Latin Loanwords Research Articles

Lexicalization, polysemy and loanwords in anger: A comparison with non-affective domains in Middle English

This paper compares the Middle English lexis of anger with that of nine non-affective domains. We first investigate lexicalization, polysemy, replacement and retention, and then focus on semantic overlap between French / Latin loanwords in Middle English and their etyma. Results show that anger is more heavily lexicalized than other domains and individual lexemes within it are more polysemous. Turnover of vocabulary appears to be higher, but it was not the case that incoming loanwords caused existing native terms to shift or fall from use in large numbers. anger has similar proportions of loanword senses innovated in Middle English and they are much more likely to be figurative.

Gender-Marking -ess: The Suffix that Failed

Abstract Languages with grammatical gender typically have affixes, sometimes called motion affixes, for converting grammatically masculine, semantically male human nouns into grammatically feminine, semantically female ones (e.g. German -in, as in Professor “male professor”, Professorin “female professor”). It it widely assumed that the English suffix -ess (as in actress, waitress) is such an affix. We show that this assumption is false. By the time the suffix entered the language via French and Latin loanwords from the 13th century onwards, English had lost its grammatical gender system and human nouns without gender marking were no longer interpreted as male by default. While the suffix initially served a function in deriving female correlates to lexically male human nouns (for example, nouns referring to members of the clergy or the so-called nobility), it gradually shifted to a suffix invoking female-directed stereotypes. This is a fundamental difference to motion affixes and ultimately led to the disappearance of -ess as a productive derivational morpheme. Based on an empirical analysis of roughly 780 derivations and loanwords documented in the OED and various large corpora, we trace this shift and discuss it in terms of morphological theory, in particular, with respect to the notion of productivity.

Old English Transciption of the Latin Hagiography of Saint Aegidius: Language and Rhetoric

The article analyzes the methods of transcribing an anonymous Latin hagiography of St. Aegidius (British Library manuscript Tiberius Div, volume 2, 84v-87r, late eleventh century) by an anonymous author of an Old English hagiography of the same saint (mid-twelfth-century manuscript, Corpus Christi College Cambridge C 303). Errors in manuscript CCCS 303 show that the scribe copied an earlier Old English text of the eleventh century, not always understanding it well. But overall, the twelfth-century manuscript retains most of the features consistent with the norm of the eleventh-century Wessex dialect. The lexicon of the Old English text includes a number of Latin loanwords, as well as one word of Scandinavian origin. Some deviations from the written norm in phonetics and morphology show the influence of colloquial speech. The emphasis on the omnipotence of God and on the saint’s close personal contacts with God, not so noticeable in the Latin version, leads to an expansion of St. Aegidius’ epithets compared to the Latin source. The changes in the method of narration concern the rejection of ancient rhetorical techniques, primarily rhetorical questions; the replacement of historical details; and the expansion of Gospel allusions. At the same time, the Old English narrative is characterized by an increase in the emotional mood and dramatization of the story, including through the introduction of monologues and dialogues.

Translation of Perso-Arabic loanwords from Hindi into Polish: A pilot study

Abstract In contemporary literary Hindi there is an abundance of Perso-Arabic loanwords which often function similarly to words of Sanskrit origin. Despite their semantic proximity, each of them can have different connotational meanings and cultural associations. Furthermore, depending on the context, one of them will be preferred to the other. This situation can become an issue when translating from Hindi into Polish. In this paper, I will investigate whether these loanwords should be considered as a third language in translation. If this is the case, they make the text a multicultural one, and, thus, raise the question of how to translate them into Polish, being at the same time focused on a monolingual recipient and their cognitive comfort while not impoverishing and distorting the process of translation. Moreover, I will propose an approach which can be of assistance in achieving this goal, relying on French and Latin loanwords used in the Polish language.

Early Latin Loan-Words in Modern Ukrainian and the Question of Toponymic Replications

An in-depth analysis of two distinct linguistic elements (lexical and toponymic) of Latin origin in the modern Ukrainian language adds some important elements to the study of the direct contacts of proto-Slavic populations and cultures with Roman civilisation in the early centuries of the first millennium. The paper examines ancient Latin loanwords in modern Ukrainian, in comparison with other Slavic languages and focuses on the question of Roman influences on the toponymy of Ukraine. Considering the difficulties linked to the temporal distance and the genetic diversity between late Latin and modern Ukrainian, these linguistic phenomena are correlated with historical, archaeological, numismatic data (as materially attested), in order to frame the linguistic question in the respective historical context, and at the same time to highlight the lexical connections and cultural continuity with the late Latin period.

A history of the Basque prosodic systems

AbstractThis paper presents new proposals for the reconstruction of Proto-Basque accentuation, as well as the development and chronology of the main accentual systems of the modern dialects, grounded in phonetic, historical and typological evidence. It is the first attempt to reconstruct Basque accentuation from a pre-Roman stage to the dialectalization that followed Common Basque. We suggest that Old Proto-Basque had prosodic prominence in the root, i.e., [(C)V.'CVC]. This system evolved into phrase-level prominence in Modern Proto-Basque, giving rise to unaccentedness in non-phrase final positions, with marked stress only introduced later, through Latin loanwords (2nd–3rd century CE). This would become the common system, which still persists in the west. Not long after the dialectification, word-level systems developed in non-western areas, first as peninitial and then as penultimate stress (in eastern dialects). Finally, we propose that the Goizueta prosodic system can be derived from the Central system, which is an alternative view toHualde (in press).

Czy (i jak) warto jeszcze badać staropolskie latynizmy i grecyzmy?

IS IT STILL WORTH RESEARCHING GREEK AND LATIN LOANWORDS IN OLD POLISH? (AND HOW SHOULD WE DO IT?) The paper focuses on Greek and Latin loanwords in Old Polish language. It attempts to show what has already been done and what still needs to be done in this important issue. Three main aspects are discussed: (1) definitions of the terms loanword, Latinism, Hellenism, and the problem of direct and indirect borrowing; (2) the current state of investigation of Greek and Latin loanwords in Old Polish; (3) the Old Polish Christian terminology – the problem of chronology and borrowing channels of Greek and Latin Christian words to Old Polish. The final part of the paper contains a brief research history i.e. it describes the most important works in chronological order.

Continuidad y discontinuidad en la transmisión de las palabras patrimoniales competidas por arabismos: oliva y aceituna, olio y aceite, olivo y aceituno

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Transmission of Spanish Inherited Words Competed by Arabisms: oliva and aceituna, olio and aceite, olivo and aceituno. The loss and replacement of Arabisms by Latin loanwords was a frequent phenomenon between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries; the opposite movement, the replacement of an inherited word by an Arabism is far less frequent. Oliva, an inherited word, is competed by the Arabism aceituna; currently the common name for the fruit in the Hispanic world is aceituna, and oliva has a restricted use to the phrase aceite de oliva or to refer to a colour. Similarly, the inherited word olio will be replaced by aceite, and with a specialized meaning will be eliminated by the euphuism óleo, its etymological doublet. On the other hand, olivo prevails over aceituno and represents a special case of continuity in this lexical family. The research will be carried out in two directions: first, I will analyse the old academic dictionaries and other specialized dictionaries and glossaries from the fifteenth-twentieth centuries. Second, I will conduct a corpus analysis, based on the diachronic corpora available for the Spanish language. This study will try to answer the questions how? and why? of these neological movements of vocabulary. Keywords: inherited words, Arabisms, oliva, aceituna, lexical substitution

Compounding in Old Italian

AbstractThis paper provides a corpus-based analysis of compounding in Old Italian. The semantic and formal properties of compound words attested in Old Italian are described and discussed through the theoretical tools provided by Construction Morphology. The analysis confirms that compounding is exploited since the earliest attestations of the language. It reveals that Old Italian compounds are mostly right-headed endocentric or exocentric: particularly, endocentric [ADV-Y]Y, [A-N]N|Aand exocentric [V-N]Nare the most productive schemas. Moreover, this study highlights a significant influence of Latin on Italian compounding, whereby many Old Italian compounds are Latin loanwords and calques which served as a model for the creation of new native compounds.

The New Testament translation by Martin Lupáč (ca. 1450): Questions of language and authorship

The New Testament translation from the mid-15th century attributed to the Utraquist priest and diplomat Martin Lupáč represents the first phase of the 4th redaction of the Old Czech Bible translation. It served as a model for the Prague Bible (1488) — the first printed Slavic Bible.The aim of the present work is to detect specific features of Lupáč’s translation method by comparing his texts with four editions of the Old Czech Bible translation. In addition we aim to verify Lupáč’s authorship of the translation, previously attributed to him on the basis of insufficient evidence, by comparing it with two Czech texts written by him. Our results show that Lupáč’s translation contains a number of grammatical innovations that were consciously used to make the Bible content more accessible to the contemporary recipients, e.g., using iterative verbs instead of disappearing imperfect tense, using compound sentences with a finite verb instead of Latin nominal constructions. We detected vocabulary specific for the 15th century (currency, units of measurement, names of feasts), additional explanatory notes, precise translations of non-specific Latin verbs, stylistic dissimilation, and German and new bohemicized Latin loanwords. In addition, in Lupáč’s translation of the Pauline Epistles we found traces of Utraquist theology. We compare the language of two Czech tractates written by Lupáč with the New Testament translation attributed to him, but the degree of similarity is not sufficient to confirm the attribution. In conclusion, Lupáč’s New Testament is a vivid and explanatory translation with unique stylistic figures. Some innovations were so unusual that they were omitted in the Prague Bible created by Utraquists 40 years later.

O neosemantyzacji zapożyczeń łacińskich we współczesnej polszczyźnie (na wybranych przykładach)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest analiza wybranych czterech leksemów (zapożyczeń łacińskich), posiadających jedną formę i różne znaczenia nabyte w drodze zapożyczenia lub ich rozwoju na gruncie języka polskiego. Wychodząc z założenia, że neosemantyzacja jest zjawiskiem nasilającym się i dobrze widocznym w perspektywie ostatnich 30 lat, postanowiłam wykorzystać w analizie m.in. wyrazy, które były już przedmiotem opisu w 1. poł. lat 90. — filozofia i opcja. Następną parę tworzą leksemy atencja i protagonista, które obecnie modyfikują swoje znaczenia. Obserwując zjawiska leksykalno-semantyczne polszczyzny końca XX i początku XXI w., możemy mówić o powszechności procesu neosemantyzacji i jego intensyfikacji. Bez wątpienia neosemantyzacje są przejawem globalizacji językowej i postępującej homogenizacji kultury.

Latin Loan Words in the Italian Language and Their Functions

The Italian language is derived from Vulgar Latin. Borrowing words from another language is an important way for the development of a language. Since its emergence, the Italian language has been picking up neologisms from other languages. The Latin loan words in the Italian language can be analyzed from three different aspects – the time when they are borrowed, the fields they are involved in and the part of speech they belong to – in order to delve into the relation between the two languages and the influence that Latin imposed on Italian.

L'elemento latino della lingua albanese - un impatto della Via Egnatia?

According to a wide-spread theory, the Latin loanwords of Albanian originate from the Latin once spoken along the Via Egnatia which ran through Albania on its way to Byzantium. This theory implies the presence of Albanians in their actual territory already in ancient times in full accordance with the popular theory of an Albanian autochthony. However, a thorough investigation of the phonological history of the Latin loanwords and the Albanian toponymy reveals that they are affected by the same late sound laws. This indicates that both these lexical units have entered the Albanian language only in post-Christian times which creates a strong argument against the autochtony of the Albanians. The Latin loanwords of Albanian have thus been integrated when the ancestors of the Albanians were still dwelling in the Balkan hinterland, in some areas distant from the Via Egnatia.

Loanword adaptation in Hungarian: unexpected vowel harmony in material of Latin and Slavic provenance

In a 1992 article, Eugen Helimski showed that the accented vowel of Old and Middle High German, Medieval Latin and Pannonian Slavic lexemes governed whether they acquired front-vowel or back-vowel harmony when entering Hungarian as loanwords. While the German material appears exceptionless, some words of Slavic and Latin provenance exhibit unexpected back-vowel harmony. The present article submits that if a labial sound follows the originally accented vowel, front-vowel harmony is blocked. This conditioned rule applies without exception to both Slavic and Latin loanwords; it is thus an economical solution. It follows that variation in Slavic loanwords in Hungarian cannot serve as a testimony of Old Slavic accent shifts, but merely of the place of the original (pitch) accent; and that the Slavic language that provided loanwords to Medieval Hungarian must have been fairly uniform. As for Latin loanwords, it likewise renders an appeal to late accent shifts unnecessary. Helimski also discovered that a subset of Latin words containing a medial cluster *-CiV- could trigger front-vowel harmony even if the original accent fell on a back vowel. Here, I argue that the distribution of front and back vocalism in this type is further governed by the vowel of the initial syllable. This minor rule possibly applies to Slavic as well.

'Sky' and 'Heavens' in Breton Oral Tradition

The aim of this paper is to trace the linguistic development of two terms deriving from IE *nem- in Breton: neñv ‘heavens’ and nemet ‘sacred’. This development, attested from the Old Breton into the modern language, seems, in these two instances, to present a particular example of the Christian influence on the vocabulary of spoken and written Breton. While neñv was integrated in the vocabulary of the priests and was employed to mark the opposition between the heavens and the sky (ModB oabl), nemet disappeared from the language and the notion of ‘holy’, ‘sacred’ was explained by a Latin term sacrum > ModB sakr. The evidence of the two derivates from the stem *nem- can illustrate the influence of the extralinguistic factors on the evolution of the lexemes. The better understanding of the causes of such influence can be a step towards our better understanding of the origin and the function of Latin loanwords in Breton.

Exploring Continuities and Discontinuities Between Ælfric’s Grammar and its Antique Sources

This paper explores the extent to which the tenth-century English scholar AElfric, author of a grammatical treatise known to us as AElfric’s Grammar, differed from his sources, the late antique grammarians Donatus and Priscian, (1) in his conception of grammar, (2) in his perception of the structure of Latin, and (3) in the descriptive apparatus he used. I argue for the transmission of a conceptual framework. The facts taken into consideration are those dealt with by Donatus and Priscian, and they are analyzed with the help of the self-same concepts: AElfric does not introduce new concepts into the description, nor does he elaborate or refine those transmitted by the grammatical tradition. I also note the transmission of a descriptive apparatus, at which level, however, discontinuity appears in the partial re-organisation of the treatise so as to gain coherence and pedagogical efficiency, in the Christianisation and Anglicisation of the exemplification, in the systematic translation of Latin items into English and in the coinage of a vernacular grammatical terminology. Yet in the most important form of discontinuity, i.e. in AElfric’s decision not to use Latin as the medium of a Latin grammar, several elements point to a continuity, such as the technical terms being Latin loan words or functioning as glosses to Latin words.

Loanwords in the Synodal Church Slavonic Gospels and Psalms

This paper deals with the role of Greek, Latin and Hebrew loanwords in the history of Church Slavonic. Their number was fluctuating in the course of centuries which can be attributed to political rather than theological or linguistic considerations.The number and role of loanwords in the modern variant of Liturgical Church Slavonic is still considerable. In modern vernacular Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian) the majority of them are substituted with native words.

Latin and Romance loanwords in English

In this study the autor provides a survey on the interaction between English and the Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and Potuguese is analyses chronologically, with a special regard to the phonological modifications of loan-words.

Language and History in the Early Germanic World

Introduction Part I. The Germanic World: 1. Religion 2. Law 3. Kinship 4. Warfare 5. People and army 6. Lordship 7. Kingship Part II. Contact with the Non-Germanic World: 8. Contact with the Celts 9. The migration of the Goths 10. Germanic loanwords in Latin 11. Latin loanwords in Germanic 12. Trade and warfare with the Romans 13. Names of the days of the week 14. The vocabulary of writing Part III. Contact with Christianity: 15. Problems of Christianisation 16. The influence of provincial Roman Christianity 17. The influence of Gothic 18. The influence of the Merovingian Franks 19. The influence of the Anglo-Saxons 20. Contrasts in Christian vocabulary 21. The vocabulary of ethics and fate Bibliography Index of words.

Plurals of Latin loanwords: a report on LANGSCAPE 4

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