Contribution of Culture-loaded Loanwords to the Class of Etymological Doublets in the Contemporary English Language

Kuzina Marina Anatol'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-3359-3378 Doctor of Philology Associate Professor, Department of English Phonetics and Lexicology Named after V.D. Arakin, Moscow Pedagogical State University; Associate Professor, Department of English for Professional Communication, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 88 Vernadsky Avenue, room 607, Moscow, 119571, Russia kouzina-marina@yandex.ru

Introduction

The volume of the vocabulary of the English language reaches one million units; 616,500 headline words ("Oxford English Dictionary") and 470,000 ("Webster's Third New International Dictionary") are registered in print editions of authoritative lexicographic publications") ^{[5, 7, 11]}. Russian Russian Dictionary As a comparison, statistical data on the coverage of the vocabulary of the literary forms of Russian, German and French languages can be given: the "Large Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language", which has been working on since 2004 and is currently reflected in 23 volumes, will approximately cover 150,000 headline words, the largest dictionary of the German language includes about 200,000 the maximum volume of the French dictionary reaches 150,000 words ^[7].

Universal internal trends in the development of language systems include: the tendency to express different meanings in different forms, the tendency to express the same meanings in one form, the tendency to get rid of redundancy (or the tendency to save), the tendency to use more expressive forms, the tendency to eliminate forms that have lost their original function or have a low semantic load, etc. Despite the pan-chronic nature of the tendency to get rid of redundancy, the English language retains a significant layer of synonyms, which is explained by their active use in texts of different functional orientation as part of stylistic means (alliteration, assonance, epithets, metaphors, etc.) ^{[1, 3, 4]}.

Due to the intensification of the process of borrowing from the autochthonous languages of the former colonies (especially from the group of Indo-Aryan languages) and regional variants of the English language (within the framework of pluricentric English) into the English language of the former metropolis (in particular, into the British and American territorial variants), it seems relevant to consider replenishing the class of etymological doublets.

A certain scientific novelty of the undertaken research is explained by the small number of dissertation studies, the object of which are etymological doublets in English: E. F. Dmitrieva "Etymological doublets of Latin-French origin in modern English" (1954), Fadeev V. I. "Etymological doublets of common origin in English and Russian" (1970), Nikitina M. A. "Etymological doublets in the history of the English language (on the problem of word identity" (1985), Tsarevskaya I. V. "Etymological units of common origin: lexical and semantic aspect of research: based on the material of Russian and English languages" (2006). Theoretical aspects of doublets at all language levels are studied in the doctoral dissertation of Ivanov A.V. "The metalanguage of phonetics and metrics" (2005); some problems of etymological doublet in German and French are developed respectively in the dissertations of Mashikhina E. V. (2004), Kochurova Yu. I. (2010), Moraru L. I. (1984).

The range of problems directly related to doublet includes: the relationship of three types of identity of linguistic units (actual, historical, etymological), the variation of a word while preserving its identity to itself, the role of borrowing in preserving or leveling the identity of a lexical unit, gradation of phonetic and semantic divergence, etc. ^[2].

The objectives of the study are: to identify etymological doublets that arose as a result of contacts between native English speakers and native speakers of Indo-Aryan (Indian) languages; to identify the distinctive features of new doublet pairs; to establish the dynamics of their use in modern English (in particular, in fiction and periodicals).

The following methods were used in the course of the study: the continuous sampling method (when selecting empirical material), the statistical method (when classifying and tracking the dynamics of the use of etymological doublets in texts), the descriptive method (when evaluating the distinctive features of new etymological pairs).

The research material was a file of etymological doublets (and quadroplets), including borrowings with a national-cultural component of meaning (15 units), selected by continuous sampling from dictionaries of the general vocabulary of the English language.

The results obtained and their discussion

The theoretical analysis of scientific works on the problems of etymological doublet in English, Russian and French (M. S. Hayrapetyan (1953), E. F. Dmitrieva (1954), V. I. Fadeev (1970), M. O. Nikitina (1985), I. V. Tsarevskaya (2006), etc.) allows us to define etymological doublets as lexical units, going back to a common root, a common basis, the same word (as a fully formed lexeme) and having a different degree of sound (phonemic or phono-morphological) and semantic divergence. Etymological identity is a necessary and sufficient condition for assigning a lexeme to the class of etymological doublets ^[2].

The etymological taxonomy of doublet units implies the identification of three cases of interaction of native and (or) borrowed linguistic material: native word – native word, native word – borrowed word, borrowed word – borrowed word.

Etymological doublet (type 1), which includes only native material, is the result of a number of intra-linguistic changes and includes ten subtypes ^{[10, pp. 405-406]}.

Subtype 1: truncation of the initial and (or) final syllable in a word: defense – fence; cad – cadet;

Subtype 2: alternation of the root vowel sound: clench – clinch; preen – prune;     

Subtype 3: alternating consonantal sound: dike – ditch; wake – watch;

Subtype 4: changing the place of stress in a word: a – one; gentle – genteel;

Subtype 5: metathesis: through – through; worked – through;

Subtype 6: The revival of an outdated form: fancy – fantasy;

Subtype 7: using different inflections: mead – meadow; shade – shadow;

Subtype 8: spelling variation, in which interchangeable spellings of words begin to be used as different words: travail – travel;

Subtype 9: using the causative form of the verb as an independent unit:

Subtype 10: using the doublet plural form as an independent unit: brother (units) and brothers/brethren (many hours) > brothers – brethren; penny (units) and pennies/pence (many hours) > penny – pence.

Etymological doublet (type 2) is the result of the interaction of borrowed (mainly from Scandinavian or North Germanic languages) and native units and includes five subtypes with characteristic alternations of consonants and vowels ^{[10, pp. 403-405]}.

Subtype 1 with alternating [sk > ?]: skirt – shirt; scatter – shatter

Subtype 2 with alternation [g > j]: garth – yard; guild – yield

Subtype 3 with alternation [k > t?]: kist – chest

Subtype 4 with alternating [g > ?]: egg – edge

Subtype 5 with alternating [e? > ou]: hail – whole, nay – no

Also, this type of doublet includes pairs from a Latin loan and a native word without systematizable sound alternations: eatable – edible, foam – spam, kin – genus, mother – mater, naked – nude, nine – noon, thin – tenuous, thole – tolerant.

Etymological doublet (type 3) is the result of the interaction of borrowed and ancestral units and includes two large groups with several subtypes in each ^{[6, pp. 164-165; 10, pp. 403-405]}.

Group 1 consists of asynchronous borrowings from the same language; these include

Subtype 1 includes gallicisms correlated with the XI-XIV centuries and XV-XVII centuries; they are characterized by typical alternations [k > t?] and [w> g]: canal – channel, catch – chase, cattle – chattel; wage – gage, warranty – guarantee, warden – guardian.  

Subtype 2 is represented by Latinisms correlated with the periods before the XIV century and after the XVI century: camp – campus, cross – crux, devilish – diabolic, inch – ounce, plum – prune, street – stratum. 

Group 2 includes asynchronous and synchronous borrowings from different languages.

Subtype 1 is represented by pairs of Latin and French loanwords: abbreviate – abridge, amicable – amiable, balsam – balm, camera – chamber, florida – flowery, legal – loyal, pauper – poor, potion – poison, pungent – poignant, regal – royal, secure – sure, strict – strait, wine – vine, zealous – jealous.

Subtype 2 includes pairs of gallicisms and Italianisms: brave – bravo, flask – fiasco, porch – portico.

Subtype 3 consists of pairs of words borrowed from French and Spanish: army – armada, charge – cargo, musket – mosquito.

Subtype 4 illustrates the results of borrowing from Greek and French: basis – base, cathedral – chair, deacon – dean, papyrus – paper, paralysis – palsy.

Subtype 5 is represented by loanwords for which the donor languages are Indo-European languages and languages of other language families: zero – cipher.

More rare cases of functioning in the English language of a group of words united by a common origin are triplets, quadroplets and quintiplets; a sample of their typical examples is presented in Table 1 (Note: the abbreviation PI in Table 1 denotes proto-Indo-European).

Table 1

Etymological triplets, quadroplets and quintiplets in English

Borrowings from the autochthonous languages of South Asia or regional variants of English into the English of the inner circle (within the framework of the concept of concentric circles Br. Kachru) – ayah, baboo/babu, baksheesh, feringhee/feringhi/ferinji/firanghi, gooroo/guru, maharaja/maharajah, maharani, maharishi, mahatma, mandarin, mantra, pagoda – replenish the types 2 and 3 of etymological doublet described above.

The interaction of borrowed and ancestral units (type 2) is represented by a single pair of etymological doublets: father (an original word with the meanings "father; ancestor; ancestor" from the proto-Indo-European basis *p?ter- with the meaning "father") vs. baboo/babu (an 18th-century borrowing from Hindi with the meaning "impersonal appeal to an elderly or respected to a man"; the word can be derived from the proto-Indo-European basis *p?ter- meaning "father").

The Oxford English Dictionary registers 10 values of the father token, which can be summarized as follows: 1) a man in relation to his children (more often) and a male in relation to his cubs (less often); 2) the heavenly father (in religious contexts); 3) people of previous generations, the progenitor; 4) people in power, patrons; 5) patrician in Ancient Rome; 6) appeal to the elderly to a man or to a husband as the father of his children (colloquially); 7) a confessor, a spiritual father; 8) the ancestor or founder of something, as well as the original sample of something; 9) a person who takes paternal care of the younger, weaker, inexperienced; 10) a professor at Cambridge and (less often) Oxford, especially which accompanies students upon admission and graduation ^[13].

 This native word is characterized by a high frequency of use - it is included in the 500 most commonly used words of the English language and has 100-1000 uses per million words (according to the classification adopted by the Oxford English Dictionary, this frequency corresponds to group 7, and group 1 contains words with the lowest frequency, and group 8 – with the lowest high frequency). The least frequent are historical and highly specialized meanings; it is noteworthy that father is rarely used in colloquial speech when children address their father - common substitute words for father are: daddy, dad, papa, pa, pop(s); for example, Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, mentioned in a press interview that children call William Arthur Philip Louis, Prince of Wales, simply "pops": "To most, Prince Williams is known as "His Royal Highness". But to Prince George and Princess Charlotte, he’s simply “Pops”  <…> Season ticket holder Fiona Sturgess told reporters, “Kate said that William was playing football with the children last night and one of them said, I think it was George, ‘Are you playing football tomorrow, Pops?’» ^[14].

The root -father- is characterized by high word-formation activity: in the Old English period, it attached the suffixes -en, -ly and - less: fatheren, fatherly, fatherless; in the New English period, as a result of affixation, the adjective fathered (1543) and the nouns fatherhood (1393), fathership (1482), fathering (1549), fatherlessness (1571), fatherlike (1500), fatherliness (1546). The verb father formed as a result of conversion is characterized by a moderate frequency (2 uses per million words), which, to a certain extent, can be explained by its ambiguity. Over two dozen composites (with fused spelling, split spelling, hyphenated spelling) became part of the New English language: father-breeder (1624), Father Christmas (1646), father complex (1910), father-dust (1728), father figure (1916), father-fixed (1934), father fixation (1916), Father-forger (1624), Father General (1581), fatherhead (1384), father image (1912), father-imago (1913), father-in-law (1749), fatherkin (1405-1839), fatherland (1275) with subsequent affix formations fatherlandish (1832) and fatherlandless (1870), father-lasher (1673), father-long-legs (1742), father right (1899), father-rule (1888), Father's Day (1908), father-substitute (1917), father-surrogate (1916).

One of the suffix formations and 8 composites formed from the beginning of the Old English period to the 1920s belong to the category of "obsolete" in modern English: fatheren (other-English), father-age (1596-1633), father-better (1645-1705), father-brother (1382-1681), father-law (1445-1888), father-queller (1440-1641), fathersick (1748-1923), father-sister (1387-1672), father-waur (1500-1600) ^[13].

The borrowing of baboo/babu is recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary in the following meanings: lord (as an address) or Indian nobleman (this is also reflected in the dictionary of G. Yule and A.K. Burnell: "properly a term of respect attached to a name, like Master or Mr., and formerly in some parts of Hindustan applied to certain persons of distinction"); an Indian clerk who was educated in an English school and speaks English (this is also explained in the dictionary of G. Yule and A.K. Burnell: "a native clerk who writes English") ^{[21, p. 72]}.

In the first of these meanings, borrowing is most often used together with a person's personal name, but it can also function independently, especially to designate an employee responsible for a certain type of work: "The broad-shouldered Mr. Singh was a much-in-demand 'tar babu', a man in charge of the telegram desk" ^[16]. Many lexicographic sources point to the negative connotation of baboo/babu when used in the second meaning: "it is often used with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali" ^{[21, p. 72]}. P.K. Nayar's specialized reference and encyclopedic publication "The British Raj: Keywords" captures the modern meanings of the word: office worker in India; bureaucrat, letter-reader, red tape ^{[12, p. 21]}.

Baboo English, i.e. broken and pompous English speech, and White Baboos, i.e. de-Europeanized English officers who have been living for a long time among the local population of the Hindustan Peninsula, become the target of directed criticism ^{[21, p. 73]}. Baboo English samples with instructive quotations, expressions to convey excessive modesty and self-deprecation, multiple hyperboles, archaisms and idioms are dealt with in a number of sociolinguistic and stylistic works. In particular, A. Wright in the monograph "Baboo English as 'tis Writ: Being Curiosities of Indian Journalism" cites many curious examples of such speech with the above–mentioned characteristic features: "Honored and much respected Sir, - With due respect and humble submission, I beg to bring to your kind notice that for a long days, I have not the fortune to pay you a respect, or not to have your mental or daily welfare, therefore my request that you will be kind enough to show me some mercy and gratitude, by paying some few lines to your wretched son and therefore highly oblige" ^{[20, p. 82]}.

The root -babu- (coinciding with the basis of the babu lexeme, borrowed into English in 1763) is characterized by relatively low word-formation activity: in the New English period, two nouns were formed as a result of affixation from it: babudom (1870s) to denote bureaucratic red tape (mainly in South Asia) and babuism (1858) to indicate typical speech errors (for example, malapropisms) in the speech of Indians who speak English ^[13]. The analyzed word is characterized by an average frequency of use – according to the classification adopted by the Oxford English Dictionary, this frequency corresponds to a group of 4 out of 8 distinguished groups).

The interaction of loanwords from different languages (type 3) is represented by the following pairs of etymological doublets:

1. guitar (borrowed twice in the XIV and XVI centuries from French and Spanish, the word meaning "stringed musical instrument" from the proto-Indo-European basis *ten- meaning "stretch, pull") vs. sitar (borrowing of the XIX century from Hindi in the meaning of "musical plucked instrument like a lute", erected to the word-the prototype of "sihtar" in Persian with the meaning "three things; three strings" and further to the proto-Indo-European basis *ten - with the meaning "stretch, pull"); it is fair to talk about quadroplets in Russian and English: kifara/cithara (direct borrowings from Greek) – guitar/guitar (borrowings Italian-Spanish origin) – sitara/sitar (borrowings from Hindi) – citra/cittern (direct borrowings from German);

2. uncle (a word borrowed in the XIV century with the meanings "uncle; uncle" from the proto-Indo-European basis *awo- with the meaning "grandfather or male relative besides the father") vs. ayah (borrowing of the XVIII century from the Anglo-Indian language (Anglo-Indian) in the meanings "maid of the mistress of the house; nanny from the number of local residents raising children in a British family", which can be elevated to the prototype word "aia" in Portuguese, and then to the Latin etymon and the proto-Indo-European basis *awo- with the meaning "grandfather or male relative besides the father").

The borrowing of ayah has a pronounced national-cultural component of meaning, since its lexical formation took place under the active influence of extralinguistic factors.

First, the word was borrowed into the English language of the inner circle (in the terminology of Br. Kachru) along the following chain with several intermediary languages: aidus (Latin) meaning "assistant, assistant" > aia (Portuguese) meaning "nanny, governess" > (local languages of the South Asian subcontinent) > aya (Anglo-Indian) meaning "maid, maid from among the locals; nanny or a governess from among the locals" > ayah (English of the inner circle, namely: British English) in a similar meaning to the previous stage. It is also particularly noted that the ayah lexeme was borrowed from Portuguese into the local languages of the Indian subcontinent, since the Portuguese founded colonies in India before the British, at the beginning of the XVI century, and already from local languages the word passed into the English language of the British, who served mainly in the East India Company, founded in 1600.

Secondly, the local languages of the South Asian subcontinent and the Portuguese language of the first colonizers became the source languages for many other designations of the realities of the era of the British Raj (1858-1947). In particular, ayah is in a co-hyponymic relationship with another name of a domestic servant, the nurse of the children of the British from among the local residents – amma/ammah/amah. The designation for a woman breastfeeding someone else's child was borrowed into English along a chain similar to the chain of borrowing for ayah: amma (Latin) > ama (Portuguese) > (local languages, one of which – the Telugu language – has the amma lexeme with similar phonomorphological characteristics) > amma/ammah/amah (Anglo-Indian) ^[13].

Thirdly, in modern English, ayah is almost always accompanied by an explanatory comment: "She was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of ayahs – Indian nannies (though the name came to refer to other nationalities too) who were brought to Britain by wealthy families as cheap travelling childcare between the 18th and mid-20th centuries» ^[16]. This may be explained by the fact that the analyzed lexeme is gradually passing into the category of historicisms; on the one hand, on the pages of modern periodicals, even after 2000, there are obituaries dedicated to ayah, who during their career as nannies raised a significant number of British children: "She was a shining example of the conscientious and trustworthy 'ayah' – the Urdu word for the traditional children's nurse. By her own count, she cared for 19 children in her career, including three of ours» ^[16]. On the other hand, some facts of the passing Ayya era are captured in literature, art, architecture, etc.: in memoirs (for example, in J. Grant's "First Love Last Love" (1868), F.A. Styles's "On the Face of the Waters" (1896), etc.) perpetuated the image of aya as a symbol of the devotion of the local population of British India to English families; whole series of paintings have been preserved in painting, in which aya is depicted along with other members of the English families (for example, J. Reynolds's "George Clive, Family and Ayah" (1765-66) and J. Zoffani's "Colonel Blair with His Family and an Indian Ayah" (1786)); in 1897, a House for Ayah was built in London – it provided adequate housing conditions for nannies who had experienced abuse in families or They were dismissed without severance pay, i.e. without means of subsistence or to buy a return ticket to their homeland ^{[12, pp. 19-21]}.  

Type 3 also includes a triplet: Frank (erected to the common word-prototype francus and proper name Frank in Old English) vs. French (erected to the adjective frencisc in Old English) vs. feringhee (with spelling variants feringhi/ferinji/firanghi), borrowed along the chain [Latinisms (or gallicisms) francus/Frank > Arabisms f a ran j/firang?/al-firan j or Persian f a rang?/fir i ng? > Hindi fira?g? or Urdu firang? > English feringhee]. The three analyzed units can be traced back to the proto-Indo-European basis *preg-, *pregn- with the meaning "stick, pole; stem, trunk" ^[13].

"Firangi" (and its phonetic variants: "firingi" and "farangi") and "angrezi" (angrezi) are fairly considered as synonymous hyperonyms for foreigners of non-Asian origin in Asia Minor and South Asia, since both lexemes have undergone a process of expansion of meaning: designation of a tribe or nation > designation of a foreigner, a foreigner, a representative of an "alien" culture. Examples of the use of feringhee/feringhi/ferinji/firanghi in fiction and in periodicals indicate that this lexeme is accompanied by an appropriate author's commentary or interpretive context. In T. Mandy's short story "The Soul of a Regiment" (1912), firangi is identified with an Englishman who eats pork and does not profess Islam: "He was told promptly that he was a liar; how it came that a feringhee – a pork-fed, infidel Englishman – should be allowed to live anywhere the Mahdi's long arm reached?" ^{[15, p. 41]}. In the detective story by A.K. Doyle "The Sign of the Four" (1890), in the scene when the Sikhs take the Englishman Jonathan Small's promise to keep a secret about stolen treasures from the Indian raja, the feringhee token has a positive connotation, since in the understanding of the Sikhs, the Englishman always keeps the word: "The thing stands thus, sahib, and I tell it to you because I know that an oath is binding upon a Feringhee, and that we may trust you. Had you been a lying Hindoo, though you had been sworn by all the gods in your false temples, your blood would have been upon the knife and your body in the water" ^{[9, p. 167]}. In A. Desai's novel Baumgartner's Bombay (1988), Hugo Baumgartner, a refugee from Nazi Germany, reflects on his half–century stay in India: "In Germany he had been dark - his darkness had marked him the Jew, der Jude. In India he was fair and that marked him the firanghi. In both lands, the unacceptable" ^{[8, p. 20]}. In modern periodicals in English, the lexeme can be used in neutral contexts, denoting foreigners, citizens of foreign countries: "There is also an important question of how far Indian writers in English have to compromise if they are writing primarily for a firangi audience" ^[16].

Also, the following groups of words can be elevated to the same proto-Indo-European basis:

1. a group of single-root words with a Greek root –phage/phago (for example, aphagia, esophagus, sarcophagus, etc.) vs. baksheesh - borrowing of the XVII century from the Persian donor language with the meanings "monetary gift, reward; bribe"; pagoda – borrowing of the XVI century from the Persian or Tamil donor language with the meanings "a multi-tiered structure of a religious nature, which is a repository of sacred objects"; all analyzed lexical units can be erected to the proto-Indo-European basis *bhag- with the meaning "divide into shares; receive your share";

2. a group of cognate words with a Latin root -gravis (for example, aggravate, aggrieve, gravity, gravitate, grief, grieve, etc.) vs. gooroo/guru is a borrowing of the XVII century from the Persian donor language with the meanings "monetary gift, reward; bribe"; all analyzed lexical units can be elevated to a proto-Indo-European basis *gwere- with the meaning "heavy";

3. a group of cognate words with a Latin root - magnus (for example, acromegaly, magistrate, magnate, magnitude, magnanimity, majority, maximum, etc.) vs. maharaja/maharajah, maharani, maharishi, mahatma – a borrowing of the XVII century from the Persian donor language with the meanings "monetary gift, reward; bribe"; all analyzed lexical units can be raised to the proto-Indo-European basis *meg- with the meaning "great";

4. a group of cognate words with a Greek root - mneme (for example, aphagia, amnesia, amnesty, anamnesis, comment, mania, mentor, mind, mnemonic, money, monitor, monster, mosaic, museum, music, reminiscence, etc.) vs. mandarin – borrowing of the XVII century from the Persian donor language with with the meanings "monetary gift, reward; bribe"; mantra – a borrowing of the XVI century from the Persian or Tamil donor language with the meanings "a multi-tiered structure of a religious nature, which is a repository of sacred objects"; all analyzed lexical units can be erected to the proto-Indo-European basis *men - with the meaning "to think".

It is advisable to trace the frequency of use of etymological doublets in modern periodicals using the example of "high-quality" British and American publications ("The Guardian", "The Independent", "The Washington Post", "The USA Today") ^{[16, 17, 18, 19]}. In table 2, the fifteen analyzed borrowings are presented in alphabetical order with statistical data on the total number of their uses in the online versions of British and American newspapers, as well as by the year of their first registration by the Oxford English Dictionary (Note: in the table, this dictionary is indicated by the abbreviation OED).

Table 2

Dynamics of the use of etymological doublets (type 2: native word – borrowed word, type 3: borrowed word – borrowed word)

The data given in the table allows us to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, all 15 words were borrowed from the XVI to the XIX centuries: 3 words passed into the English donor language in the XVI century, 5 - in the XVII century, 5 – in the XVIII century, 2 – in the XIX century; thus, the earliest borrowings have been functioning in English for more than 450 years ^[13]. Secondly, the analyzed words included in the etymological doublets correspond to groups 2 (1 word has a frequency of less than 0.001 cases of use per 1 million words), 3 (3 words have a frequency of less than 0,01 – 0, 001), 4 (6 words have a frequency of less than 0.1 – 1.0), 5 (3 words have a frequency of less than 1.0 – 10); thus, they are neither exceptionally rare (group 1) nor the most frequent (groups 6, 7, 8) ^[13]. Thirdly, according to the frequency of use in modern periodicals, borrowings could be classified into 4 groups: with a very high frequency of use (more than 10,000 cases in the archive of at least one of the newspapers) – guru, mandarin, mantra; with a high frequency of use (from 1,000 to 10,000 cases in the archive of at least one of the newspapers) – ayah, maharaja, maharishi; with moderate frequency of use (from 100 to 1000 cases in the archive of at least one of the newspapers)  – babu, mahatma, pagoda; with low frequency of use (less than 100 in the archive of at least one of the newspapers) – baksheesh, cithara, cittern, feringhee, maharani.

Conclusions

Etymological similarity is a prerequisite for the formation of etymological doublets (triplets, quadruplets, quintiplets); additional conditions include permissible variability in graphophonetic correspondences and morphological structure of elements of the lexical level of the language. Using the example of etymological doublets, one can trace the formal (mainly phonetic) and functional (mainly semantic) evolution of prototype words in donor languages. The tendency of etymological doublets to maximum divergence in formal and functional aspects is clearly manifested in pairs involving borrowings from European and non-European languages. The tendency to expand the word-formation possibilities of borrowing and to develop polysemy in them is both the cause and the consequence of an increase in the number of their uses in modern English. It is also fair to note that even borrowings with a low frequency of use remain in the language: they are assigned to a certain element of foreign language culture and, for this reason, are characterized by uniqueness and irreplaceability in describing realities that are not typical for the recipient language countries.