Semantic changes and borrowing from French

Semantic changes and borrowing from French

In order to understand this sphere of borrowings from French one must bear in mind that the first loans were to be found in the upper classes who spoke Anglo-Norman. This fact led to French loans being automatically placed on a level above the normal everyday English vocabulary. Up to the present-day this characteristic of French words in English has remained. While it is true that some of the common French borrowings have become part of the basic stock of English vocabulary (cf. air, age, cry, change, large, manner, mountain, place, point, village, voice) a large quantity of words has remained on a stylistically higher level alongside the lower English terms. This results in such word pairs as the following which are distinguished more by register than by basic meaning: dress : clothe; amity : friendship; commence : begin; conceal : hide; nourish : feed; liberty : freedom.

Loans and native words

The fact that for many of the above words Germanic equivalents already existed in English and continued to exist led to a stylistic splitting of the vocabulary of English. Thus a word like work is a Germanic word and the normal everyday word whereas labour is a Romance loanword which is regarded as being on a higher level, cf. ‘I have some work to do now’, ‘The value of labour in our society’. In other cases the Romance loanword has come to have a slightly different meaning to the Germanic base word, cf. ask and demand where the latter (Romance) word has the implication of insisting on something.

Among the various types of changes which took place in the period in which Middle English borrowed from French through direct contact, are those which led to a mixing of Germanic and Romance elements. Thus one has cases of assimilation in which an English word was created on the basis of a similar sounding French word. Here one has an instance of the French form complementing the English one. For example, the English verb choose obtained a noun choice on the basis of a borrowing of French choix.

In some cases one can no longer decide whether the Germanic or the Romance form of a word has survived into Modern English. Thus in the case of the adjective rich one cannot tell whether it is a continuation of the Old English rice or the later French borrowing riche. However, one can in many cases see a contamination of the morphology of words due to French borrowing. With the previous adjective one can see the Romance suffix in the noun formed from it: richess as opposed to Old English richdom with the Romance ending -ess.

The form of a word may have been changed without its meaning having been affected. With the Old English word iegland / iland (cf. German Eiland) one arrives at the later spelling island under the influence of French isle. Note that the s here is unetymological, i.e. was never pronounced in English. Some French loanwords were influenced by changes later than Middle English. This is for example the case with Old French viage which was borrowed into Middle English but where the later French form voyage was borrowed into English and adapted in its pronunciation. The same is true of the Middle English noun flaute which was changed under the influence of later French flute.

Relative chronology of borrowings

The form of many French loanwords can be used to date borrowing. As mentioned above there are two strands of French influence, an early Anglo-Norman one and a later Central French one. These can be identified phonologically as can be seen in the word pairs catch and chase or cattle and chattels (from captiare and capitale in Latin respectively). In the first word one sees Middle English cacchen which was borrowed from North French cachier as the retention of the /k/ before /a/ was a feature of Norman French.

After 1250 the influence of Central French was predominant in England. In this variety of French the original /k/ retained in Norman French was shifted to /tʃ/ which is reflected in the writing where c was changed to ch. Thus we have the Central French verb chacier being borrowed into Middle English as chacen, Modern English chase. Note that the later borrowing did not replace the earlier one in keeping with the principle that if two variant forms come to be distinguished semantically their continuing existence in the language is as good as guaranteed. Not so with a number of other Norman French borrowings which were replaced by the later Central French ones: calice, carite, cancel; chalice, charite, chancel.

The Central French /tʃ/ underwent the further change to /ʃ/ in the course of the post-Middle English period and later loans reflect this. Thus we have change and chief as Middle English loans from Central French with /tʃ/ but words like chef and champagne with /ʃ/ are of a later origin.

Similar differences in pronunciation can be used to date other loanwords from French. For example the relationship of /dž/ and /ž/ shows the relative chronology of borrowing. The older loans such as siege, judge, age show the affricate /dž/ whereas newer loans from the Early Modern English period have the simple fricative typical of Modern French as in rouge /ru:ž/; with the word garage there still exist two alternative pronunciations /ˡgærɪdʒ/ and /gəˡrɑ:ʒ/.

One can also recognise