The Borrowed Words Process Development in English
MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY
The English and Literature department
«The borrowed words process development in English»
Gulistan‑2006
Introduction
Borrowing as means of replenishing the vocabulary of present-day Uzbek is of much greater importance and is comparatively active only in the field of scientific terminology and social-political terminology as many terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes, mostly morphemes from classical languages.
The part played by borrowings in the vocabulary of a language depends upon the history of each given language, being conditioned by direct linguistic contacts and political, economic and cultural relationships between nations. Uzbek history contains innumerable occasions for all types of such contacts. It is the vocabulary system of each language that is particularly responsive to every change in the life of the speaking community.
The development of the contacts between nations and the dominance of English language as business language cause a big flow of words into Uzbek language, thus enriching its word – stock.
The influence which English exerted on our language is seen in all aspects of life, social, political and hardly any walk of live was unaffected by it. The first point to be emphasized is that here we are not dealing with completely new ideas introduced from a different type of civilization and culture, but rather the imposing by a dominant race of their own terms for ideas which were already familiar to the subject race. Such a state of affairs obviously means that there will arise pairs of words the native and the foreign term for the same idea and a struggle for survival between the two, so that one of the words was eventually lost from the language, or survived only with some differentiation of meaning.
Borrowed words have been called «The milestones of philology» – said O. Jesperson – because they permit us (show us) to fix appreciatively the dates of linguistic changes. They show us the course of civilization and give us information of the nations». The well-known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed. Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes of factors; linguistic and extra-linguistic.
Borrowed words have been considered in many scientific works, monographs and publications. But detailed analysis of words borrowed into Uzbek from English in detail hasn’t been done so far.
The main constituent part of the vocabulary system of any language is formed by borrowed words. Only borrowed words which were loaned from English into Uzbek have been considered in the qualification paper.
The actuality of the qualification paper is determined by increased interest of linguistic in studying the origin of words and the source of borrowings. Still much is left to investigate.
The purpose of the qualification paper is to reveal borrowed words that were loaned from English into Uzbek and determine the origin and the source of them.
The tasks of the investigation include:
· to reveal English borrowings in Uzbek language.
· to determine the reasons of enriching the vocabulary of any language.
· to investigate the correlation of borrowings with native words.
The problem under consideration in the qualification paper possesses definite theoretical value, for, fist of all, it is based on the principles of approach, which is, revealed on all the stage of investigation. The results of the investigation present interest for a number of fields of contemporary linguistics: linguistic typology, theory of translation, languishing, lexicology, theoretical grammar, lexicography.
Practical significance of the results of investigation consists in the fact they can be used in:
1. in teaching English for Uzbek and Russian students.
2. in compiling practical courses of English.
3. in compiling bilingual dictionaries.
4. in writing lectures on lexicology and theory of translation.
Investigations have been carried out on a vast language material, based on lexicographic sources. We used mainly monolingual, bilingual and encyclopedic dictionaries.
The structure of the qualification paper.
It includes introduction, chapters, conclusion, list of used literature.
Chapter I «Borrowed words and their properties» is dedicated to the study of borrowed words, their origin and their significance.
In the 2nd Chapter the problem of assimilation of borrowed words has been discussed.
1. Borrowed words and their properties
1.1 Etymological survey of the word-stock of a language
Etymologically the vocabulary of any language consists of two groups – the native words and the borrowed words. E.g., in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The etymological linguistic analysis showed that the borrowed stock of words is lager than the native stock of words. Uzbek language, as well as English has been in long and close touch with other languages, mainly Arabic, Persian, Russian.
A native word is a word which belongs to the original stock. An English native word is a word which belongs to Anglo-Saxon origin. To the native words we include words from Common Germanic language and from Indo-European stock.
A borrowed word, a loan word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the language.
The native words in English are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin. The native words of Uzbek language belongs to Turkic language family, the origin of which based on Altay-Yenisey manuscripts. It has been noticed that native words readily fall into definite semantic groups. Among them we find terms of kinship: father‑ота, mother‑она, son‑угил, daughter‑киз, brother‑ака etc; words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature: Sun‑куёш, moon‑ой, star‑юлдуз, wind‑шамол, water‑сув; names of animals and birds: bull‑хукиз, cat‑мушук, goose‑гоз; parts of human body: arm‑кул, ear‑кулок, eye‑куз, heart – юрак
Words belonging to the subsets of the native word – stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word – building power and enter a number of set expressions, e. g., watch DE Weccan is one of the 500 most frequent English words. It may be used as a verb in more than ten different sentence patterns, with or without object and adverbial modifiers and combined with different classes of words.
1.2 Borrowed words, kinds of borrowed words
Borrowed words are words taken over from other languages. Many linguists consider foreign influence plays the most important role in the history of any language.
But the grammar and phonetic system are very stable and are not often influenced by other languages.
For example, in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages mainly Latin, French and Old Norse. 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 and who nudged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors. Who brought with them a lot of new nations 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.
Uzbek language also developed under the influence of Persian, Arabic and later Russian languages. Persian language spread in our territory in 500–300BC, since that time peoples of Central Asia have been in close contact with Iran, the birthplace of Persian language. Till 15th century it was «Fashion» and desirable to write poems and prosaic works in Persian, though old Turkic language was also used among nation, mainly by ordinary people. In the VII century Arabs conquered Central Asia, carrying their religion and language to the peoples. Thus, Arabic language was predominant till XI–XII centuries. Books were written in Arabic language too. e.g. outstanding scientists and scholars Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Farabi, Beruni created their works in Arabic language. Only in XV century Alisher Navoi, great writer and statesman proved the beauty and importance of the Turkic language, starting to write his best masterpieces in this language, though he knew Persian and Arabic languages very well. And starting with XVIII century Uzbek language was under the influence of Russian language. In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a ruled placed on the middle English period and in Uzbek it is middle Turkic language.
Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in resent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. They refer to various fields of social – political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of them (41%) is scientific and technical terms.
When we speak about the role of native and borrowed words in the language we must not take into consideration only the number of them but their semantic, stylistic character, their word building ability, frequency value, collocability (valency) and the productivity of their word-building patterns.
If we approach to the study of the role of native and borrowed words from this point of view we see, though the native words are not numerous they play an important role in the English and Uzbek languages. They have value, great word – forming power, wide collocability high frequency, many meanings and they are stylistically neutral. Almost all words of native origin belong to very important semantic groups. The number and character of the 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.
The well known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed.
It must be pointed out that while the general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of through the purely linguistic reasons for borrowings are still open to investigation. The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.
Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes or factors: linguistic and extra-linguistic. Economic, cultural, industrial, political relations of speakers of the language with other countries refer to extra-linguistic factors.
For example, 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 of the Scandinavian tribes was the language of the conquerors. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other 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. The same is in Uzbek language. Due to the expansion of Islam religion, Arabic was used for centuries in Central Asia as the language of science and religion(1). For about two centuries Russian language hold a dominant position in the nations of former Soviet Union. It was priority to know Russian and it was a language of communication and friendship. These factors are extra-linguistic ones.
The absence of equivalent words in the language to express new subjects or a phenomena makes people to borrow words. E.g. the words football, volleyball, pitchman in Uzbek; to economize the linguistic means, i.e. to use a foreign word instead of a long native expressions and others are called linguistic causes.
The closer the two interacting languages are in structure the easier it is for words of one language to penetrate into the other.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways through oral speech (by immediate contact between the people) and through written speech by indirect contact through books) Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adopter. Written borrowings are often rather long and they are unknown to many people, speaking the language.
We distinguish translation loans, borrowings proper and semantic loans. Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the language but according to patterns taken from another language, by way of literal morpheme – for – morpheme translation, e.g. wall-newspaper – деворий газета.
The term «semantic loan» is used to denote the development in a word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language. The English word pioneer meant «explorer» and «one who is among the first in new fields of activity.» now under the influence of the Russian word «Пионер» it has come to mean «a member of the Young Pioneers’ Organization»
Borrowings proper are words which are taken from another language with their sound graphic forms and their meaning.
1.3 The influence of borrowings on the vocabulary of the language
The number of borrowings on Old English was meager. In the Middle English period there was an influx of loans. It is often contended, that since the Norman conquest borrowing has been the chief factor in the enrichment of the English vocabulary and as a result there was a sharp decline in the productivity and role of word-formation. Historical evidence, however, testifies to the fact that throughout its entire history, even in the periods of the mightiest influxes of borrowings, other processes no less intense, were in operation – word – formation and semantic development, which involved both native and borrowed elements. If the estimation of the role of borrowings is based on the study of words recorded in the dictionary, it is easy to overestimate the effect of the foreign words, as the number of native words is extremely small compared with the number of borrowings recorded. The only true way to estimate the relation of the native to the borrowed element is to consider the two as actually used in speech. If one counts every word used, including repetitions, in some reading matter, the proportion of native to borrowed words will be quite different. On such a count, every writer uses considerable more native words than borrowings. Shakespeare, for example has 90%, Milton 81%, Tennyson 88%. This shows how important is the comparatively small nucleus of native words. Different borrowing are marked by different frequency value. Those well established in the vocabulary may be as frequent in speech as native words, whereas other occur very rarely. The great number of borrowings in English left some imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the volume of its vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary. But the adoption of foreign words must not be understood as were quantities change. Any importation into the lexical system brings about semantic and stylistic changes in the words of this language and changes in its synonymic groups.
It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already in English the adopted word very often displaced the native word. In most cases, however, the borrowed words and synonymous native words (or words borrowed earlier) remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and use. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. The synonymic groups became voluminous and acquired many words rarely used. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.
As a result of the differentiation in meaning between synonymous words many native words or words borrowed earlier narrowed their meaning or sphere of application.
Abundant borrowing intensified the difference between the word stock of the literary national language and dialects as well as between British English and American English. On the one hand a number of words were borrowed into the literary national language which are not to be found in the dialects. In a number of cases the dialects have preserved some Anglo-Saxon words which were replaced by borrowings in the literary language. On the other hand, a number of words were borrowed into dialects are not used throughout the country.
In spite of the numerous outside linguistic influences and the etymological heterogeneity of its vocabulary the English language is still, in essential characteristics a Germanic language. It has retained a ground work of Germanic words and grammar. A comparative study of the nature and role of native and borrowed words show that borrowing has never been the chief means of replenishing the English vocabulary. Word-formation and semantic development were throughout the entire history of the English language much more productive than borrowing. Besides most native words are marked by a higher frequency value. The great number of borrowings bringing with them new phonon-morphological types, new phonetic morphological and semantic features left its imprint upon the English language. On the other hand under the influence of the borrowed element words already existing in the English changed to some extent their semantic structure, collectability, frequency and word forming ability. Borrowing also considerably enlarged the English vocabulary and brought about some changes in English synonymic groups, in the distribution of the English vocabulary through sphere of application and in the lexical divergence between the two variants of the literary national language and its dialects.
Uzbek language is also under constant influence of borrowings. We are living in the age of progress and technology. New discoveries new inventions, bring about new notions which are accepted by languages, and Uzbek language is also among them. The words connected with development of technology, sport terms, everyday words have been penetrating into Uzbek language from other languages, especially from English, Russian and through Russian or English from many European languages.
In its turn many Uzbek words entered the word stock of world languages, such as of sport terms: Kurash, halol, chala, the names of quinine: plov, manti, somsa, the names of clothes: chapan and etc.
When in two languages we find no trace of he exchange of loan words one way or the other. We are safe to infer that the two nations have had nothing to do with each other, but if they have been in contact, the number of the loan-words, and still more the quality of the loan-words, if rightly interpreted, will inform us of their reciprocal relations, they will show us which of them has been the more fertile in ideas and on what domains of human activity each has been superior of the other. If all other sources of information were closed to us except such loan-words in our modern North-European languages as «piano», «soprano», «opera», «libretto», «tempo», «adagio» etc. we should still have no hesitation in drawing the conclusion that Italian music has played a great role all over Europe.
There are many words, one a native word, the other a Romance loan, originally of lither identical or similar meaning with some distinction made today, such as «freedom», and «liberty», «happiness», and «felicity», «help», and «aid», «love», and «charity», and we should find that the native word has a more emotional sense is homely and unassuming whereas the loan word is colder, aloof more dignified more formal.
1.4 Recent Translation Theoryand Linguistic Borrowing in theModern Sino-Chinese
Fascinating developments in the new field of translation studies may help us advance our understanding of the evolving vocabulary of the Chinese Revolution in the twentieth century. Indeed, there has been an unconscious theoretical convergence between translation studies outside the China field and modern Chinese cultural history. The key concept is «culture» writ large in both cases.
Translation theory has been virtually unknown in China until recent times. It is not that the Chinese historically have never been forced to confront the issue; on the whole, however, until the later decades of the nineteenth century, most of those who came to China were prepared to communicate in Chinese. The important exceptions were the nativization of the Buddhist canon and the undoubtedly extensive use of Manchu during the early decades of the Qing dynasty. Since the Western nations only tagged on to the long parade of countries coming to China over the centuries, we need to look first at the other countries of East Asia for clues about translation theory in an ideographic context. Literary Chinese was the lingua franca of the East Asian world for two millennia. Although the Japanese invented a native script as early as the tenth century, the Vietnamese in the thirteenth, and the Koreans only in the fifteenth, in all of these cases Chinese remained the primary domestic language for politics and high intellectual culture until the dawn of the twentieth century. We shall return to this issue below.
There have been several traditions of translation theory in the West. The oldest and most long-lasting of them–the transmission of holy scripture into lands in which its language was impenetrable–interestingly parallels developments in East Asia. The story of the Septuagint graphically typifies a whole conception of translation. When the community of Greek rabbis was called upon, ostensibly, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, seventy rabbis separately assumed the task. They reconvened to discover that all seventy Greek translations were identical. The implication is that only one true and correct–and implicitly divinely inspired–translation existed of this text and accordingly any text. The veracity is thus guaranteed if the translator is properly trained and equipped for the task. In the case of Bible translation, the translator performs a semi – divine function–working with God–to spread the holy word to those unable to master the original, for via translation they will now be assured of the equivalent experience. God may have spoken in Hebrew, but He also guided the Greek translators to the one and only possible translation of His word. By the same token, translation errors were, on occasion, regarded as blasphemy and punished accordingly.
This conception of translation bespeaks a word-by-word transmission of a text from one context into another. It was not important that the Greek rabbis merely conveyed the general meaning of the Hebrew Bible nor that they simply had the sentences more or less in the same order. The telling points were two: first, that every word was the same in all seventy translations, and second, that the unique translation was the equivalent (though not the equal) of the original(2).
Despite the multilingual nature of literate culture in Europe through the turn of the nineteenth century, no specific theory of translation was forthcoming. Many would write in Latin or translate their ideas mentally from the vernacular into Latin rather than write them down in the mother tongue. Few needed translation. George Steiner has suggested one possible reason for the lack of translation theory: «The epistemological and formal grounds for the treatment of `meaning' as dissociable from and augmentative to `word' are shaky at best.» In spite of the absence of theory, translation not only continued, but was deeply intertwined with the evolution of modern languages: «The evolution of modern German is inseparable from the Luther Bible, from Voss's Homer, from the successive versions of Shakespeare by Wieland, Schlegel, and Tieck.»
Translation theory began to undergo a radical transformation in the nineteenth century, as translation began to involve a conscious manipulation to «move the author toward the reader,» to make literary texts as palatable in the target language and culture as they were in the source language and culture. This development marks the effective realization that precise translation, especially in the case of literary works, was inconceivable without regard for norms of the target language and culture. It is also cotemporal with the widespread emergence of vernaculars as literary mediums, where in the past Latin would have been more frequently employed. As people became less and less multilingual and as Latin declined in generic use, the multilingual knowledge necessary for remaining abreast of «world» literature made translation all the more crucial.
We have here the emergence of a new understanding of the relationship between source text (and perhaps author) and target text (and translator). No longer was a work worthy of translation approached as a long string of words, but as an entire text. The translator now performed the all-important function of bringing into one universe a text from another which often might have remained unknown. Without English or French translations of their work, it is highly unlikely, for example, that the writings of Ibsen or Strindberg or Kierkegaard or Tolstoy or, in more recent times, I.B. Singer would have been known outside the realm of native speakers of their mother tongues; it is inconceivable, as well, that Singer would have won the Nobel Prize.
This development has now reached the point that readers outside the native languages of such authors have ceased thinking of their writings as foreign. The same is true of the King James Bible. Translation has actually energized the target languages with new themes and genres deriving from the source languages. The phrase, «Yea, that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death» – despite the fact that it is not an entirely correct translation–has so fully entered our discourse as to make ordinary mortals believe King David spoke English.
Advances over the past two decades in translation studies have evolved from this trend. We are now in the midst of a «cultural turn.» The important unit for translation is now seen not as a series of words or sentences between languages nor even as a text moving from one setting to another. Rather they themselves are now seen as emblematic of their contexts, as cultural entities that emerge from one distinctive cultural universe. Without an appreciation of that enveloping context, translation into the target language loses much. But traditional bemoaning of what is «lost in the translation» should also not consume our efforts excessively, for there are countless instances in which translation can clarify or elucidate a cryptic original, in which the target language rises above the source language. Generations of Germans have turned to the English translations of Kant's critiques to understand them, and you have not lived until you have read Tsubouchi Shy's translations of Shakespeare: «Yo ni aru, yo ni aran. Sore ga gimon jya!»
Translators now speak not of source and target languages alone, but of source and target cultures as well, and the target culture is now beginning to loom almost as large as the source. There is as well less talk of good versus bad translations or faithful versus unfaithful ones. This particular extension of the development of translation studies has a profoundly dangerous aspect to it. In the hands of theorists influenced by postmodernist literary criticism, everything becomes relativized. All texts, translations as well as originals, emerge on an even plain. While it strikes me that there certainly is much room for nuance and uncertainty in translation, there are also certain definable criteria, if not absolutes, that must remain in play. War is not peace, and love is not hate.
Responsible members of the community of translation studies, however, are fully aware of such potential pitfalls while remaining sensitive to the new directions in their field. As Jirí Levý had noted: «A translation is not a monistic composition, but an interpretation and conglomerate of two structures. On the one hand there are the semantic content and the formal contour of the original, on the other hand the entire system of aesthetic features bound up with the language of the translation.»
The new realization, then, is that translation is not simply the transference of meaning from one language system into another with the able use of dictionary and grammar. Language is at the heart of culture; it gives voice to culture, and translators must see the source text within its surrounding cultural context. Texts have images in cultures and these are not always the same in the source and the target. Images in turn have power through language.
In this conection, Susan Bassnett-McGuire has argued: To attempt to impose the value system of the SL (source language) culture onto the TL (target language) culture is dangerous ground, and the translator should not be tempted by the school that pretends to determine the original intentions of an author on the basis of a self-contained text. The translator cannot be the author of the SL text, but as the author of the TL text has a clear moral responsibility to the TL readers.
Mary Snell-Hornby goes this one half-step further. She notes that, as we move toward an understanding of translation that sees it as more a cultural (rather than a linguistic) transfer, the act of translation is no longer a «transcoding» from one context into another, but an «act of communication.» Texts are part of the worlds they inhabit and cannot be neatly ripped from their surroundings. The new orientation in translation studies is toward the «function of the target text» rather than the «prescriptions of the source text.» Hans J. Vermeer has argued that translation is first and foremost a «crosscultural transfer.» Thus, the translator must not only be bilingual – that's a given – but effectively bicultural as well. «Translation is not the transcoding of words or sentences from one language to another, but a complex form of action, whereby someone provides information on a text (source language material) in a new situation and under changed functional, cultural, and linguistic conditions, preserving formal aspects as closely as possible.»
With the misgivings expressed above, I believe that the cultural turn in translation studies marks a major stride forward, and it can be especially useful to those of us trying to understand the evolution of the new vocabulary of the Chinese Revolution. We should note in passing that the identification of language with culture is elemental in East Asia where the two words share the same root. This is, of course, not to say that Chinese and Japanese cultures are the same. Especially (though not exclusively) at the elite level, however, Neo-Confucian culture–a core canon of texts, a shared tradition of commentaries on them, specific family and societal values deriving from them, and the like–had become strikingly similar in both countries from at least the seventeenth century forward. Significant differences in social organization and particularly in the procedures by which men were chosen for political decision-making jobs remained, making the Japanese and Chinese cultural contexts similar as opposed to identical, different strings on the same guitar, different variations on the same theme(3).
The Japanese descendents of these elite men of the Edo period, men from the bakumatsu (late Edo) and Meiji eras who were trained initially in the Confucian classics, would later in their careers learn Western languages and take upon themselves the formidable tasks of transmitting Western concepts into Japanese. Had it been the mid – to late twentieth century, they would surely have conveyed–as their own descendents have–the new ideas from the West into katakana expressions taken largely from English. There are two reasons for this shift: English now enjoys the reputation of an international language, and the new «coiners» lack the training in Kanbun (literary Chinese) of their forefathers. A brief trip to any electronics store in Japan will reveal just how dependent on English the new Japanese terminology is. Because these new terms are not written in Chinese characters, they cannot easily be imported (let alone reimported) into China now, as was the case with the Chinese-character compounds coined by Japanese earlier.
In the Meiji period, however, the only appropriate language for transmitting new philosophical, literary, and scientific terms was Chinese. Many of these creators of new terms were famous in their own right for composing works in literary Chinese. One of the most famous case is undoubtedly the great liberal thinker, Nakae Chmin (1847–1901), who translated Rousseau's Social Contract into Kanbun in the 1880s. Via such routes, numerous new words were coined in Chinese for the literate Japanese reading public. Because the terms then existed in Chinese ideographs, they were ready made for transport into Chinese. The second stage began roughly from the turn of the century, and, although not all terms were renativized into Chinese, the carriers were usually Chinese studying in Japan or those who had taken refuge there.
To make matters even more complicated, the Japanese coiners frequently derived their neologisms from traditional Chinese texts. The research of Sanet Keish and its further development in the research of Tam Yue-him has now documented over 1000 such terms, usually two – or four-character expressions. Many of these same terms also entered the Korean and Vietnamese languages in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Although it is not completely exceptional, an ideographic language like Chinese–and the other East Asian languages that used Chinese and developed their own vernaculars later–may require a variety of qualifications in discussing translation, either to or from. Achilles Fang overstated the case, though he raised some important considerations.
Another fetish of a group of Sinologists who still think Chinese (classical Chinese) is a «language» in the conventional sense is their firm conviction that a perfect dictionary will smooth their way. Alas, they are whoring after false gods. First, such a dictionary is impossible to make; next, what earthly use is a two-hundred-volume dictionary to anyone? After all is said and done, the meaning is determined from the context in the largest sense of the word, and there no dictionary will avail him. Moreover, a dictionary is no help if the wrong entry is chosen.
A great deal of research has been done on the entrance into Chinese and Japanese of the Meiji-period Japanese neologisms, though it remains scattered. An entire generation of intellectuals in China tried to read Yan Fu's Chinese renderings of Western concepts in his translations of Mill, Smith, Spencer, and Huxley, though most of his neologisms simply did not stick. For example, perhaps his most famous term, tianyanlun as a translation for the «theory of evolution,» was soon replaced in the new Chinese lexicon by the Japanese created term, shinkaron (Ch., jinhualun). Why such terms did not «take» in China cannot simply be stuffed off on the fact that they were too literary or assumed too profound a knowledge of classical Chinese lore. When Yan Fu was writing, there was no widespread vernacular Chinese language in use, and most of those who were able to read his translations undoubtedly understood his allusions (even if the Western ideas behind them remained partially obscured). Was Yan Fu aware of the Japanese translations by Nakamura Keiu of the same texts he labored over? Has anyone ever compared the vocabularies devised by Nakamura and Yan to render Western philosophical, political, and economic concepts?
There is a widespread, but extremely thin understanding of the process by which the abovementioned 1000 or so Japanese coinages were formed and entered Chinese. In fact, there are any number of actual, far more complex routes by which these terms were created and adopted into modern, vernacular Chinese. Sait Tsuyoshi has examined a number of fascinating cases in great detail in his major work, Meiji no kotoba (Meiji words). He is concerned primarily with how a discrete set of expressions was forged in Meiji Japanese and how it came to be part of the modern spoken and written Japanese language. Although most of the terms studied–such as Seiy (Ch. Xiyang, the West), shakai (Ch. shehui, society), kywakoku (Ch. gongheguo, republic), hoken (Ch. baoxian, insurance), and other philosophical and academic terms–also found their way into Chinese, Sait does not examine that phase of the process. He does, though, discuss many of the terms that were suggested and subsequently dropped for various Western political institutions and systems.
In a series of fascinating studies that approaches a similar topic, though largely from the Chinese side of the picture, Mizoguchi Yz looks as the numerous Chinese terms that surround the complex of issues involved in laying out the modern distinctions drawn between the public (gong) and the private (si). He begins his analysis in Chinese antiquity and demonstrates the remarkable changes that transpired in the uses to which these terms were put over time. From the late nineteenth century, however, these terms became caught up in demands by Chinese intellectuals for Western-style political institutions. China's readiness for such institutions, such as representative government or democracy, were frequently justified on putative long traditions in which, for example, the «people were the basis» of the state.
Let me conclude with one small case which should demonstrate succinctly just how thoroughly complicated this transmission process was: the particle de (J. teki), used in general to form adjectives from nouns, adverbs from adjectives, or to create the genitive case. In his unsurpassed study of the transmission of Western learning to China and Japan, Masuda Wataru (1903–77) has described part of the story in discussing the important work of Yanagawa Shunsan (1832–70). Yanagawa was a scholar of Western learning at the end of the Edo period and head of the Kaiseijo, the main center for Western studies at the time in Japan; he also reputedly knew Dutch, French, English, and German. A few biographical details about the life and work of the coiners of these neologisms may help us anthropomorphize this process; it puts flesh on the bones.
Yanagawa was also, though, a punctuator of Kanbun texts, written by Chinese or translations by Chinese of Western works. His reputation as a scholar was sufficiently formidable and well known that he appeared as a character at the very beginning of Nagori no yume (Lingering Dreams) by Imaizumi Mine (1858–1937), the daughter of Katsuragawa Hosh (1822–81), a physician to the family of the shogun and a scholar of Dutch learning. Clearly, the community of Kangaku scholars and that of Western learning scholars had significant overlap. Among his many works, Yanagawa wrote Furansu bunten (A Grammar of French), Igirisu nichiy tsgo (Everyday colloquial English), and Ygaku benran (A manual of Western Learning); and his skills at Kanbun can be found in the literary Chinese versions of popular Japanese songs he prepared, his punctuation work on the Japanese version of the Zhihuan qimeng (The circle of knowledge), a work comprising lessons on English, Christianity, and natural science, based on James Legge's Chinese translation. Yanagawa was also involved in a project to prepare a complete Japanese translation in twenty string-bound volumes of the Gewu rumen (Introduction to science) by W.A.P. Martin.
Among the many terms nativized into Japan by Yanagawa and his associates was the aforementioned particle teki (Ch. de). In his personal recollections, tsuki Fumihiko (1847–1928) once described the group of men who worked together translating so many of these Chinese and Western texts. The group included: Yanagawa Shunsan, Katsuragawa Hosh, Kurosawa Magoshir, Mitsukuri Keigo (d. 1871), Kumazawa Zen'an (1845–1906), and even myself. Odd as it might seem, this group in general (also) enjoyed reading Chinese novels, such as Shuihu zhuan (Water margin) and Jinpingmei (Golden lotus). One day we got together and began chatting, and someone mentioned inadvertently the following. It was fine to translate «system» as soshiki (Ch. zuzhi), but it was difficult to translate the term «systematic.» The suffix «tic» sounded similar to the character teki (de) as used in (Chinese) fiction; so why not render «systematic» as soshiki teki (Ch. zuzhi de). Everyone thought it was a brilliant idea and agreed to give it a try. Eventually, we paid someone to write out the expression soshiki teki clearly and bring it to the authorities. «Have you put this into use?» «Yes.» «This is rather extraordinary, isn't it?» «Not that I am aware, no.» We joked with these sorts of comic play-acting, but very often we were only able to escape difficult (translation) points with this character teki. Ultimately, it moved from pure invention to fact, and it was used later without a second thought, as people picked up on this usage.
Again, though, this is only half of our story. We need to know if this new colloquial usage in Japanese of teki was the source for de as a comparable particle in colloquial Chinese, or whether de entered modern baihua directly from its much earlier usage in colloquial Chinese literary texts of the Yuan and Ming periods. While twentieth-century spoken Chinese uses de almost exclusively, written vernacular texts often use de alongside the other genitive-forming particles zhi and di. Japanese has its own manner of forming the genitive, with the particle no, not the precise counterpart of teki but the two perform something more on the order of complementary, and occasionally overlapping, roles.
Most serious scholars of the modern Chinese historical experience, even those most closely wedded to statistical data, consider culture–actually, cultural differences – elemental to their considerations in research and writing. It would be almost impossible to imagine someone making the claim that study of China could be pursued without taking culture into account. Thus, the recent turn in translation studies toward a broader, more cultural appreciation of both source and target contexts segues neatly with this widespread scholarly criterion, and concerted attention toward the linguistic Sino-Japanese innovations over the past century could not have come at a better time.
Before blanket characterizations can be put forth about the nature of this borrowing – and long before we can generalize or theorize about it–we need closer examination of as many of the different routes by which the terminology of the Chinese Revolution entered the modern Chinese lexicon from Japanese as possible. We need to study the very texts in which these terms were first used, what Western concepts they were meant to translate, what they conjured up in the Japanese setting, the process by which they entered Chinese, and the images (however different or similar from Japanese) these terms gave rise to in China. I do not mean to suggest that we conduct 1000 separate studies, but we do need many separate studies for different clusters of terms.
2. The problem of assimilation of borrowed words
2.1 Phonetic assimilation of borrowed words
It is now our task to see what changes 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 constant combinations (p n), (p s), (t p t) in the words «pneumatics», «psychology», «ptolomey» of Greek origin were simplified into (n), (s), (t), since the consonant combinations (p s), (pt), (p n) very frequent at the end of English words (as in «sleeps», «stopped») were never used in the initial position.
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. This differentiation is not always easily discernible. In most cases we must resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words «procession» and «progression» to show that the former was already used in England in the 11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The history of these words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of changes along side with other English words change in declension, accentuation, structure, sounds, whereas the word «progression» underwent some changes by analogy with the word «procession» and other similar words already at the time of its appearance in the language.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage 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. For instance, the long (e) and (E) in recent French borrowings, quite strange to English speech, are rendered with the help of (e i) (as in the words «communiqué», «chaussee», «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 spits (spits) 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.
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 «honour», «reason» were accented on the same principle as the native «father», «mother».
2.2 Grammatical assimilation of borrowed words
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.
If a borrowed word loses its former grammatical categories and inflexions and gets new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words we say the word is undergone grammatical assimilation. Sometimes the foreign inflexions are fallen off.
E. g. sputnik, sputniks, sputnik’s
Lat. consutare (v) English consult.
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-phonomena
Addendum-addenda
Other borrowings of the same period have two plural forms the native and the foreign, e. g. vacuum-vacua, vacuums, virtuoso-virtuosi, virtuosos.
All borrowings that were composite in structure in their native language appeared in English as indivisible roat-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, but it has changed its quality, it is preserved in all the other grammatical forms of the word. (saunters, suntered, sauntering), which means that it has become part of the stem in English.
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 course of time their word-building elements can be employed to form new words(4).
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
Barbarus-barbarous
Botanicus-botanical
Balneus-balneal
2.3 Lexical assimilation of borrowed words
Loaning words from another language causes some changes in meaning of the word borrowed.
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 specialization of meaning, as in the word hangar, denoting a building in which aero planes are kept and revive, 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 word move in Modern English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French movoir does not possess. The word scope, whichoriginally 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.
The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways as well. Some meanings become more general, others more specialized, etc. For instance, the word «terrorist» that was taken over from French in the meaning of «Jacobin» widened its meaning to ‘one who governs, or opposes a government, by violent means. The word umbrella, borrowed in the meaning of a sunshade or pares came to denote similar protection from the rain as well.
Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word was a 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.
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 sur (o) under had the meaning of «overflow». In English r (o) under was associated by mistake with round – думалок and the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘encclose on all sides, encircle’ Folle – etimologization is a slow process; people first attempt to give the foreign borrowing its foreign premonition, but gradually popular use involves a new pronunciation and spelling.
Another phenomenon which must also receive special attention is the formation of derivatives from borrowed words. New derivatives are usually formed with the help of productive affixes, often of Anglo-Saxon origin.
2.4 The degrees of assimilation
The role of loan words in the formation and development of English vocabulary is dealt with in the history of the language. It is there that the historical circumstances are discussed under which words borrowed from Latin, from Scandinavian dialects, from Norman and Parisian, French and many other languages, including Russian, were introduced into English. Lexicology, on the other hand, has in this connection tasks of its own, being chiefly concerned with the material and the results of assimilation.
The main problems of etymology and borrowed words as they concern the English language are comprehensively and consistently treated in Professor A.I. Smirnitskiy deals with these issues mainly in terms of word. Sameness reflecting his methodological approach to word theory.
Here we are going to concentrated our attention on the assimilation of borrowed words as a way of their interrelation with the system of the language as a whole. The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetically, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system.
Even a superficial examination of borrowed words in the English word-stock shows that there are words among them that are easily recognized as foreign and there are others that have become so firmly rooted in the language, so thoroughly assimilated that it is sometimes extremely difficult to distinguish them from words of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Let’s take some examples: «we can easily determine that the words «décolleté», graffito», «chemistry» are loaned words.
But the words like «pupil», «master», «city», «river» which became part of words used at least once a day are also borrowed words. In Uzbek language this kind of situation can be also observed. For example: «Kolxoz», «sputnik», «demokratiya», «efir», etc words can be easily recognized as loan words. But the words like «maktab», «kitob», «muhabbat», «ilm», «badavlat» and etc are not considered to be loan words by ordinary people, because these words are deeply rooted in native lexicon and are commonly used by people. But according to the etymology of these words they are not native words, they were borrowed from Arabic and Persian languages.
Unassimilated words differ from assimilated words in their pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. However, there is no distinct borderline between the two groups.
So far no linguist has been able to suggest more or less comprehensive criteria for determining the degree of assimilation depends in the first place upon the time of borrowing. The general principle is: the older the borrowing the more thoroughly it tends to follow normal language (Uzbek, English) of accentuation, pronunciation, etc. It is but natural that the majority of early borrowings have acquired full language (English or Uzbek) citizenship and that most English speaking people are astonished on first hearing, that such everyday words as «window», «chair», «dish», «box» haven’t always belonged to their language. As you see in the above Uzbek extract there are words which can be easily recognized as loan words, e.g.: банк-bank, стратегия-strategy, сектор-sector, бизнес-business, кредит-credit, инфратузилма – infrastructure.
A classification of loan words according to the degree of assimilation can be only very general as no rigorous procedure for measuring it has so far been developed. The following three groups may be suggested:
1. Completely assimilated borrowed words
2. Partially assimilated borrowed words
3. Unassimilated borrowed words or barbarism.
The group of partially assimilated words may be subdivided depending on the aspect that remains unaltered, i. e. according to whether the word retains features of spelling, pronunciation, morphology or denotation that are not English. The third group is not universally accepted, as it may be argued that words not changed at all cannot form part of the vocabulary of language, because they occur in speech only, but don not enter the language.
Completely assimilated borrowed words are found in all the layers of older borrowings.
They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e, g: cheese, street, wall, or wine. Among Scandinavian borrowed words we find such frequent nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent. Suffice it to mention such everyday words as table, chair, face, figure, finish, matter. A considerable number of Latin words borrowed during the revival of learning are at present almost indistinguishable from the rest of the vocabulary. Neither animal nor article differ noticeable from native words.
Uzbek language like English is vulnerable to new nations. It mainly enriches its word stock by loaning words from Persian, Arabic Russian and via Russian from European languages. A large number of words in Uzbek language are the words from Persian. Tajik languages which are completely assimilated and widely used by Uzbek people: дастурхон, даструмол, хокандоз, пояндоз, пойдевор, барг, дарахт, гул, фарзанд, дутор, сетор and etc.
After Arabic invasion of Central Asia a number of Arabic words were borrowed, which became the indivisible part of our daily speech: мактаб, китоб, мактуб, адабиёт, ахолии, оила, Фан, санъат, хизмат, мехнат, раис, идора, давлат and etc.
Starting from XIX century new notions began to penetrate into Uzbek language from Russian and via Russian from European languages. They denote new notions, new inventions which don’t have equivalence in Uzbek that’s why they are completely assimilated borrowings:
Стол, стул, ручка, паровоз, студент, министр, операция, (Latin) грамматика, комедия, театр, музей, опера, (Greek) солдат, галстук, штаб, лагерь, (German) костюм, пальто кабинет, генерал, (French) опера, ария, ложа, топор, (Italian) трамвай, вокзал, митинг, футбол, баскетбол, бокс (English)
The number of completely assimilated borrowed words is many times greater than the number of partially assimilated ones. They follow all morphological, phonetically and orthographic standards. Being very frequent and stylistically neutral, they may occur as dominant words in synonymic groups. They take an active part in word-formation. Moreover, their morphological structure and motivation remain transparent, so that they are morphologically analyzable and therefore supply the English vocabulary not only with free forms but also with bound forms, as affixes are easily perceived and separated in series of loan words that contain them.
To illustrate the frequency of completely assimilated words it is sufficient to mention that many of them are included by E.L. Thorndike and I. Lorge in the list of 500 most frequent words. Some of these are: act (Lat), age(Fr), army(Fr), bill(Lat), case(Fr), cast(ON), cause(Fr), die(Scand).
The second group containing partially assimilated borrowed words can be subdivided into subgroups.
The oppositions are equipollent.
a) Loan words not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero; foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador; foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese), food and drinks: pillow(Persian) sherbet(Arabian); foreign currency: krone (Denmark), rupee(India), zloty(Poland), peseta(Spain)
b) Borrowed words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus; bacilli, crisis; crises, formula; formulae, index; indices. Some of these are also used in English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning as in: indices: indexes.
c) Loan words not completely assimilated phonetically. The French words borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. Some of them keep the accent on the final syllable: machine, cartoon, police.
d) Borrowed words not completely assimilated grammatically. This group, as V.I. Balinskaya shows, is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from French in which the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g: battet, buffet, corps. Some may keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche.
It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. One and the same loan word often Shows in complete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.
The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarism, i. e. words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents. The examples are the Italian addio, ciao ‘goodbye’, the French affich for’ placard’ and coup or coup d’ Etat ‘a sudden seizure of state power by a small group’