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Non-semantic grouping. Russian borrowings. . French borrowings
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NON-SEMANTIC GROUPING
For different purposes of study different types of grouping may prove effective: synchronic or diachronic, semantic or formal, depending on possible distribution or taking words as isolated units. The simplest, most obvious non-semantic grouping, extensively used in all branches of applied linguistics is the alphabetical organization of written words, as represented in most dictionaries. It is of great practical value as the simplest and the most universal way of facilitating the search for the necessary word. The rhyming, i. e. inverse, dictionary presents a similar non-semantic grouping of isolated written words differing from the first in that the sound is also taken into consideration and in that the grouping is done the other way round and the words are arranged according to the similarity of their ends. The practical value of this type is much more limited. These dictionaries are intended for poets. They may be also used, if but rarely, by teachers, when making up lists of words with similar suffixes. A third type of non-semantic grouping of written words is based on their length, i. e. the number of letters they contain. This type, worked out with some additional details, may prove useful for communication engineering, for automatic reading of messages and correction of mistakes. The shorter words occur more frequently and accumulate a greater number of meanings. Finally, a very important type of non-semantic grouping for isolated lexical units is based on a statistical analysis of their frequency. Frequency counts carried out for practical purposes of lexicography, language teaching and shorthand enable the lexicographer to attach to each word a number showing its importance and range of occurrence. Large figures are, of course, needed to bring out any inherent regularities, and these regularities are, naturally, statistical, not rigid. But even with these limitations the figures are fairly reliable and show important correlations between quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical units, the most frequent words being polysemantic and stylistically neutral.
Russian borrowings.
There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowed words from one language into the other. Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rouble, copeck, pood, sterlet, vodka, sable, and also words relating to nature, such as: taiga, tundra, steppe. There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into English through Rushian literature of the 19-th century, such as: Narodnik, moujik, duma, zemstvo, volost, ukase and also words which were formed in Russian with Latin roots, such as: nihilist, intelligenzia, Decembrist etc. After the Great October Revolution many new words appeared in Russian connected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them were borrowed into English, such as: collectivization, udarnik, Komsomol and also translation loans, such as: shock worker, collective farm, five-year plan. One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, such as: glasnost, nomenklatura, apparatchik.
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Homonyms - in case of homonymy the different meanings of words are mutually independent, there is no connection between such words, they have only the same pronunciation and spelling. (son-sun, bear-bear, ear-ear, meet-meat, piece-peace). The classify: 1) perfect homonyms (or words identical both in pronunciation, spelling but different in meaning): bear-bear. 2) homographs or heteronyms (identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning): row-row. 3) homophones (words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning): son-sun, pair-pear. 4) homoforms (different in meaning but identical in some of their grammatical forms): found (find) - to found. Characteristics: Lexical - differ in their lexical meaning but belong to the same part of speech (to lie - to lye); Grammatical - differ in their grammatical meaning and forms if any. They are different grammatical forms of the same word (two sisters /plurality/ - my sister's book /posessivity/. Lexico - grammatical - differ in lex. -gram. meaning that is they belong to different parts of speech. The are partial, but they may be also complete if these parts of speech have no paradigme (nose - knows, may /v. / - May). Sources of hom.: 1) diverging meaning development: story - store, case - case); 2) converging sound development. The coinsidence of the sounding of words is the course of their historical development (seon - see, eazan - eye); 3) borrowings (bark - barque); 4) word - building (pop - pop /popular/).
French borrowings
The largest group of borrowings are French. Most of them came into English during the Norman conquest. Fr. influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by Fr. scribes as the local population was mainly illiterate. Runic letters remaining in English after the Latin alphabet was borrowed were substituted by Latin letters and combinations of letters, e. g. «v» was introduced for the voiced consonant /v/ instead of «f» in the intervocal position /lufian - love/, the digraph «ch» was introduced to denote the sound /ch/ instead of the letter «c» / chest/ before front vowels where it had been palatalized, the digraph «sh» was introduced instead of the combination «sc» to denote the sound /sh/ /ship/, the digraph «qu» substituted the combination «cw» to denote the combination of sounds /kw/ /queen/, the digraph «ou» was introduced to denote the sound /u: / /house/. There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings: a) words relating to government: administer, empire, state, government; b) to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle; c) to jury: advocate, inquest, sentence; d) to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, pleat, embroidery; e) to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl; f) to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew. Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings: a) relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville; b) to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre; c) to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau; d) to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.
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