English loan verbs in 19th century Russian language

Abstract

The presented research shows the benefits of using diachronic approach in studying the process of borrowing, revealing its characteristic features and main tendencies in the certain period of language development. The work was carried out to identify a group of English loan verbs in the Russian language of the 19^th century, to assess their quantitative and thematic composition, to consider the peculiarities of their adaptation. On the basis of historical and lexicological research and the developed criteria, nine verbs belonging to the sphere of sport, technology, social and political sphere were identified, which is much less than the number of verbs borrowed at this time from French and German. The difficulty of determining the source language, the ways of entry of foreign-language verbs, and the separation of borrowings from word formations in Russian makes it necessary to use corpus linguistic methods and careful work with multi-genre sources, which is illustrated by the example of the verbs tatuirovat` (to tattoo) and startovat` (to start). The historical and lexicological data presented in the article made it possible to clarify the time of occurrence of English loan verbs and to define their first lexicographic fixation. The paper shows the competition of suffixes in the formation of borrowed verbs, leading to a wide variability, with the suffix -irova- proving to be the most productive in the formation of normative variants of English loan verbs. The article also shows that the formation of prefixal correlates becomes a characteristic feature of the borrowed verbs, with their two-kind nature being preserved. Modern Internet materials reflect the process of prefixes expansion in forming the perfectives from borrowed verbs, as shown in the example of the verbs bojkotirovat` (to boycott), flirtovat` (to flirt). A characteristic feature of borrowing is the parallel entry of single-rooted words (skal`p (a scalp), skal`pirovat` (to scalp), interv`yu (an interview), interv`yuirovat` (to interview) etc.), as well as the wide development of family of words when a borrowing comes into the focus of public attention (flirt, flirtirovat`, flirtovat`, flirtaciya, flirtirovanie, flirtistka).