Phonological and Orthographical Assimilation, Borrowings into French - Coursework Example

The phonological and orthographical assimilation they undergo, borrowings into French In virtually every country , linguistic minorities can be found. This has mainly been caused by two reasons : adoption and immigration. This has led to hundred of cases of language loss and to a reduction of language diversity used by the local population. The linguistic outcomes of language are determined in a large part by the history of social relations among populations that are inclusive of the political, economic and demographic factors. French is regarded as a romantic language. This language is believed to have originated from Vulgar Lain. This evolved from the Gallo- Romance dialects that was spoken in northern France1. There are two aspects of history that can explain the phonological and orthographical assimilation that the French language underwent. Firstly, the ethnic, technological, political and other factors that affected the language.Secondly, the grammatical and phonological changes that the French language had to undergo. orthographical assimilation that the French language French orthography is composed of the punctuation and spelling of the French language. It is a combination of historical and phonemic principles. Most of the spellings are based on the pronunciation of Old French and this has stayed the same for a long time. However,there were enormous changes that took place regarding the pronunciation of this language. This resulted in a sophisticated relationship between sound and spelling2. This was evident in the vowels, an array of the silent letters and many homophones. For example, ceint/sein/sain/cent. There were attempts to respell some of the words using the Latin etymologies which further increased the silent words for example tens instead f temps. This is compared to the English word “tense” that was originally spelled as vint. Nonetheless, there are a set of rules that are used to govern French orthography that will create room for accuracy when producing French words. One imperative way of handling nomination is to borrow word, more specifically when it is borrowed to the referent at he same time. However, native mormphemes can be substituted with a foreign word, and we get a calque or a loan translation which is semantic borrowing only. There are various types of loan translation that can be distinguished however,the essence is clearly anological: French arriver and English arrive can be matched more or less in their semantic range however, the French Verb meant also to attain success. Hybridization plays an important part loanwording. Evidence of the strong effect of the French on Middle English is forthcoming in hybridization. This means that the word consists of the German element and the Romance element. For example, Adding of the ending {ly} (< OE -lich) to loanwords of the French language: {ly}: princely, courtly. The same applies to ending such as {ful}: beautiful, powerful; {less}: noiseless, colourless and pitiless. Forming verbs,nouns from French stem and a german ending fro example, ending {ing}: serving and preaching. Additionally, the formation of nouns that use German suffixes like {ness}: faintness. However, the reverse can also be used . For example, forming of noun by adding the suffixes {age}: mileage,leakage; and {ment}: endearment and bewilderment. In addition, the formation of adjectives by using the endings {able}: likeable, drinkable, loveable. Phonological assimilation that the French language French is one of the most important language with thorough phonetic changes that originated from Latin. This language shows a wide range of phonetic changes between the Old French and Modern French. The spelling has not changed a lot.The notable changes that can be noticed are : The loss of most final consonants, subsequent loss of the letter /ǝ/ thus causing the appearance of the new consonants and the significant alteration in the vowels and nasal vowels. Loan words, phonological treatment Loan words refer to words that enters a language through borrowing from some other language. Loanwords can be classified from native words in the sense that native words derive from earlier historical stages of the language. The manner in which the loanwords are actually pronounced in the recipient language that may provide insights into the phonology of that language that would not otherwise be apparent from the native words. Because the type and number of phonemes in a phonemic inventory is different from language to language3. Borrowing requires that a language should have some strategy for dealing with foreign sound that are not present in its phonemic inventory. The main distinction between Central French and Anglo-Nornam loans in English are evident in the words catch and chase. This goes back to Latin word “captiare” which had furnished English but later obtained the name “capture”4. There are distinctive feature that can separate Central French and Anglo- Nornam. This is evident in the table below: Anglo-Norman Central French cattle /k-/ chattels /tʃ/ /k/ /tʃ/ /tʃ/ /s/ pocket /-k-/ poach /tʃ/ The major feature between the two is the etymon and this also seen in the French and Latin language. For example,royal and regal. There are Germanic loanwords in French is a little different from the number of words borrowed from Latin. For example, in Central French this is evident in /g-/ that was earlier /gw/) and in Anglo-Norman /w/. The borrowing of words in the mid-English period made some changes In French language. For example, an /s/ before /t/ was loaned by any English but was lost in French. Thus , a person can say forest but forêt. In this case, the first words that are in this order of borrowing are evident in Modern French5. In the split of English vocabulary, it is imperative to state that the French loans are to be found in the higher levels English. The general split is between Romance terms and the colloquial native words. These are words like pardon and forgive, felicity and help, hearty and cordial. These words are used in literary terms in English currently. However , for the later English source of words are not important as any of the pair can form a formal axis that will be used as perceive and present. The semantic differentiation is gradually developed and may be neutralized through the previous distinctions6. There are instances of French influence on English spelling are: h > gh, þ, ð > th, æ > a, cw > qu, i > j (partly), u > v at the commencement, u in the middle of a word, sc > sh [ʃ], c > ch [tʃ], cg, gg > dg [dʒ]. Loan words and native words The fact that most of the words that are Germanic equivalents seemed to have already existed in English and still continue to be effective in stylistic splitting makes them very important. For example a word like work is regarded as a Germanic word but the word labour is regarded as a French loan word. In other instances, the Romance loanword will tend to have a slightly different meaning from a Germanic base word. For Example, to ask or demand in Germanic will be insisting on something in Romance language. The various changes that took place during this period where Middle English that borrowed from French was through direct contact and this led to a mixture Romance and Germanic elements.7 Therefore the cases of assimilation in which an English word can be created as long as French word sounds similar. For example, the English word choice is a noun that has been borrowed from the French word Choix. In some instances, one is not able to decide whether Romance word or a Germanic Word will be able to be used in Mordern English. For example, the adjective rich derived from the Old English word rice and borrowed French words riche8. Nonetheless, there are my cases in which a combination of morphology can be used from French borrowing. In a nutshell,to be able to understand the sphere of loan borrowing on as to have a clear understanding of the ethnic, technological, political and other factors that affected the language.Secondly, the grammatical and phonological changes that the French language had to undergo. Bibliography Melzer, Dana. 2009. French Influence on the English Languange in the Middle English Period. München: GRIN Verlag GmbH. Pg. 34-56 International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena, and Richard Dury. 2008. English historical linguistics 2006: selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, Pg.21-25 Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing systems: a linguistic introduction. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Pg. 33-66 Baddeley, Susan. 2012. Orthographies in Early Modern Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Pg. 57-77 Martin-Jones, Marilyn, and Kathryn Jones. 2000. Multilingual literacies reading and writing different worlds. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Pg. 60-90 Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. 1996. The French influence on Middle English morphology: a corpus-based study of derivation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pg.. 56-76 Tajima, Matsuji. 1988. Old and Middle English language studies: a classified bibliography, 1923-1985. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.Pg. 67-90 Somerset, Fiona, and Nicholas Watson. 2003. The vulgar tongue: medieval and postmedieval vernacularity. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press. 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