Formation of the lexical core of the English language

Soluyanova Olga N., Arkhipov Aleksandr V.

Any language is a living organism, and its vocabulary is in a state of continuous change. Constant enrichment of the lexical and semantic system of a language is one of the laws of the historical development of language and social phenomenon. The relevance of the topic lies in the necessity of a specialist to understand the process of formation of the lexical core of modern English (due to significant changes in the native English vocabulary and numerous borrowings), and not only the knowledge of the language itself (the result of this assimilation). We aim at the study of genetic origins and assimilation processes in the English lexicon. Methodology. The paper is based on diachronic (historical) approach and uses the following methods: system analysis, induction, classification, abstraction, synthesis and generalization of the results. Scientific novelty / Research implications. The research work is characterized by a complex approach to the problem of formation of the lexical core of the English language: the analysis of foreignborrowings and some of their features, connected with the entry into a new language system, both extra-linguistic and linguistic reasons of the borrowing process are identified, the conditions when borrowing is inevitable, as well as a lot of examples of the assimilation of foreign words into the lexicon of English are provided. Research results. The article examines the basic theoretical issues, related to the stage-by-stage formation of the lexical core of the English vocabulary, and gives examples of the enrichment of the English vocabulary by borrowings from foreign languages. The prospect of further research could be the further study of the influence of different languages on the formation of the lexical core of the English language. Conclusions. Most of the words belonging to the lexical core of the English language are of foreign origin, which is due to historical reasons: political and social events contribute to the intensive inflow of foreign words. The difficulty many English language learners have with the lack of a clear correlation between the spelling of words and their phonology is due to the very origins of these words: their borrowing from other languages.

Keywords:periodization, lexical core, borrowing, etymological doublets, semantic borrowings, assimilation.