Microsoft Word 81843-1179932786- mstyblo thesis0516

CONCLUSION

This thesis has adressed the following questions: Why are there so many Englishloanwords in the modern Russian language?Why do Russian speakers choose to use theEnglish loanwords, when there are perfectly good native counterparts already present inthe Russian language?What affects the process of lexical borrowing and why do someloanwordssurviveand others fadeintoobscurity?

For nearly a century the English language has been the most popular source oflexical borrowings for Russian.Countless words describing everything imaginable havebeen borrowed during this time.The intensity of borrowing varied over time, mostrecently increasing after the fall of communism in 1991, when many new loanwords,usually related to business, politics and popular culture entered the language.Some ofthese terms were adopted as new words for new concepts, but many others already had atleastoneRussian counterpart in widespread use.
There are several reasons why Russian speakers would choose to use a foreignloanword instead of its native counterpart.It could be because of the novelty and positiveconnotation of the newword, or because of thedated nature or negativeconnotation ofthe old word. A more quantifiable reason for using a loanword would be its meaning, ifitismoresuitableforthedesiredexpression.Bystudyingloanwordsandtheircounterparts in the context of their collocated adjectives, it is possible to reveal the entirescopeoftheirmeaning.Byanalyzingthedifferencesinthesemeaning,itoftenbecomes
apparent that a loanword and its counterparts are not perfect synonyms.This is onepossible reason why Russian speakers sometimes find that a loanword, and not its nativecounterpart,is moresuitabletoexpress aspecificmeaning.
Thefactthataloanwordanditscounterpartoftenonlypartiallyshareonemeaning is also evident in my analysis.This same fact is what helps a loanword toremain in the Russian language.One frequent phenomenon observed during loanwordacquisitionisthatofsemanticconcretization,wherealoanwordpossessesonlyasubsetof its original meanings.In such cases, the lexical competition between the loanword andits counterpart can often be characterized more as a lexical addition rather than a lexicalreplacement.The more specialized the meaning acquired by a loanword, the easier it isfor the Russian speaker population to adopt it, and the higher are the chances of itsurvivingin theRussian languagein thelongterm.