Evolving Nature of the English Language

| 19 →

Ada Böhmerová

Latinisms in Substandard Language

Abstract: The paper¹ investigates the systemic functions and communicative presence of Latinisms in substandard Slovak, which is an area that so far has not been the focus of linguistic investigation. The aim of the research, on the one hand, is to identify Latinisms which have been preserved only in substandard layers of Slovak, highlighting the related specific historical, socio-cultural and communicative circumstances of their presence, and, on the other hand, the linguistic situation is contrasted with English, where considerable differences resulting from the different linguo-cultural development have been found. While the focus is on the investigation of synchronic data from lexicographical sources, comparing the presence and evaluation of the Latinisms contained in them, the research essentially involves diachronic investigation from available etymological sources, and their mutual and contrastive analysis and discussion.

Keywords: Latinisms, substandard Slovak, linguo-cultural development, diachronic research, comparison with English

Preliminaries

Latin, beyond any doubt, has left a deep, wide and permanent trace in the languages of Europe. As the language of the Romans, who subdued and for several centuries ruled most of Europe within the powerful Roman Empire, it influenced the languages it came into contact with not only during the existence of the Empire, but also in the context of the heritage of Roman civilization. Moreover, thanks to its multiple communicative functions as a lingua franca, it has continuously exerted its international lexical impact.

However, the circumstances of the contacts and their results are varied. While Romance languages actually developed directly from Latin as their cradle, and languages like English during their history became highly Romanized, both as a result of the influence of Latin itself and later above all also through the intensive impact of Norman and Parisian French, Latinisms came into other European languages as lexical phenomena that are either not directly genetically related, or else at best only traceable through the Common Indo-European heritage. ← 19 | 20 →

This is the case with Slovak as a Slavic language. Hence, it is not surprising that countless Latinisms have also found their way into the Slovak lexis, while many others are continually being added to it as Neo-Classicisms and are shared with other languages as internationalisms, recently often formed in English or mediated by it. In spite of the existence of shared Latinisms, many others have had different chances and lexical fates within the differing domains of the receiving languages, including Slovak. Highlighting these cross-linguistic differences is a challenge and could contribute to better understanding and interpreting the historical and socio-cultural contexts of Latinisms in languages.

Aims

In connection with the specific functions of L2 within the history of the Slovaks, which in certain ways were much different from those in some other ethnic communities, the primary focus of our research is to identify and investigate the Latinisms occurring in substandard layers of contemporary Sk lexis.

Based on the special historical, socio-cultural and communicative circumstances, we analyse the Latinisms which, after penetrating into some areas of the lexis, have been preserved up to the present only in substandard lexis, in spite of the parallel existence of their Standard equivalents, whether Latinate or not. We follow their current communicative status, as well as the thematic areas in which they belong by their semantic content. In our lexicographical investigation we study their inclusion in the representative Sk dictionaries and the accompanying information on their genetic provenance, semantic content and communicative and pragmatic status.

The findings are compared to the lexical situation existing in the corresponding equivalents in E and to their systemic status. The research forms part of a wider contrastive investigation of Latinisms in E and in Sk³.

Theoretical considerations and methodology

It is generally acknowledged that borrowing constitutes a language-adherent extension and enrichment of the lexis. Its investigation indispensably involves diachronic research, i.e. contrastive historical lexicology and semantics, enabling the revealing of the processes of lexical changes within the etymology of the word ← 20 | 21 → going back to the source of the borrowing or, if possible, to its original form and meaning. To various degrees, our research involved internal reconstruction and contrastive studies, combining synchrony and diachrony to account for the results of historical developments of the lexis. Panchronic research has been found to be of relevance. As stated by Grygiel (2005, 98), “since language constitutes a spatio-temporal continuum, the only way to describe it is to recognise panchrony as its most objective level of representation” (cf. also Böhmerová 2016).

According to Filipović, the studies of lexical borrowings represent a gratifying area of synchronic lexicology and offer the investigation of standard, codified, as well as substandard and dialectal lexical units of national languages (1986). Furdík stipulates that for studying lexical borrowings, which constitute the most prominent and the most direct manifestations of linguistic contacts, the methodological needs involve a variety of approaches, including the etymological, historical, geographical, structural, contrastive, sociolinguistic, etc. (1994, 95). For analysing the reasons and the processes of borrowing lexical units, we also apply the theory of borrowing as outlined by Durkin (2009, 2014).

For the purposes of this research we define Latinisms broadly as lexical units borrowed from L directly or through another language, regardless of whether their ultimate origin is in L or they go back to common IE origin.

The collection of data for our research involved several problems and, as a result, necessitated a combination of several approaches. Due to a lack of lexicographical (and/or electronic) sources of Latinisms in Sk with comprehensive and unanimous genetic and communicative labelling, most of the compilation of the data could only be done by an empirical lexical search, by incorporating some of the data presented in the existing research on Latinisms in Sk (cf. chap. 4), and by introspection supported by professional familiarity with Latinisms in E, utilizing the detailed and extensive lexicographical etymological information available about borrowings into E. Hence, in this respect, cross-linguistic methodology has also been found to be efficient. Though we had at our disposal a potentially helpful list of borrowings recently generated by the Linguistic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences from representative Sk dictionaries (cf. chap. 4), this could actually only replicate the lexicographical situation. For checking dialectal lexis, a useful source was Múcsková’s Praktická dialektológia (2012) where several Latinisms are identified.

Of course, etymological data are of primary importance for research of this type. Without the availability of the Slovak etymological dictionary (by Králik, submitted for print), in searching for etymological data, similarly to our research into Lexical, Semantic and Lexicographical Aspects of Early Latinisms in English as Contrasted to Slovak (2016), we have resorted to the genetic labels as given in ← 21 | 22 → representative Slovak dictionaries and to Rejzek’s Český etymologický slovník (CzED 2001). For checking hypothesized Latinisms cross-linguistically, most useful were found English etymological sources, above all OED and Harper’s etymonline. (For sources see the Bibliography.)

Socio-historical circumstances of Latinisms in Slovak and their status

Similarly to other languages, the borrowing of Latinisms into Sk took place throughout its development. It is generally claimed that Latinisms represent the largest number of borrowings in Sk. They are part of the core of the lexis and of the general lexis, while others have specific functions within varied domains, typically in terminological and/or formal registers and religious, legal and administrative contexts4. However, as also demonstrated in our research, they occur and function in substandard Sk as well.

The first scholar to investigate L borrowings into Sk was Škultéty (1902) who briefly dealt with them within the presence of foreign words in Sk. According to Habovštiaková (1966), as well as Skladaná (1986), the earliest layer of borrowings from and through L were from religious terminology. They go as far back as to the time when Cyril and Methodius Christened the Great Moravian Empire. These include words like e.g. anjel, diabol, apoštol, advent, many of which also have their counterparts in E.

Though several works have dealt with some aspects of Latinisms in Sk (e.g. Habovštiaková 1966, Habovštiak 1983, Skladaná 1986, 2011), there is still a lack of wide-range in-depth research into them. Moreover, with data concerning the provenance of entries in the existing dictionaries varying, absent, or problematic, and with the thus-far unavailable Sk etymological dictionary, research into Latinisms in Sk is rather problematic. Still, systemic investigation of this extensive and important layer of the Sk lexical system is a linguistic and cultural imperative. ← 22 | 23 →

With regard to loanwords in Sk, an interesting project is in progress5. It is based on the electronic version of Krátky slovník slovenského jazyka (KSSJ – 2003) containing about 60 000 entries and representing the extended core of the Sk language. Entries labelled as foreign have been extracted from it, the list amounting to 13 557 monolexical items, which would correspond with about 22.6 % of borrowings in the given source of Sk. Though in many ways a very useful database, it cannot but bear all the existing limitations and possible deficiencies in the thus-far existing sources identifying borrowings, including Latinisms.

Recently, a valuable contribution to the investigation of Latinisms in Sk has been made by Skladaná (2011) who in a monograph on early borrowings into Sk authored a chapter comprising a dictionary of early Latinisms. Her material is based on the volumes of Historický slovník slovenského jazyka (A-G 2006, H-M 2011) published so far and gives lexical data found in preserved documents from the 15^th to the 18^th centuries. Though it is the most extensive list of Latinisms, with more than 3000 entries, as most of them are terms, historisms or archaisms, many no longer used, and none labelled as substandard, the source could not be used for our purposes.

Within the socio-historical circumstances of the status of Latinisms in Sk, one specific trait was that they penetrated not only into the general lexis, but that they also found their place and have been preserved in dialects (cf. Habovštiak 1983: 7). An explanation is provided by Habovštiaková (1966). She observes that after the period of its nearly exclusive dominance in the educated Christian world of the Early Middle Ages, L gradually started to withdraw from its positions and the local languages started to gain ground. However, in contrast to other European countries, in the multi-national feudal Hungarian state, of which Slovakia was a part, L preserved its privileged position longer than elsewhere, functioning as a supranational, neutral language of cultural communication – a lingua franca. The preservation of L in dialects testifies to the fact that also ordinary people borrowed and used numerous L expressions (within their dialectal modifications). As she points out later, not only the passive command of L, but also practical bilingualism (or even polylingualism) exerted their influence upon the Sk language. According to Tóth (1996), documents testify that up to the 19^th century even ordinary shepherds and carters had a command of L, though, on the contrary, the nobility sometimes made very elementary mistakes when using it. As a possible reason we could adduce that while the nobility mostly communicated in Hung as the official language, whether ← 23 | 24 → native to them or only because they became Hungarianized, or else they spoke Gm, the common people in contacts with speakers of other languages used L as a lingua franca.

In the context of the historical and cultural importance of L for the Slovaks, of considerable importance is the L-Sk dictionary compiled and in 1763 completed by the Camaldolese monk Romuald Hadvábny. L is also present in the multilingual dictionary by Bernolák (1825), the first codifier of the Sk language.

Lexical and lexicographical data

The data have been selected and studied with regard to three communicative and pragmatic areas, namely colloquial expressive Latinisms, some of them obsolescent, obsolete or expressive, then dialectal Latinisms, and finally recent Latinisms in slang. However, as most of them are communicatively polyfunctional, and, moreover, their lexicographical labelling in the sources often differs, we have decided to present them jointly.

Wherever possible and relevant, we supplemented the lack of Sk etymological data by information from Rejzek’s CzED. Hence, within the contrastive linguistic perspective of two closely genetically related languages we also give the Cz form and the etymological data which indicate analogies or language-specific differences. The absence of a Cz cognate in the box can hypothetically be interpreted as either its non-existence in Cz or only its non-inclusion in the dictionary.

Based on selecting and studying colloquial Latinisms found in Sk, in the following Table we present some of them to document and subsequently analyse the complexity of their formal and communicative features and thus-far existing lexicographical specifications and relatedness to the situation in English. The Sk Latinism is given in boldface, under it the standard Sk equivalent, then the form of the direct or indirect source of L borrowing, and the E translation equivalent of the Sk Latinism. These are followed by the statements given for the Sk Latinism in representative Sk lexicographical sources, i.e. the source language and/or the language of origin of the borrowing and its communicative/pragmatic label. From the Table it is evident that these accompanying data in the Sk dictionaries differ in numerous instances. ← 24 | 25 →

Table 1: Substandard Latinisms in Slovak.

← 25 | 26 →

Notes:

1. With most entries only their basic meaning/lexia is given.

2. --- No data in the source