http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kem-
The object is the English language itself. Analysing Slavonic words in English Alarik Rynell (1974:41-42) expresses the same opinion and he mentions only eleven words borrowed from Russian. Furthermore, the author draws the conclusion that words from the above-men-tioned languages denote exclusively Slavic phenomena. Moreover, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1993:309) claim that some Russian borrowings are known in English but they have not been naturalized. Simeon Potter (1969: 63) admits that because of the closer contacts with Russia in recent years an augmented use of many old Russian terms is observed. However, the author describes only eighteen words of the Russian origin.
Another linguist David Wilton analyses 13 words borrowed
from Russian. (Wilton, http://www.-wordorigins.org/
Thus the majority of the authors mention only a few Russian words borrowed into English.
Even though it is common knowledge that in the new language loan words begin to take inflections and some of them change their meanings, there is no information about the morphological and semantic development of the Russian borrowings in English.
The object is the English language itself.
The aim, the subject and the object of this project allow us to state
the following research tasks:
1) to analyze the theoretical literature of the topic of the project;
2) to study the question of borrowing and their role in English;
3) to study the types of borrowings in the English language;
4) to study the ways of assimilation of Russian borrowings in English;
5) to analyze what words of Russian origin have been borrowed into English
and to study their thematic groups and find out whether they have undergone
some morphological and semantic changes in English or not and compare
the received results with the above mentioned postulates.
The investigation was done on the base of two dictionaries:
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary
of the English language.
It is used the descriptive, comparative, etymologycal and analytical
methods in this project.
The theoretical base of this project is stands on
the works of such scientists in the sphere of linguistics as Charles
F. Hockett, Alarik Rynell, J. A. Sheard, Otto Jesperson, Mitford M.
Mathews, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo and others.
Structurally, this project consists of the introduction, theoretical
and practical parts, conclusion and bibliography.
In the introduction it was explained the aim, the
object, the subject, theoretical base of research, theoretical and practical
sigificance, methods of research structure of the work, tasks and the
relevancy of the project.
In the theoretical part the questions of borrowings, types of borrowings
and ways of their assimilation were examined.
The theoretical significance of the work lies in the fact, that the investigation of Russian borrowings and its linguistic aspects contribute for the further development of sociolinguistics theory, Russian studies etc.
The practical part represents the analysis of 59 words of Russian origin from two dictionaries: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language and illustration of their peculiarities by giving examples from different texts. Since the majority of these words were borrowed during various periods of time from the 16th century until now it is difficult to find such examples from one particular source. Therefore we decided to collect them from different Internet sources.
All main thoughts are set in the conclusion of the
project.
Chapter I. HISTORICAL CONTACTS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND BRITAIN
According to historians (Ocherki, http://russianculture.ru/brit/
For example, in some British and Russian chronicles there are some vague pieces of information about the presence of two princes from The British Isles at the court of Jaroslav the Wise.
There is also information that in 1074 Gytha – King Harold’s daughter - married the Russian Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh. King Harold was defeated and killed at Hastings in 1066.
According to these chronicles Gytha gave her first
son the double name Mstislav-Harold in honour of the grandfather.
However, these early contacts were of an occasional character.
Permanent trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries were established only in the middle of the 16th century from the moment when the British navigator Richard Chancellor was given an audience with Ivan IV (The Terrible) in Moscow.
It must be mentioned that in 1553 The English Company of Merchant Adventures for the Discovery of Lands, Territories, Isles, Dominions and Seignories Unknown organized an expedition for the exploration of a possible Northeast Passage to Asia.
Edward Bonaventure was the only ship to survive this expedition and all other ships were devastated by storm in the White Sea. Richard Chancellor was second in command under Sir Hugh Willoughby. However, Hugh Willoughby died during this storm. Chancellor managed to reach a fishing wharf in the mouth of Northern Dvina. His negotiations with the Russian czar paved the way for trade with Russia and the formation of Moscovy Company.
During the period of his reign czar Ivan IV (The Terrible) invited many skilled British specialists: physicians, chemists and craftsmen. British physicians Robert Jacob, Mark Ridley and Arthur Dee worked at the courtyard of Ivan IV (The Terrible). In the second half of the 16th century British readers derived information about Russia not only from literary works but also from other documentary sources (Ocherki).
For example, the British ambassador A Jenkinson made a geographical map of Russia which was published in London in 1552 .One of the well-known writers of the time, Gilles Fletcher (1548-1611), wrote the tractate Of the Russe Common Wealth.After the October Revolution the interest in Russia increased gradually.
In 1921 Britain was the first European country to commit a trade agreement with USSR and in 1924 England established diplomatic relations with the country.Among famous Russian emigrants of the 1930s Bertold Ljubetkin should be mentioned.
He was an architect and he represented the Russian avant-gardism in England. At the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century a very large amount of translations of Russian literary books were made.
One of the most successful Russian books translated into English was F. Dostojevsky’s book The Brothers Karamasov.
In the first years after the revolution nearly twenty periodicals about Russia were issued in England. Among them there are such journals as The New Russia, Russian life, The Russian, newspapers: The Russian Outlook, The Russian Gazette, Russian Times,
The Russian Economist etc. The British Russian Gazette reported on the activity of the Russian industrials. In 1923 The Slavonic and East European Review was published in London.
Thus permanent contacts between Russia and England were established in the middle of the 16th century and they have continued until now. These contacts involve trade, diplomatic and cultural relations.
1.1 RUSSIAN LOAN WORDS IN ENGLISH
1.2 THE LEXICAL CATEGORY OF THE RUSSIAN BORROWINGS
All Russian borrowings chosen from dictionaries are nouns. Totally 59 nouns will be analyzed in this chapter and they are the following words:
agitprop, babushka, balalaika, blin, Bolshevik, borzoi, boyar, bridge, chernozem, Comintern, crash, dacha, droshky, Doukhobor, galyak, glasnost, gley, gulag, Kalashnikov, kasha, kefir, kolynsky, kolkhoz, Komsomol, kopeck, kvass, Leninism, mammoth, Menshevik, muzhik, oblast, paulownia, perestroika, piroshki, podzol, politburo, polynia, pood, ruble, samarskite, samisdat, samovar, Samoyed, sastruga, seecatch, sierozem, soviet, sovkhoz, sputnik, starets, stishovite, sterlet, taiga, theremin, tovarich, troika, verst, vodka, zemstvo.
1.3 THE MEANINGS AND THE ETYMOLOGICAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BORROWINGS
Main Entry: agitprop Function: noun
Ex.:The greater perversion of capitalist consumption, according to Veblen, was its willingness to waste – a tendency captured in Soviet agitprop as ‘Western decadence.’ (Neil).
Main Entry: babushka Function: noun
How to Tie a Scarf –Babushka. (Goltz)
…a wonderful, smiling Russian babushka (grandmother) appeared in my
doorway with a steaming bowl of Pokhelbka
Main Entry: balalaika Function: nou
Ex.: The varied family of Central
Asian lutes is a large one, and one of the most popular and best known
is the balalaika, with its unique triangular
body shape
(Brown,http://www.larkinam.
Ex.: They were issued in six standard
denominations: 10, 25 and 50 kopecks and 1, 5 and 10 roubles.(Hoge, http://www.money.org/
Etymology: Russian kvas. Date: circa 1553: ‘a slightly alcoholic beverage of eastern Europe made from fermented mixed cereals and often flavored’ (Merriam- Webster).
1.4 WORDS OF FOREIGN ORIGIN BORROWED FROM RUSSIAN
Apart from the words analyzed above, English has also borrowed from Russian a variety of words, which originate from other languages. Because of the restricted character of this work it is impossible to analyze them scrupulously and therefore we will classify them only in accordance with their initial sources.
Words of Turkish origin:
archine, ataman, buran, caftan, cossak, coumiss, kurgan, saiga, shashlik.
Words of Latin origin:
collegium, comissar, comissariat, czar, intelligentsia, nomenclatura, presidium.
English has also borrowed some derivatives of the word
czar: czarevitch, czarevna, czarina; czaritza.
The Russian word cezarevitch borrowed into English originates from the same word as czar- namely from the Latin word caesar.
Words of German origin: duma, kremlin ( the latter is from obsolete German).Furthermore,
the word knout is of Scandinavian origin, suprematism – of French,
cosmonaut -of Greek; sevruga is a Tatar word, shaman is borrowed from Tungus and pika- from Evenki,
tundra is a Lappish word. Finally bidarka is of Siberian
origin.
1.5 SUBCATIGORIES OF NOUNS
Among the above-mentioned words there are both proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are the following:
Bolshevik, Comintern, Doukhobor, Komsomol, Leninism, Menshevik and Samoyed.
All other words are common nouns. Moreover, among common nouns there are words that are derived from personal names :
Kalashnikov, paulownia, samarskite, stishovite and theremin.
For instance, Kalashnikov is the name of an assault rifle.
This word is derived from the name of Michail Timofeevich Kalashnikov (born 1919), ^ Soviet arms engineer. Paulowniais a tree name and it originates from the name of the Russian princess Anna Pavlovna who died in 1865.
Rare-earth metals with niobium and tantalum oxide are called samarskiteafter Col. M. von Samarski, a 19th-century Russian mining official.
The lexeme stishovite denotes ‘a dense tetragonal polymorph of quartz that is formed under great pressure and is often associated with meteoroid impact’.
Stishovite originates from the name of Sergei Mikhailovich Stishov (born 1937), a Russian mineralogist. An electronic musical instrument is called theremin after Lev Theremin born 1896 Russian engineer & inventor.
1.6 FOLK ETYMOLOGY
As mentioned, seecatch originates from the Russian sekach, from sech’, to cut. Interestingly, the change of the form of seecatch might occur because of the folk etymology.
This means that the English speakers might take this
word for the combination of the English words see+catch.
1.7 MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF
THE RUSSIAN BORROWINGS
From the examples above it is apparent that the majority of the Russian borrowings have the most usual English noun ending –s in the plural. However, some words have two plural forms: the English-s ending and the Russian plural ending -i/y.
For example: Bolsheviki/
Mensheviks, oblasti/oblasts,
polynyi/polynyas, sovkhozy/ sovkhozes.
Interestingly some words are used only with the Russian-i/y ending in the plural. For example, the term starets has the form startsy in the plural.
The plural form of the lexeme seecatch is seecatchie and apparently this -ie ending originates from the Russian plural ending-i.
The lexemesastruga has also the Russian ending in the plural:sastrugi. Surprisingly the word blin has two plural forms: blini and blinis.
In the latter case the English plural -s ending is added to the Russian plural ending -i.
1.8 ORTHOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF RUSSIAN
LOAN WORDS
The spelling of the majority of the Russian words is standardised in English. However, there are some cases where the same word is spelled in two different ways.
For example,boyar/boyard, droshky/drosky,
kopeck/kopek, pirozkipiroshki. podzol/podsol, ruble/rouble, Samoyed/Samoyede,
tovarich/tovarish, sastru-ga/zastruga.
1.9 THEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF
THE RUSSIAN BORROWINGS
The Russian borrowings analyzed above can be divided into a variety of thematic groups:
Political
terms: agitprop, Bolshevik, Comintern, glasnost,
Komsomol, Menshevik, perestroika, Politburo. Ideological term: Leninism.
Words
denoting government and administration: gulag, oblast, soviet, zemstvo.
Words
denoting social strata: nobility: boyar/boyard; lower social strata:
muzhik. Religious terms: Doukhobor, starets. Honorific
term: tovarich.
The
names of animals: beluga, borzoi, kolinsky, mammoth,
Samoyed seecatch, sterlet.
The
names of food and drink: blin/blini, kasha, pierogy/pirozhki,
kefir, kvass, vodka.
Words
denoting: natural phenomena: sastruga, polynya; substances:
gley, mineral: stishovite.
Names
of soils: chernozem, podzol, sierozem.
Geographic
term: taiga.
Transport
names: droshky, troika.
Monetary
terms: kopeck, ruble.
Weight
and length measures: pood, verst.
The
names of the musical instruments: balalaika, theremin.
Words
denoting farming: kolkhoz, sovkhoz.
Words
denoting clothing: galyak; and mateiral: crash.
Moreover, the word sputnik is connected to
the exploration
of cosmos and Kalashnikov is a name
of a weapon.
Samisdat is a
literary term and samarskite is a metal
name.
Among Russian borrowings there is a term
denoting a game: bridge and a kinship
term: babushka.
Paulownia is a plant
name, samovar is a utensil and dacha is a building.
Thus Russian borrowings belong to different thematic groups, which can be explained by the fact that the cultural contacts between the two countries covered various aspects of life.
In conclusion, among Russian borrowings there are both proper nouns and common nouns and they belong to a variety of thematic groups.
Among common nouns there are also words that have been converted from proper nouns.
Some terms of foreign origin were also borrowed from Russian into English.
The majority of the Russian nouns have the same inflections in English as other English nouns.
Nevertheless there are also such words that have both Russian and English plural endings.
There are a few words that have only Russian plural endings. Some Russian loan words have two different spelling forms.
1.10 THE MEANING CHANGES OF THE
RUSSIAN RORROWINGS
Some Russian loanwords analyzed in the second chapter have extended their meanings in English. For example, the word agitprop has the general meaning ‘political propaganda promulgated chiefly in literature, drama, music, or art’. Nevertheless it is apparent that initially this word was used only in connection to the soviet political propaganda.
Now it seems to be applicable to political propaganda in other places.
Ex.: Here’s the agitprop intent of this
terror “propaganda by deed” followed by video replay: “The World
Trade Center was terror en masse, our ‘execution’ of Mr. Pearl is
terror in the particular (Bay, http://www.
There is also another Russian loanword gulag that has undergone a similar extention of meaning. In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary the following meaning of this word is registered: ‘the penal system of the U.S.S.R. consisting of a network of labor camps’. At the same time this word seems also to be applicable to the penal systems of other countries.
Ex.: Private prison companies, from 1983-1994 represent one of the biggest growth industries in America. The growth curve for the American Gulag looks remarkably like the graph for the growth of derivatives, and not without reason
The word babushka has two meanings in Russian: ‘grandmother’ and ‘old woman’. However, this word developed a new meaning in English: a ‘a usually triangularly folded kerchief for the head’; b : ‘a head covering resembling a babushka’. It is known that old Russian women wear triangularly folded shawls and because of this a certain triangularly folded kerchief got the name babushka in English. In addition a certain head covering resembling old women’s head covering has also the same name.
The ground for such a metaphor is similarity of form. It
must be mentioned that the well- known doll called matreshka in Russian has
the name Babushka in English. Ex.:Feel Like a Babushka Doll
Apparently, the reason why Russian dolls got the name babushka is that these
dolls have a head covering resembling the head covering of old Russian
women.
Thus this metaphor is also based on similarity of form. According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary the word tovarich has the meaning ‘comrade’. At the same time there is also a cocktail with the same name:
TOVARICH COCKTAIL
Cocktails
1 1/2 oz. (4.5 cl)
Vodka 3/4 oz. (22.5 ml) Kümmel
Juice of 1/2 Lime (Tovarich Cocktail.
Apparently the coctail got such a Russian name because of the fact that the main ingredience of it is vodka – a Russian product.
The original meaning of the word kasha is ‘a porridge made of grain or groats’. However, this word got a new additional meaning in English ‘kasha grain before cooking’. In the second chapter one example of the use of kasha in this meaning was given.
Thus grain is an ingredient necessary for making kasha and therefore in this case the meaning extension is based on metonymy.
Russian borrowings have developed their meanings in English in a variety of ways in accordance with the rules of the semantic system of English.
The result of the analyses of the semantic development of the Russian borrowings is contrary to the opinion that they only denote Russian phenomena and that they are not naturalized.
The reason why some linguists believe them not to
be naturalized is that there is a lack of thorough research on the Russian
borrowings and their development in English. Therefore new research
on the development of the Russian borrowings is needed.
Chapter II. BORROWINGS AS A WAY OF REPLENISHMENT OF THE VOCABULARY
Being an adaptive system, the vocabulary is constantly adjusting itself to the changing conditions of human communication. New notions appear, requiring new words to name them.
New words, expressions or neologisms are created for new things. The neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word. There is a problem of denomination. It is not still clear which words to consider new?
The most rational point is that new words are the ones that appeared in the last years of the previous generation.
The borrowed words are taken from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English.
They came in diffirent times. Early Latin borrowings were adopted in the 1st century BC (butter, chalk, kitchen). In the 5th century AD there penetrated a few Celtic words into English (cradle, London). In the 7th century AD, during the Christianisation, there were adopted many religious terms from Latin (priest, nun). From the end of the 7th century till the middle of the 11th century there penetrated Scandinavian words into the English language (window, husband, law, ugly, weak, call, take, die).
The Scandinavian words are similar in pronunciation to the Anglo-Saxon ones. Many Scandinavian words start with the sk-cluster: skill, skin, ski, skirt, sky. In 1066 when the Norman Conquest took place, England became a bilingual country. French was officially introduced into the life of the people.
The French words borrowed at that period are of the following layers: administrative, military terms (army, officer), educational (pupil, pencil, library), words of everyday life (dinner, river, uncle). In the Renaissance period there were borrowed numerous words from Latin and Greek connected with science (university, professor), Italian (piano, opera, violin etc.).
In the 18th-20th centuries the basis of the words became different due to the colonial expansion: Indian (pundit), Arabic (sherbet), Chinese etc. The Russian borrowings in the English language are of the following layers: prerevolutionary (before 1917 vodka, valenkis, pelmenis), sovietisms (preserve only Russian meaning: polit-bureau, 5-year-plan) and the perestroika period.
1.1 ASSIMILATION OF BORROWINGS
It is now essential to analyse the changes that 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 consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology, Ptolemy of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [ps], [pt], [pn], very frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were never used in the initial position.
For the same reason the initial [ks] was changed
into [z] (as inGr. xylophone).
The suffixes -ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced by the highly
productive Old English suffix -ere, as in L. Caesar>OE. Casere, L. su
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.
1.1 PHONETIC ASSIMILATION
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 [ε] in recent French
borrowings, alien to English speech, are rendered with the help of [ei]
(as in the words communiqué, chaussée, café).
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 spitz [∫pits] 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.
Even when a borrowed word seems at first sight to
be identical in form with its immediate etymon as OE. skill < Scand. skil; OE
1.3 GRAMMATICAL ASSIMILATION
Grammatical Assimilation. Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired hew grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words, as in
им. спутник Com. sing. Sputnik
род. спутника Poss. sing. Sputnik’s
дат. спутнику Com. pl. Sputniks
вин. спутник Poss. pl. Sputniks’
вин. спутником
предл. о спутнике
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 (L.) — phenome
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible simple 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 (cf. OFr. s'aunter), but it has changed its quality, it is preserved in all the other grammatical forms of the word (cf. saunters, sauntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English. The French reflexive pronoun s- has become fixed as an inseparable element of the word. The former Italian diminishing suffixes -etto, -otta, -ello(a), -cello in the words ballot, stiletto, umbrella cannot be distinguished without special historical analysis, unless one knows the Italian language.
The composite nature of the word portfolio is not seen either (cf. It. portafogli < porta — imperative of ‘carry’ + fogli — ’sheets of paper’).
This loss of morphological seams in borrowings may
be termed simplification by analogy with a similar process in native
words.1
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 the
course of time their word-building elements can be employed to form
new words.2
Thus the word bolshevik was at first indivisible in English, which is seen from the forms bolshevikism, bolshevikise, bolshevikian entered by some dictionaries. Later on the word came to be divided into the morphological elements bolshev-ik.
The new morphological division can be accounted for by the existence of a number of words containing these elements (bolshevism, bolshevist, bolshevise; sputnik, udarnik, menshevik).
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: L. barba
1.4 LEXICAL ASSIMILATION
Lexical Assimilation. 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 specialisation of meaning, as in the word hangar, denoting a building in which aeroplanes are kept (in Frenchit meant simply ’shed’) and revue, 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 verb move in Modern English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French mouvoir 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.
Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word is 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, whereas in the OE. fēolaze (MnE. fellow)
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 verb sur(o)under had the meaning of ‘overflow’.
In English -r(o)under was associated by mistake with round —круглый and the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘enclose
on all sides, encircle’ (MnE. surround). Old French estandard (L. estendere
Folk-etymologisation is a slow process; people first attempt to give
the foreign borrowing its foreign pronunciation, but gradually popular
use evolves a new pronunciation and spelling.
CONCLUSIONS
Permanent diplomatic and cultural contacts between Russia and England were established in the 16th century.
The visits of the different ambassadors and trades-men to Russia were depicted in the works of various English authors. In this way the English got knowledge of Russia and its culture. In addition, for a long time an exchange of ideas has taken place.
Russia imported many skilled English specialists and the works of some Russian authors were known in England.
Cultural contacts between the two countries included art, science, literature etc. After the October Revolution many Russians immigrated to England and they published their newspapers and magazines there.
As a result of these cultural contacts many Russian words were borrowed into English. All Russian words chosen for analysis from the two dictionaries are nouns.
Among them there are both proper and common nouns. There are also some common nouns that converted from proper nouns. The majority of the nouns analyzed have -s as the plural suffix just like most English nouns.
However, there are also nouns that have two endings: the Russian -i/y ending and the English -s ending.
Some words have only the Russian plural ending. Among words borrowed from Russian there are also terms which originally belonged to other languages. Russian borrowings belong to a variety of the thematic groups, which can be explained by the fact that contacts between the two countries covered various aspects of life.
Russian borrowings developed their meanings in a variety of ways. Many words have new meanings in English and they do not denote only Russian phenomena anymore.
Taking into account the analyzed facts it is not possible to agree with the opinion that the Russian borrowings are few and that they denote only Russian phenomena and are not naturalized.
Unfortunately, the very restricted character of this work makes it impossible to analyze all Russian words borrowed into English and their morphologic and semantic features. However, the analyzed facts are enough to understand the character of the development of the Russian borrowings in English.
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