Sources of phraseology.

1) everyday life. F.e.: to wash the dirty linen in public.

2) history. F.e.: to cross the Rubicon; Rome was not built in a day; Greek gift.

3) world literature. F.e.: to rub the lamp (“Arabian nights”).

4) the Bible. F.e.: the slaughter of the innocent; a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

5) other languages. F.e.: blue blood (from Spanish); to lose face (from Chinese).

6) mass media and quotations

7) films, plays

Borrowing.

A borrowing (a borrowed word) is a word taken from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

Reasons for borrowing:

1) to name new objects

2) to differentiate the existing concepts. F.e.: “to love” and “to adore”.

3) to express new concepts

4) words can be borrowed blindly for no reason at all. There is no gap in the vocabulary which needs to be filled in.

Ways of borrowing new words:

1) cultural and language contacts

2) the spread of religion

3) wars, conquests and invasions

4) globalization

5) global systems of communication (Internet)

6) occasional borrowings

English language is a unique mixture of Germanic, Romanic elements, which has resulted in the international character of the vocabulary.

About 70-80% of words in English are borrowed.

Classification of borrowings:

1) according to what is borrowed

1.1 borrowings proper – these are words borrowed from another language and assimilated to this or that extend.

1.2 translation loans / calques – the new word is created from the native material according to a foreign pattern which is borrowed; the word is usually created by means of word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation. F.e.: небоскрёб; master piece (from German Meisterstück).

1.3 semantic borrowings / semantic loans – the meaning is borrowed from another language; a new appears due to the influence of a related word in another language. F.e.: pioneer. Now this word in English has two meaning: an explorer and a member of Pioneer organization.

1.4 morphemic borrowing – a morpheme is borrowed. F.e.: “экс” from English “ex”.

2) according to the degree of assimilation

Assimilation is a partial or total conformation of a borrowed word to the phonetic, graphical or morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantics.

2.1 completely assimilated – we cannot guess the origin from the form of the word. F.e.: street, cheese.

2.2 partially assimilated

2.2.1 words which are not assimilated semantically (blind borrowings) – they do not form derivatives, they do not develop new meaning, they do not form collocation and rarely enter phraseological units. F.e.: mantilla (from Spanish).

2.2.2 borrowings not assimilated grammatically – they don’t have the system of grammatical forms peculiar to the part of speech to which they belong. F.e.: criterion – criteria; crisis – crises. BUT: index – indices / indexes.

2.2.3 borrowings not assimilated phonetically. Usually it is French borrowings, which still has the stress on the last syllable. F.e.: machine, garage.

2.2.4 borrowing not assimilated graphically – their spelling includes foreign letter symbols. F.e.: Tromsø, café.

2.3 not assimilated at all /barbarism - words which are not assimilated in any way, for which there are corresponding English equivalents. F.e.: ciao (Italian) – bye (English); hors d'oeuvre (French).

The fate of borrowed words in English:

1) they can become completely assimilated

2) they can change their meaning in competition with the native words. F.e.: In French “large” meant “wide”, but it was not needed, now “large” mean “big in size”.

3) a native word can change its meaning under the influence of the borrowed one. F.e.: heofon (OE), steorfan (OE).

4) sometimes native words can disappeared under the influence of borrowed ones. F.e.: “niman” (OE) disappeared under the influence of “take”

5) word can become frequent. F.e.: they, them, their (Scandinavian borrowings).

6) borrowed word can disappear after a period of time

7) a native word and a borrowed can exist as an absolute synonyms, as free variant. F.e.: бегемот – гиппопотам.