Microsoft Word 81843-1179932786- mstyblo thesis0516

Summary

The background material consulted for this thesis included linguistic works onlanguage contact, historicalaccounts ofEnglish loanwords in Russian, and previousstudiesthatfocusedonsimilarlanguagetopicsandusedsimilarresearchmethods.According to linguistic theory, loanwords can enter the target language as a result of eventhe mildest of language contacts.For this to occur, it is only necessary that the speakersof the target language be exposed to people, media or culture associated with the sourcelanguage.Loanwordscan enter a languageeven through non-personal, removed orlearned contact, as was the case throughout Russia’s history.French, German and mostrecently English, were all popular sources of lexical borrowings into Russian.EnglishbecamethemostpopularsourceafterWorldWarI,andhasremainedsountiltoday.

During this time the intensity of contact between Russian and English did not remainconstant, as world events, ideological revolutions and changes in Russia’s leadershipaffected the exposure of Russian speakers to English. Over the course of a century alarge number of English loanwords have entered the language in many different areas ofuse.Asisoftenthe case,they were relatedtonewconceptsthatwere alsobeingintroduced into Russian society during that time.The most frequent lexical additionsoccurredinreferencetonewconceptsinbusiness,industry,politics,art,fashion,entertainmentandtechnology.NotalloftheloanwordsthatenteredtheRussianlanguage remained in use.Many loanwords already had Russian counterparts, or theylater developed them, often as a result of a government campaign to “purify” the Russianlanguage.Some loanwords were able to complete the lexical replacement of their nativecounterparts, but others did not, and remained in use only with a fraction of their originalmeaning or disappeared from the language completely.To study English loanwords inthe Russian language, it is important to understand the theory behind language contact, aswell as its history in Russia.To understand why lexical borrowings take place, it isimportant to be able to compare the loanword with its native counterpart. One approachis to collect word frequency data of the synonyms and compare their lexical properties inorder to determine the level of their similarity.While this is a useful approach, I believethat focusing on analysis of the synonyms’ semantic properties can result in much moreinteresting data.By understanding and comparing the meanings of loanwords and theirsynonyms, we can better understand when and why each of them is used.To determinethe meaning of a word, we can examine the context that it appears in.The easiest way toaccomplishthisfornounsistodeterminewhichadjectivestheyaremostfrequently
collocated with.Qualitative adjectives are usually more descriptive than their relationalcounterparts and better characterize the noun that they collocate with, often giving thenounpositive or negative connotations.The applicationof languagecontacttheoryprovidesforabetterunderstandingofEnglishlexicalborrowingsinRussian,andfrequency analysis of collocated adjectives provide a better understanding of loanwordmeanings.The loanwords meanings can be compared with the meanings of their nativecounterparts, and based on this comparison we can analyze the loanword-counterpartrelationship, better understand the nature of the lexical competition, and make educatedpredictionsabout its outcome.