English lexical and semantic loans in informal spoken Polish
English lexical and semantic loans in informal spoken Polish

Author(s): Marcin Zabawa
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: English lexical loans; English semantic loans
Summary/Abstract: It is a well-known fact that nowadays English exerts a strong influence onmany European languages, including Polish. Naturally, the changes inthe Polish language are most readily visible in the area of vocabulary, asa number of words of English origin have entered Polish in recent years. Whatis more, new meanings are frequently assigned to already existing native Polishwords or older borrowings. Furthermore, other spheres, such as syntax,morphology or even phonology are not free from the influence of English,either.In general, the lexical influence of English upon written Polish, particularlythe language of the press, has been researched relatively thoroughly; however,the influence on spoken informal Polish, both lexical and semantic, hasattracted much less attention of linguists, as gathering a sufficient amount ofspontaneous spoken language is inherently a very difficult and time-consumingprocess. This tendency still continues, as much attention is devoted to newvocabulary items appearing in written Polish, especially the one used inthe mass media. Much less has been written, however, about the newestsemantic borrowings. The aim of the present book is therefore to investigatethe lexical and semantic influence of English upon Polish on the basis ofthe corpus, consisting of informal conversations, recorded, transcribed andanalysed by the present author. The main focus of the book is on semanticborrowings.The only previous work of this type known to the present author is the onewritten by OTWINOWSKA-KASZTELANIC (2000). The present research, however,differs from hers in many respects. Most importantly, the present study doesnot concentrate on syntax, but instead devotes much more attention toindividual loans at the level of words; the majority of them are presented inthe context and their meaning and use is discussed in detail. In other words,the loans, especially semantic ones, are discussed not only globally, butindividually as well; statistical analyses have also been performed. Moreover,the author has also aimed at investigating the mechanisms of the emergence ofsemantic loans in Polish. In addition, the present work concentrates not only onthe general informal variety of Polish, but on the Silesian dialect as well.The book consists of seven chapters and five appendices. The first fourchapters have theoretical and introductory character, whereas the next two (fifthand sixth) form the essential part of the book.Chapter 1 concentrates on some theoretical points concerning the notion ofspoken language: the theories of the primacy of speech over writing and viceversa and the differences between the two modes. The final section ofthe chapter is devoted to the research done in the field of spoken Polish.Chapter 2 focuses on theoretical aspects of the process of borrowing.The chapter aims at defining the notion of ‘borrowing’, as it is perceiveddifferently by various linguists. Moreover, the chapter includes the descriptionof the two types of loans (lexical and semantic) as well as the discussionconcerning the conditions and motives for borrowing.Chapter 3 concentrates on the contact between English and Polish.The main part of the chapter focuses on the linguistic outcome of the contact inquestion. In other words, concrete examples of lexical and semanticborrowings, including less known ones, are given and briefly discussed.Moreover, various other tendencies, i.e. not typical borrowings, which haveprobably been taken over from English, are mentioned. The final section isdevoted to the research done in the field of English influence upon Polish.The aim of the section is not only to present a list of the literature onthe subject, but also to highlight the areas which still require furtherinvestigation.The aim of Chapter 4 is to describe the corpus of informal spoken Polishupon which the study is based. The first part gives some general, introductoryinformation on corpus studies and then focuses on various problems connectedwith spoken language corpora, for example the process of designing sucha corpus and gathering of the material. The difficulty and protracted nature ofthe process is stressed. What is more, many other specific problems arise whenthe aim of the research is to count and analyse borrowings used in sucha corpus, the most important of which are also described in the section.The further part of the chapter is devoted to the description of the corpus usedin the study. Various aspects, such as the individual recordings (particularlythe setting and the topics), the informants (including their age, sex, education,occupation and knowledge of English) and the conventions used inthe transcription are discussed, among other things. Moreover, as some ofthe informants used — to a lesser or greater extent — the Silesian dialect,some information on its most important features is given.Chapter 5 concentrates on the lexical loans found in the corpus. The firstsection focuses on the methodological problems connected with such spheres asdifferentiating between English borrowings and borrowings of other origin ordistinguishing between borrowings and instances of single-word codeswitching. The main part of the chapter concentrates on the description ofthe loanwords found in the corpus. The final section is devoted to statisticalanalysis of the loanwords.Chapter 6, the longest and most important, focuses on the semanticborrowings found in the corpus. The first part of the chapter is concerned withthe general description of the semantic loans in question as well as with a briefdescription of the methodological problems. The further part of the chapteraims at explaining the process of introducing semantic loans into spoken Polishby using ARABSKI’S theory of primary counterparts. The main part ofthe chapter focuses on detailed description of the semantic loans found inthe corpus. The final section is devoted to statistical analysis of these semanticborrowings.Chapter 7 focuses on the conclusions of the study.

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