A study of major sources of borrowings in english vocabulary = nghiên cứu những nguồn vay mượn chính trong từ vựng tiếng anh

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY HOÀNG THỊ MINH HẢO A STUDY OF MAJOR SOURCES OF BORROWINGS IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG NGUỒN VAY MƯỢN CHÍNH TRONG TỪ VỰNG

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE

FACULTY

HOÀNG THỊ MINH HẢO

A STUDY OF MAJOR SOURCES OF BORROWINGS

IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG NGUỒN VAY MƯỢN CHÍNH TRONG TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH)

Field: English Linguistics

HA NOI, 2019

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE

FACULTY

HOÀNG THỊ MINH HẢO

A STUDY OF MAJOR SOURCES OF BORROWINGS

IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG NGUỒN VAY MƯỢN CHÍNH TRONG TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH)

Field: English Linguistics

SUPERVISOR: ĐỖ TIẾN ĐỨC, MA

HA NOI, 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would love to show my huge and sincere gratitude to my supervisor, DoTien Duc for his patience, guidance and support throughout the time Icarried out my thesis, without whom this project would not have beencompleted I would also like to thank all both Vietnamese and foreign teachers

of English at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2 for their guidance and adviceduring the time I did the study

I am also grateful to my family and friends who always stand by me in any

situation to help me go over many troubles and difficulties through the course

ABSTRACT

The study focuses on how some languages have affected English

by specifically pointing out the major sources of borrowing of Englishvocabulary f rom each language In detail, it fully deals with how words

in English has been borrowed from some other languages and paves theways for readers to be able to recognize loan words or borrowings innewspapers The study is done with the process of collecting a lot of data,synthesizing and analysing the materials in specific method to bring aboutreliable findings which are the four major sources of borrowings in Englishvocabulary from Celtic, German, Latin and French, along with theidentification of loan words from these languages used in Englishnewspapers The research hopefully meets the needs of discoveringEnglish language by readers and makes contributions to the development oflanguage study in general and learning English in particular

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled:

A study of major sources of borrowings in English vocabulary

Is my own study in the fulfilment of the requirement for the degree

of Bachelor of Art at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2 The study is theresult of hard – working time by the enthusiastic guide of my supervisor andother people

LIST OF TABLES AND DIAGRAMS

Diagram 1: Germanic languages (Barber, C., 1993, p.34)

Diagram 2: North Germanic languages (Barber, C., 1993,

p.35) Diagram 3: West Germanic (Barber, c., 1993, p.35)

Diagram 4: East Germanic (Barber, C., 1993, p.36)

Table 1 Abbreviations of borrowings)

Table 2: Borrowings used in the

extract)

TABLE OF CONTENTSPART I: INTRODUCTION

words 6

1.4 Classification of borrowings in English vocabulary

2.2.1 A brief overview on the history of the German languages

1 Reasons for the

study

PART I INTRODUCTION

It is true that both English native speakers and non-native speakers caneasily realize a lot of same words or same-looking words when they compareEnglish and another languages like French or Latin This is because of the factthat English has a close relationship with other languages In other words,English vocabulary contains a variety of borrowings from various sourcelanguages However, it is very difficult for those studying English to recognizewhich words are borrowed ones, and which source languages these borrowingsoriginally belong to The researcher herself also finds borrowings a hardsubject However, it is also the matter she is interested in most because it isdifficult but interesting and useful for the study Last but not least, duringher study at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2, the subject has not beenseriously touched upon yet All of the reasons above have encouraged her tochoose the subject on borrowings as her thesis for graduation

All the studies of English vocabulary so far have not clearly identified themajor sources of borrowings in English vocabulary This encourages me tocarry out a study about this as a way to discover from which otherlanguages, a big part of English vocabulary originates

2 Aims of the

study

In this study, the researcher would like to give an overview of the followingissues:

 The generalizations about English borrowings

 The major sources of borrowing that have the most influence on

English vocabulary

questions

4 Scope of the

study

There are many languages that have contributed words to English vocabulary

It is, however, due to the lack of time as well as experience, in thisgraduation paper I only focus on the major sources of borrowings that have

the most influence on English vocabulary, namely Celtic, Germanic, Latin, and French.

5 Methods of the

study

As this study is a theoretical-based one, the researcher collected materialsand information as data related to sources of borrowings in Englishvocabulary, as well as synthesized and analysed them to have an overview ofthe research topic Then all the detailed information is theoretically studied toget the results of how English vocabulary has been borrowed from otherlanguages and major sources of these borrowings

6 Organization of the

study

The thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, the development andthe conclusion

Part 1: The introduction gives the reasons for the study, history, research

questions, aims, scope and methods of the study It also shows the organization

of the study Part 2: The development consists three chapters

Chapter 1 deals with the general knowledge about English borrowings

Chapter 2 works on the major sources of borrowings in English

PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW1.1 Native words and borrowed

words

English is considered as a multiple-characteristic language in the world One ofthe most common characteristic is the influence of foreign elements in itself.Besides, many linguists supposed that English language system which containsgrammar and phonetic system is very stable and difficult to be changed byany influence By considering the usage of different sides and manycomponents of borrowed elements in enriching English vocabulary, peoplesee the basement and the full development of English vocabulary Basing

on the origin of words, they can be divided English vocabulary into twolayers: native words and borrowed words (or loan words or borrowings)

1.1.1 Native

words

Native English words are words of Anglo-Saxon brought to the British Isles

in the fifth century by the Germanic They are subdivided into the Angles, theSaxons, and the Jutes

Surprisingly, this layer of words takes up only about 30% of the whole-English vocabulary (Truong, H T., 1995, p 101) but mostly makes up thebasic stock of words- the foundation and the score of the Englishvocabulary They denote the most common objects and phenomena of nature

(e.g sky, earth, sun, star, rain, wind, tree…), name of human beings (e.g man, woman, mother, father, arm, foot…), actions of everyday life (e.g eat, drink, do, make…), or primary qualities and properties (e.g big, small, good, bad, cold, hot…) and so on and so forth.

Native words have been undergoing considerable changes, that is, newwords or new meanings of old words appear while some old words or meanings

are no longer used or even drop out of the language entirely However, as

we have mentioned, they mostly establish the underlying stock of words, sothey are considered most stable, most significant for the communicativepurposes

1.1.2 Borrowed

words

Borrowed words are words borrowed from other languages (the sourcelanguages) The may be completely or partially assimilated in the Englishvocabulary and take up approximately 70% of the total

Distinguishing between borrowings and loan words is necessary A borrowing

can be considered as a loanword Borrowing is the process of adapting wordsfrom a foreign language to native language "Loan" and "borrowing" are not literal terms that those who use different languages from their own mother

tongue defined It is advisable for her to use the word borrowing(s) throughout

this graduation paper English has come through many time periods in which

a large number of words from other languages affected in it These periods occurred at the same time with periods of main cultural interference betweenEnglish native speakers and those speaking many foreign languages of which

Latin, Germanic, Celtic and French stand out as the major contributors,

which, of course, have greatly influenced on the English vocabulary Apart from these significant sources of borro wings in the English vocabulary, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Persian,

Japanese, Chinese and so forth have also done their part in the development of Modern English vocabulary

It is also necessary to distinguish between “source of borrowings’’ and

“origin of borrowings’’ It is commonly accepted that “source of borrowings’’

is the language from which some words were borrowed in English On thecontrary, “origin of borrowings’’ is the language to which this word

belongs or can be traced For example, the word paper was borrowed from

French, but its origin is Greek

borrowings

1.2.1 Non-linguistic

causes

English words may be borrowed through various contacts between Britain andother countries These contacts may have been through business, wars, periods

of peace, culture and so on Among these, wars, including invasions andoccupations, stand out as the primary cause that stimulates the borrowingprocess It is because during invasions and occupations the naturalpsychological reaction of the oppressed

nation is to reject and condemn the language of the oppressors However,the Norman Conquest (1066) seemed to be an exception since Norman’slevel of civilization was much higher than that of the British, and the Normanculture of the eleventh century was likely superior to that of the Saxons.The impact of the Norman Conquest on the English language like thatmade by the earlier Norse - speaking invaders was primarily confined tothe word stock As a result, an immense body of French language wasfinally adopted to turn into a part of English language system.

Despite the dominant interference of the foreign elements, the English language system has enrichened by adding a lot of new borrowings

1.2.2 Linguistic causes

It is hugely inadequate if we only mention the non-linguistic causes of

borrowings into English A large number of English words are also borrowed under the necessity of new linguistic demands Firstly, as we can see, Britain once experienced a variety of invasions These invaders brought them words conveying the meanings of new things, ideas, notions, etc., which led to the necessity to name them For instance, Normans and Romans who used to occupy Britain for a long time brought words like

street, cheese, court, army, and state…to this country and they have been

used ever since Secondly, the cause can be traced back to the Renaissance

in England that because of technology development, huge demand of

discovering the world and printing techniques, more books written by Latin languages became popular To widen the number of readers, people change it into English and kept some special Latin words Examples of Latin

borrowings include benefit, exist, virus, fact, explanation, eradicate… Last

but not least, it was also necessary to replace a word group denoting one object or idea by a single word For example, “the ground of school or

college’’ was replaced by the Americanism “campus’’ In short, these

reasons can thoroughly explain why English has been keeping borrowing words from other languages to enrich its extensive vocabulary Usually,

borrowings are due to the combination of both linguistic and non-linguistic factors.

1.3.2.1 Completely assimilated

words

Completely assimilated words are usually old borrowings Most of themare frequent and stylistically neutral words They make a significantcontribution to word-formation in English

e.g., cheese, wine, street, etc (Latin)

Husband, fellow, happy, etc

(Scandinavian) Table, face, finish, etc

(French)

It can be hard to distinguish a great deal of completed assimilated wordsfrom native words because all the words of this group follow all thephonetic, grammatical, and lexical rules of the English language

• Semantically non – assimilated words are words that denote objects, notions peculiar to the country from which they come.

e.g., kimono (Japan), sheik (Egypt), kangaroo

e.g., police, cartoon, prestige,

1.4.1 In terms of the history of English

borrowings

The remarkable thing is the fact that English acquired some words fromLatin before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to English and brought English

a number of Germanic dialects However, as what is left today, the number of

word is counted under a hundred (e.g., wall, street, cheap, wine…), therefore

could be declared that Old English was majorly made by Germanic As a result,loanwords in this stage are not as much as borrowed words in MiddleEnglish and Modern English It is estimated that only 30% of Old Englishvocabulary contained loanwords, whereas the figure is 70 % in today’s Englishvocabulary.

This brief historical summary of English borrowings helps lead us tothe classification of borrowings in English vocabulary into Old English (OE),Middle English (ME) and Modern English (Mod E)

of Anglo – Saxon with Scandinavian languages (Old Norse and OldDanish), the language of the Viking invaders.

Examples of French borrowings include parliament, government, judge, jury, beauty, romance, and many others However, English always remained the

speech of the common people, and in its struggle for survival, strengthened itsresources by, as we can see, absorbing approximately

10,000 words from French and innumerable other words from

strange words and their use In English sentences caused a reaction of distasteamong writers of the seventeenth century The denounced “inkhorn’’ terms –

their phrase for obscure and pedantic words like accersited for “brought’’ and adjuvate for “aid’’, both derived from Latin A few words were also

borrowed from Italian and Spanish The Italian

borrowings include words to do with warfare (fuse, salvo, squadron…), with the art (opera, fresco, madrigal ) and with commerce (argosy, artichoke…)

and so on Besides, Spanish loans, too, are often concerned with warfare

(cargo, sherry…) (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009) Meanwhile, Late Modern

English saw the spread of English around the globe, the development ofoverseas colonial dialects and the massive increase in vocabulary under theinfluence of technology and scientific achievements

1.4.2 In terms of the manner of

borrowings

1.4.2.1.

Doublets

Doublets are words originating from the same source but differing in

phonemic shape and meaning For example, the words shirt and skirt etymologically descend from the same root Shirt is a native word, and skirt

is a Scandinavian borrowing Their phonemic shape is different, and yet there

is a certain resemblance, which reflects their common origin Theirmeanings are also different but easily associated: they both denote articles

1.4.2.4 Translation –

loans

Translation – loans are words and expressions borrowed from a foreignlanguage utilizing translation Such words can be translated accord ing tothe meaning as well as the sound They may be translations of the wholephrase of it, or morphe me

– by morpheme, or even words – by

words

e.g., skyskraber (Danish) – skyscraper (Mod.

Meaning Extensions The Old English word gift meant “the price of wine’’

while in the Scandinavian it means “present’’ It can say that the word gift

has had new connotation under the impact of the Scandinavian language

1.5.

Summary

In this chapter, I have generalized the borrowings in English vocabulary Itincludes certain aspects of borrowings such as definition, motivation,assimilation, and classification of borrowings in English vocabulary

PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 2

Celtic languages are divided into two branches, namely Goidelic (or Gaelic) and Brythonic (or British) The Goidelic languages consist of Irish, Highland

Scottish and Manx The Brythonic is made up of Welsh, Cornish andBreton Of these languages, perhaps, Welsh is the one to survive moststrongly in the present day, mainly due to the efforts of the Welsh managing

to preserve their culture and identity part from the English (Lovis, 2001).Celtic borrowed words in English have gradually disappeared because thestigma of British community to it thousand years ago This language becameweaken and left a few traces in geographical words and place names (thelatter will be discussed more in the following part).The survival of the Celticlanguage has been a matter of pride, and they have survived mainly wherenumbers were large enough to enable its survival though everyday usage, as

well as having their importance emphasized through the establishment of abody of literary work Unfortunately, the various branches becamegeographically isolated, preventing any opportunity at

standardization as an alternative to the centralized English social andpolitical structure (Lovis, 2001).

2.1.2 Celtic borrowings- clues in place

names

According to Jonathan Culpeper (1997, p.1), the most important factor inthe development of English has been the arrival of successive way ofinvaders and settlers speaking different languages The history of placenames in Britain is closely connected to the dominance of languages at variouspoints of time

As we have mentioned, long before the Germanic tribes arrived in Britain.Briton, one of the common Celtic clans has owned this land For generations,the language of the Celts was referred to as “British” Even though, theinfluence of Celtic in English language is not much and has partially traces inplace names:

- Cities: Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow, London, York

- Rivers: Avon, Clyde, Dee, Don, Forth, Thames, Darent, Dart

- Regions: Argyll, Cumbria, Devon, Dyfed, Glamorgan, Kent, Lothian

We cannot be sure what these place names might originally mean because,like many other place names, they predate written records, which arepreserved in significant quantities only from about 700 AD More specific,conjecture is also the way of studying the development of place names byputting these words (Celtics or Welsh) in comparison or infers hints in text.Thus, people can roughly guess the meanings of the following place – name

elements.For example, Pen (Welsh pen) = top, hill (e.g Pendock, Penrirth); Bar

= wooded hill (e.g Barnet)

In some studies, especially one by Charles Barber (1993), linguists havetried to explain the meanings of a few existing Celtic place names today For

example, Avon and Ouse are Celtic words for ‘water’ and ‘stream’; Darent and Dart are all forms of British names for ‘oak river’; the Thames is the

‘dark river’ (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009) Meanwhile, such region names as

Kent and Devon are Celtic, and so are the first elements in Cornwall and

Cumberland, the latter means ‘the land of the Cymry (that is, the Welsh)(Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009).

Apart from those place names, a number of names are compounds of Celticand

Anglo – Saxon words (Lovis, 2001) Two Celtic words for ‘hill’ bre and pen

appear

in a number of names – for instance, Brill in Buckinghamshire is a combination of bre and dun; Pensax in Herefordshire means ‘hill of the Anglo

– Saxons’ giving an indication of the proximity but isolation in which Celticcommunities would have existed until they were gradually pushed to thecorners of Britain by the Anglo – Saxons (Lovis, 2001)

In short, though the contribution of the Celtic languages to the Englishlanguage seems disproportionate to the importance and longevity of the Celticculture within British society overtime, it is important to remember that theplace names, which have been created, are still an useful reminder of theways in which past society viewed their surroundings In addition, thenames they chose feature the characteristics of the land as those wholived during that time observed it Moreover, the failure of Celtic toinfluence Old English to any great extent does not mean that the Britons wereall killed or driven out (Lovis, 2001) Today the people who inhabit thoseareas take a pride in preserving the Celtic language, mainly surviving inplace names, as a way of protecting their heritage (Lovis, 2001)

of language which is Proto- Germanic, one of common dialects of European Proto – Germanic dialects were increasingly noticed when thenumber of people who spoke Germanic was expanded Hence, it is easier

Indo-to determine three arms of dialect family consisting North Germanic, EastGermanic, and West Germanic as illustrated in the following tree:

Proto-North Germanic East Germanic WestGermanic

Diagram 1: Germanic languages (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009, p.

North Germanic (Old

This group belongs to the High German dialects of southern Germany, theLow German dialects of Northern Germany (which in their earliest recordedforms are called Old Saxon), Dutch, Frisian, and English (Barber, Beal, &Shaw, 2009) Among these languages, Frisian seems to be most closely related

to English because it is said that before the Anglo – Saxons migrated toEngland, they had been near the neighbors of the Frisians However, in thisgroup, it is the High German and the

Low German that make the greatest contribution to the borrowing process in the

English vocabulary The below diagram is a family tree for the West

Diagram 3: West Germanic (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009, p 90).

Germanic

East Germanic dialects were spoken by the tribes that expanded of the Oder

around the shores of the Baltic They included the Goths whose Gothic is theonly one East Germanic language that remains a few records today (Barber,Beal, & Shaw, 2009) The main record of Gothic is the fragmentary remains

of a translation of a Bible, made by the bishop Wulfila in the middle of thefourth century (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009) However, all the EastGermanic languages are now dead In other words, no East Germaniclanguage has survived into our own time (Barber, Beal, & Shaw, 2009) Yet,the Gothic is even now being studied by linguists for it is the earliest writtenlanguage in Germanic group This chart shows clearer about East Germaniclanguages

Burgundian Vandal Gothic

The settlements of the Scandinavians in England resulted in a big amount of names of places in the North and the East, the common of which are with Scan

examples:

Table 1: Common Scan components

Indeed, the integration of the English and the Scan settlers progressedrapidly; in many districts, people became bilingual which was an easyaccomplishment since many of the most common words in the two languageswere much alike

At the beginning, the Scan borrowings were limited because they leveled

up the degree of language diversity Gradually, they penetrated into individualspheres of the English language due to the mixed feature of the language, andthen passed into London English and the national language, as well It isnoteworthy that the number of Scan borrowings in the Northern dialectshas always large than that in the Midland or in theSouth Probly, in ME therehave been more Scan words in current usage that the survivals today In

regional language, there are dead words, there are maintaining words (e.g kirt means ‘church’ or daz ‘dew’) According to Thomson Heinle (1993, p.293),

the total number pf Scan borrowings in English is approximately 900words

It is very difficult to distinguish Scan borrowings from English words Thereason is that they are deeply penetrated into everyday English Thecharacteristics of Scan words are usually ordinary and has one syllable such as

dirt, bank, birth, trust, egg, fellow, knife, and so on In other words, they are also are, they and their In addition, a good number of sc- or sk- words today are of Scan origin e.g scathe, score, scowl, scarpe, scrub, skill, skin, skirt and sky.

Besides, a number of Scan words have entered English during the modern

period The best known of these are muggy, rug, scud, and ski, which are

considered to be dated from the later years of the nineteenth century Other

words like rune (1685), saga (1709) and scald (1763) are all from Icelandic The Swedish word ombudsman meaning ‘official’ who looks into citizens’

complaints against government bureaus and against other officials’ has as yetbeen lack of preference though it is entered in recent dictionaries

b Changes in English vocabulary under the influence of Scandinavian language

- The English word sometimes displaces the cognate Scan word e.g the

sound sk, which had been inherited from their Germanic ancestors, was soon changed to sh as in fish instead of fisk.

- The Scan word usually substitute the English word that has relation inorigin to

Scan language e.g banana – banana

(Scan.word)