A course In Modern English Lexicology

§ 10. Summary and Conclusions o
f English, it has adopted many words from
other languages, especially from Latin, French and Old Scandinavian, though the number and importance of these borrowings are usually overestimated.
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2. The number and character of borrowings in Modern English from various languages depend on the historical conditions and also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of the languages in question.
3. Borrowings enter the language through oral speech (mainly in early periods of history) and through written speech (mostly in recent times).
4. In the English language borrowings may be discovered through some peculiarities in pronunciation, spelling, morphological and semant i c structures. Sometimes these peculiarities enable us even to discover the immediate source of borrowing.
5. All borrowed words undergo the process of assimilation, i.e. they ad-just themselves to the phonetic and lexico-grammatical norms of the language. Phonetic assimilation comprises substitution of native sounds and sound combinations for strange ones and for familiar sounds used in a position strange to the English language, as well as shift of stress. Grammatical assimilation finds expression in the change of grammatical categories and paradigms of borrowed words, change of their morphological structure. Lexical assimilation includes changes in semantic structure and the formation of derivatives,
6. Substitution of sounds, formation of new grammatical categories and paradigms, morphological simplification and narrowing of meaning take place in the very act of borrowing. Some words however retain foreign sounds and inflexions for a long time. Shift of stress is a long and gradual process; the same is true of the development of new meanings in a borrowed word, while the formation of derivatives may occur soon after the adoption of the word.
7. The degree of assimilation depends on the time of borrowing, the extent to which the word is used in the language and the way of borrowing.
INTERRELATION BETWEEN NATIVE
AND BORROWED ELEMENTS
The number of borrowings in Old English