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Conclusion
Borrowings from Celtic place-names: - The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia - from the names of Celtic tribes. - The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources (Celtic dūn meant 'hill'). - Celtic designations of 'river' and 'water' were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk, Avon, Evan go back to Celtic amhuin 'river', uisge 'water'; Thames, Stow, Dover also come from Celtic. some elements frequently occurring in Celtic place-names can help to identify them: -comb 'deep valley' (Batcombe, Duncombe, Winchcombe); -torr 'high rock' (Torr, Torcross); -llan 'church' (Llandaff, Llanelly); -pill 'creek' (Pylle, Huntspill). The impact of French upon the English vocabulary was not limited to the borrowing of words or roots. The vocabulary was also enriched by the adoption of French affixes. Derivational affixes could not be borrowed as such; they entered the language in scores of loan-words, were unconsciously or consciously separated by the speakers and used in derivation. They could become productive in English only after the loan-words with those affixes were completely assimilated by the language; that is why the use of borrowed French affixes dates largely from the Early NE period.
Assimilation of French words by the speakers of English was a more difficult process than assimilation of Scandinavian words. The French language belonged to a different linguistic group and had very little in common with English.
Word accentuation in O Fr was foreign to English, a language of the Germanic group: in French the main stress fell on the ultimate or penultimate syllable of the word. Nevertheless, phonetic assimilation of borrowed words progressed quickly. The foreign features were lost and the words were adapted to the norms of English pronunciation. French sounds were replaced by resembling English sounds. Thus French [y] was reflected in English as [u] or [ju], e.g. O Fr juge, ME juge, NE judge, O Fr vertu, ME vertu, NE virtue. Palatalised [1'] and [n'] were shown as ordinary [1] and [n] or as sequences [il, in], cf. e.g. O Fr faillir, which contained [1'], and ME fallen, NE fail; O Fr compagnie — ME companye, NE company. The nasalised vowels lost their nasal character: e.g. O Fr chambre, ME chaumbre, NE chamber, O Fr changier, ME chaungen, changen [a:], NE change.
(Sometimes the difference between the French and the English word is accounted for not only by assimilation but also by the peculiarities of the Anglo-Norman variety of French: e.g. ME variants of changen contained the diphthong [au], chaungen (also straunge, comaunden) like the corresponding Anglo-Norman word; the difference in the consonants of Fr changer and NE change [∫] and [t∫] reflects the dialectal difference between Anglo-Norman and Parisian French).
The stress in French loan-words was shifted in conformity with the English rules of word accentuation, due to the rhythmic or recessive tendency. This was probably a slow process, since in Chaucer’s time (14th c.) we still find many words accented in the French way, like ME nature [na'tju:r∂], condicioun [¸k∂ndi'siu:n]. By the 17th c. they sounded ['nε:tf∂] and [k∂n'di∫n].
The degree of phonetic assimilation of foreign words is further attested by their participation in the sound changes of English. ME borrowings from French underwent the same Early NE phonetic changes as native words, and as words borrowed in the preceding periods, e.g. long accented vowels were subjected to the Great Vowel Shift, final unstressed vowels were reduced and dropped, e.g. ME robe ['ro:b∂]>NE robe; ME changen ['t∫a:nd3∂n]>NE change. Grammatical assimilation of borrowed words evidently did not give much trouble to the speakers. They freely added English grammatical endings to the stems of the borrowed words and used them in all grammatical forms like native words: e.g. countable nouns took the universal ending -(e)s in the pl, all the verbs (except strive) became weak and took the suffix -d- to form the Past and Part. II.
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