The loan lexeme at the cross-cultural juncture

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The loan lexeme at the cross-cultural juncture

This article looks into cross-cultural semantic differences of words like doctor, a loan, in English and Ukrainian and it breaks a new groundfor the study of language and cultural values. There is a brief insight into language-culture relationship which steadily comes back into the focus of cotemporary linguistics.

The investigation shows that significant benefits can be gained from the integration of semantics, etymology, discourse analysis, cross-cultural linguistics, and contrastive linguistics. Anna Wierzbicka points out that language and culture are not just interconnected, but inseparable The contextual and cultural relevance combined navigate the interpreter within the realm of cultural complexity of the Source and Target Laguages (Dirven, 2015). The diachronic analysis of the English lexeme doctor borrowedfrom Latin 'church father ' (biblical) has expanded its semantic struc-ture by medical person, university lecturer, scientific degree since late 14c. In Ukrainian доктор is also a borrowing from Middle Latin doceo “teacher“, “scholar“ and the component “a person practiced medicine” (XIV c.) has not taken the dominant position in the lexical meaning of the noun доктор which is still occupied by the component учений “scientist, scholar. “ Though borrowings embedded in the Target Language still represent “a wealth of cultur-al baggage of the Source Language which sooner or later can be further actualized in discourse.

John Locke in his “Essay Concern-ing Human Understanding” (Chapter 2, 1690) empha-sises that when a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the marks are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself has. This leads him to explore differ-ent types of words, how we understand them, and how we use them to increase knowledge [13]. According to our hypothesis actualizing a component of the word lexical meaning can be context-bound, while the high-ly

frequent meaning component can be context-free but the both are context-bound and culture-bound [2]. Anna Wierzbicka points out that language and culture are not just interconnected, but inseparable [20]. The contextual and cultural relevance combined navigates the speaker/ addressee/translator/interpreter within the realm of cul-tural complexity of the the Source and Target Laguages. This article will look into cross-cultural semantic differ-ences of words like doctor for the translation objectives also and it will break new ground for the study of lan-guage and cultural values.

The end-goal of this article is an introduction to the basic assumptions, scope and methodology of loans like doctor investigation, focusing on the empirical search for the common features due to their origin and their distinctive features resulted in their individ-ual development in English and Ukrainian languages [see 8].There is also a brief insight into language-cul-ture relationship which steadily comes back to the edge of cotemporary linguistics. First and formost, we shall develop the corpora analysis. The cross-cultural or intercultural semantics [see 12], Bert Peeters says, is a contrasticve or comparative study of putative cul-tural words aimed at reaching a better understandig of known cultural values and explicatig communica-tive norms [17, 17].

Discussion. We would like to present a contras-tive analysis of the address doctor or an apposi-tion [5, 184] used in English and Ukrainian from the perspective of cross-cultural semantics, to blaze the trail of the branch of linguistics which investi-gates the relationship between meaning and culture in discourse. The cross-cultural or intercultural seman-tics, Bert Peeters, says, is a contrasticve or compara-tive study of putative cultural words aimed at reach-ing a better understandig of known cultural values and explicatig communicative norms [20, 10; 3, 1]. Pragmatically, the apposition is generally an explana-tion of the referent expressed by the personal name. It usually adds information that the speaker or narrator consider necessary to clarify what they have previous-ly expounded. In some cases it becomes expected in certain contexts of their interaction to avoid possible ambiguity or misunderstanding [8]. The diachron-ic analysis of the English lexeme doctor borrowed from Latin 'church father' (biblical) has expanded its semantic structure (medical person, university lecturer, scientific degree) since late 14 c. In Ukrainian доктор is also a borrowing from Middle Latin doceo “teacher”, “scholar” and the component “a person prac-ticed medicine” (XIV c.) has not taken

the dominant position in the lexical meaning of the noun доктор which is still occupied by the component учений “sci-entist, scholar”. Though borrowings embedded in the Target Language still represent “a wealth of cul-tural baggage of the Source Language” [cf: 20; see also 7, 162] which sooner or later can be further actu-alized in discourse.

Martn Jay writes that there is a permanent “semantic defamilirization of words that seemed commonplace, like theory subversion, paganism, and so on - begin to appear strange, while other words that until present may have been strange - abjection, the uncanny, psy- chlogism, and so on - are interrogated until they reveal at least a few of their secrets [10, 5]. The semantic struc-ture of words in the process of their functioning in dis-course, as a social construct may be widening or nar-rowing to adapt to the speaker's communicative aims.

Tle lexeme doctor is frequently used as an appo-sition to the proper noun, or functions autonomously [1, 453]. Address is a very important and very fre-quent practice in everyday discourse of many linguo- cultures and certain address practices have become ritualized to the extent that their meaning becomes blurred and obscured. Pragmatically, the apposition is generally an explanation of the referent expressed by the personal name and usually it adds information that the speaker or narrator consider necessary to clar-ify what they have previously expounded [see 11, 39]. In some cases it becomes expected in certain contexts of their interaction to avoid possible ambiguity or mis-understanding [4, 504; 8].

In the English-speakinng countries, for instance, in the university setting students address their lectur-ers as Doctor + Surname or Professor [15, 83], as well as colleagues address each other Doctor or Professor in the academic setting when Australian university students address their lecturers by their first name, or in the hospital setting patients address medical staff as Nurse or Doctor. David Evans says that whithin discourse language units are much more than words and phrases and disemboded sounds but rather coming to life of social interaction. Rather, it is about the way in which the world is ordered through social practices [7, 3; 9, 22-23].

Corpora analysis. In the process of the etymo-logical analysis of the lexeme doctor disclosed its history in the English Vocabulary. It was borrowed in c. 1300, in the form of doctour, “church father”, from Old French doctor and directly from Medieval Lat-in doctor teacher, adviser, scholar. In classical Latin it denoted “teacher, agent”, a noun from docere “to show, teach, cause to know”, originally “make to appear right” and causative of decere “be seemly, fitting”, from PIE root *dek- “to take, accept”.

The diachronic analysis of the English lexeme doctor has investigated its semantic dynamics which stresses its expansion. From late 14 c. the component “holder of the highest degree in a university, one who has passed all the degrees of a faculty and is thereby empowered to teach the subjects included in it” actu-alized in the word lexical meaning and , consequent-ly, the component “teacher, instructor, learned man; one skilled in a learned profession” was revealed in the word lexical meaning The component “medical professional, person duly licensed to practice medi-cine” (replacing native OE leech) was revealed in the word lexical meaning in c., 1400, though this use of the word was still periphery until late 16 c. The tran-sitional stage is exemplified in Chaucer's Doctor ofphesik (Latin physica came to be used extensively in Medieval Latin for medicina). In Middle English there was the medicin “a medical doctor” (mid-15 c.) also borrowed from French. Similar usage of the equiv-alent of doctor is colloquial in most European lan-guages: Italian dottore, French docteur, German dok-tor, Lithuanian daktaras, though these typically are not the main word in those languages for a medical healer. For similar evolution, we can compare San-skrit vaidya - “medical doctor”, literally “one versed in science”. German Arzt, Dutch arts are from Late Latin archiater, from Greek arkhiatros “chief healer”, hence “court physician”. French mйdecin is a back-for-mation from mйdicine, replacing Old French miege, from Latin medicus. Thus, we can define three dom-inant components in the lexical meaning of doctor in English Vocabulary: (i) a religious teacher, adviser, scholar (Church father, XIIIc.); (ii) highest degree in a university; and (iii) a person duly licensed to prac-tice medicine (from 1400, though not in use until late 16 c.) (Etymological Dictionary online).

In Ukrainian доктор is also a borrowing from Middle Latin doceo “teacher”, “scholar” (ЕСУМ) and the component “a person practiced medicine” (14 c.) has not taken the dominant position in the lexi-cal meaning of the noun доктор which is still occupied by the component учений “scientist, scholar”. Though borrowings embedded in the Target Language still rep-resent “a wealth of cultural baggage of the Source Lan-guage [cf: 20; see also 7, 162] which sooner or later can be further actualized in discourse.

The semantic dynamics of the Ukrainian lexeme doc-tor “a person with a medical degree” «oco6a з вищою медичною освітою, яка лікує хворих» (АТСУМ) has a synonym лікар originally Slavic derived from the stem вьраті «говорити ^ заговорювати» and the suf-fix, - «чь» і слова «вьраті», що означає «говорити»; in Bulgarian лікар «знахар, чаклун», see Serb-Chroa- tian «чарівник, чаклун, волхв, знахар», the verb врачіті «ворожити, гадати, пророкувати, лікувати (знахарством)». verb врачіті «ворожити, гадати, пророкувати, лікувати (знахарством)».

The anlysis of the dictionary definitions of the noun doctor has revealed the following constituent:

(1) А person with a medical degree who treats peo-ple who are ill or injured (Cambridge1; Collins1, 3);

А person who has the highest-degree from a college or university: physician, surgeon, dentist, or veterinarian (Cambridge 2; Collins 3). Note: In Brit-ish English: dentistswho look after people's teeth), and vets (=doctors who look after animals) are all referred to by the titles Mr, Ms, Mrs, or Miss. In the US, however, all of these doctors use the title Doctor (Col-lins; Macmillan);

(2) А person who has been awarded a higher aca-demic degree in any field of knowledge (Cambridge 3; Collins 4);

(3) А teacher or learned man, Archaic (Collins 6; Macmillan 2).

Accordingly, the decomposition of the lexical mean-ing of the noun doctor gave rise to its semantic struc-ture formation: MD (doctor, dentist, veterinarian), academic degree of any specialist, teacher, learmed man. Cf: Ukrainian lexeme actualizes the components: доктор, докторка, докорант, докоторанка, лікар, учений, учитель.

The Law Dictionary suppors the definitions give by the encyclopedic dictionaries: doctor (i) a learned man; one qualified to give instruction of the higher order in a science or art; (ii) In colloquial language, how-ever, the term is practically restricted to practitioners of medicine. Harrison v. State, 102 Ala. 170, 15 South. 503; State v. Mc- Knight, 131 N. C. 717, 42 S. E. 580, 59 L. R. A. 187.This term means, simply, practitioner of physic, without respect to system pursued. A certifi-cate of a homoepathic physician is also a “doctor's cer-tificate”. Corsi v. Maretzek, 4 E. D. Smith (N. Y).

The BNC gives the following illustrations of seman-tic structure of the noun doctor revealing the following components:

(i) A person with a medical degree (see Cambridge, Collis, Macmillan), when used autonomously in the sen-tence it is written in lowercase cf.:

1. So er, was it that doctor, Doctor Patrick Steptoe?

2. There used to be a doctor, called Doctor Bes-sie lived there.

There is an assumption that Ukrainian лікар “doc- torr” might have been borrowed from Germanic, c.f. Goth,. iekeis «лікар», OHG. lahhi гот. Iлkinon «лікувати», двн. Lachinon (ЕСУМ) and represents the English correspodence of doctor, e.g.:

Вперше українці можуть вільно обирати лікаря у

1. медзакладі, незалежно від форми власності.

2. Це розвантажить лікарів, дозволить їм більш якісно та оперативно надавати медичні послуги пацієнтам.

In colloquial English, however, the term doctor s practically restricted to practitioners of medicine (Law Dictionary). This term means, simply, practitioner of physic, without respect to system pursued. When it is used as an apposition followed by the persoal name it is written in uppercase, see also:

3. You should have a reasonably clean bill of health by then,' Doctor Staples said. (Health care)

4. He was seated again in Doctor Staples's office, watching the doctor examined his x-ray on an illuminat-ed screen. (Health care)

5. Doctor Minden had no right to interfere with my treatment programme. (Health care)

The given component is also the dominant in the English term referring to various areas of health care, dentistry and veterinary - doctor colloquially, and Doc-tor appositively. Unikely the Ukrainian спеціаліст ветмедицини is labeled ветеринар “лікар, що лікує тварин, з фахівець з ветеринарії” originates from French vйtйrinaire, English “veterinarian” cf. German Veterinдr which came first from Latin veterinarius «sumpter» (see Fasmer). Thus English and Ukrainian terms have the common origin, but differentiated in the areas of their use: English veterinarian (abbrevi-ation vet) “a person trained in the medical treatment of animals” (Cambridge), colloquially a doctor is, while in Ukrainian it is used in both styles, e.g.:

6. Офіційний лікар ветеринарної медицини - це спеціаліст ветеринарної медицини.

Though English veterinary clinic is rendered into Ukrainian as “ветеринарна лікарня” retaining the derivative лікарня from лікар, e.g.:

7. Тема реорганізації державних установ ветеринарної медицини не стосується лікарень - вони функціонуватимуть у тому ж статусі.

The English term dentist “a person whose job is treat-ing people's teeth” [Cambridge] has a general name doctor, in Ukrainian стоматолог «фахівець із стоматології; дантист, зубний лікар, лікар- стоматолог». Ukrainian дантист was borrowed through Russian from French dentiste which originates from Latin dem, dentis “tooth”, cf: OHG zan ^ MG. Zahn, OLG tand, see Ukr.

Ясна [Fasmer]. Accord-ingly, English and Ukrainian having the common ori-gin differetiated in styles. See Latin doctor, doctoris:

(1) academic title, (2) doctor (3) instructor, (3) teacher, (4) trainer (Latin-English Dictionary online).

The noun lexeme doctor actualizig the component “a person who has been awarded a higher academ-ic degree in any field of knowledge” is a characteristic feature of the English culture, e.g.:

3. Doctor Trevor, ITN newscaster Trevor McDon-ald is to become an Honourary Doctor of Letters (IT)

4. His Postscript evokes the aim of a white-coat-ed Doctor Kundera' to solve an aesthetic problem: how to write a novel. (Literature)

Maria Panes points out that by using apposition the author foregrounds a certain aspect of the dis-course, an aspect, primarily, a degree which has great importance in the interchange between the interlocu-tors representing different professional communities [cf 17, 93]. This discourse is an active phenomenon whch is likely to actualize the definite component of the word lexical meaning encoded by the speaker [see 18, 17]. Additionaly, the interlocutor or interpret-er can decode the author's intended component with the help of the word distribution and lexical profes-sionalisms, e.g.:

Illustration 5. “Discourse of Health care” (health).

Illustration 6. “Discourse of Health care” (examine, x-ray, illuminated screen).

Illustration 7. “Discourse of Health care” (treatment programme) help to recreate a general context, besides the communicative situation can its bit.

Illustrations 10. “Discourse of literature” (newscast-er, letters).

Illustration 11. “Discourse of literature” (postscript, write, novel).

In the academic English or printed mass media the lexeme doctor may be implicit and cotextually redundent due to the position of the referent - the Ph.D. degree (“attested from 1869 abbreviation of L. Philoso- phiae Doctor 'Doctor of Philosophy”) in the professional community is taken for granted, e.g.:

5. “This study is an incremental step toward a full-er understanding of turbulence”, said Stewart Zwe- ben, lead author of the research published in the Jour-nal Physics of Plasmas.

6. „On the test data sets examined, the FRNNhas improved the curve for predicting true positives while reducing false positives”, said Eliot Feibush, a compu-tational scientist at PPPL.

7. “This research opens a promising new chapter in the effort to bring unlimited energy to Earth”, Steve Cowley, director of PPPL, said of the findings, which are reported in the current issue of Nature magazine.

Illustration 12. “Discourse of Physics” (lead author of the research, Physics of Plasmas).

Illustration 13. “Discourse of Physics” [+ Computa-tion] (true positives, false positives, computational sci-entist).

Illustration 14. “Discourse of Physics” (energy, director of PPPL).

In some cases the lexeme professor “a faculty member of the highest academic rank at an institution of higher education”. It was borrowed in late 14 c. with the component teacher, i.e. “one who teaches a branch of knowledge”, from Old French professeur (14 c.) and directly from Latin professor “person who professes to be an expert in some art or science; teacher of highest rank”, agent noun from profiteri “lay claim to, declare openly” (see profess). As a title prefixed to a name, it dates from 1706. Short form prof is recorded from 1838. The rank presupposes that the bearer must have a Ph.D. degree, e.g.:

8. Professor Mann works on gravitation, quantum physics, and the overlap between these two subjects.

9. Professor of Chemical Biology, Oxford Univer-sity is recognised for ground breaking research into the structures and properties of biological molecules.

10. Professor Sir Gordon Duff is a Fellow of the Acad-emy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physi-cians and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Illustration 15. “Discourse of Physics”.

Illustration 16. “Discourse of Chemical Biology”.

Illustration 17. “Discourse of Medical Sciences”. The fact is that in the UK, much of Europe (and, for the most part, in Australasia and South Africa), `profes-sorship' denotes distinction: a professor is someone who has been promoted to

the highest academic grade - usu-ally on the basis of her or his scholarly achievements. It's the equivalent to what, in North America, is known as full professorship; Most professors will be PhD-hold- ers (COBUILD, Collis, Macmillan, Oxford).

In written texts Doctor is abbreviated to Dr, its fre-quence is 10884 cases in BNC. e.g.:

11. Dr McNab had thoughtfully retired as his patient was regaining consciousness (Surgery).

12. Dr Curtis is well satisfied with your patient's chest (Surgery).

13. Dr Akhlaghi is registered with the General Den-tal Council and NHS England and also has affiliations with the British Dental Association (Dentistry).

14. Dr. Mangat always ensures he takes time with us and everything is perfect - he capped my husband`s front teeth (Dentistry).

15. Dr Akhlaghi is registered with the General Den-tal Council and NHS England and also has affiliations with the British Dental Association (Dentistry).

16. Dr Glen Foley enjoys every aspect of veterinary medicine (Veterinary).

17. Dr Naomi Hosker graduated from Royal Veteri-nary College in 2012 (Veterinary).

18. Dr Ahmer Wadee is a Chartered Scien-tist and Chartered Mathematician, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Maths & Applications and the Institute of Structural Engineers (Mathematics).

19. Who was willing to leave a Western nuclear establishment to help Dr Tariq build his atom bomb was either an idiot or a traitor (Atomic Physics).

Besides, both the title ad the degree are not used together in English, when in German it is a regular case.

In Ukrainian the abbreviation Д-р as an apposition whch is usually in the postposition to the personal name is not frequent, but rather widely used as a degree mark-er of any person who holds a doctorate, e.g.:

20. Іванців Володимир Васильович: Д-р біол.н., проф. 2008 [Д-р Іванців В. В.]

21. Василь Фурман, доктор економічних наук, - гість «112 Україна».

We must admit that pragmatically appositions are used by the speaker to underline a specific feature of the interlocutor or the person spoken of [see 4, 504)].

The discourse analysis proves that the context or setting are very important for the felicitous communication which encourages interlocutors to use ritualized cliche in a definite situation adopted in the society. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be cosidered as represeting the same social reality [7, 5], especially, when the dynamic semantics underwent at different speed. By using apposition the author foregrounds a certain aspect of the discourse, an aspect which has great importance in the interchange between the interlocutors.

Findings and perspectives. The present paper continues a series of papers on functional semantics of the apposition in the structure of sentence and discourse [14; 15] In light of new findings on cultural semantic differences of doctor, a Latin loan, in English and Ukrainian we can reveal the same number of components in its lexical meaning but their taxonomy differs, besides the component “a person who treats patients” is the dominant one in the English unit,while in the Ukrainian unit it is periphery and most frequen- fly it is rendered by the lexeme лікар. In the academic community the lexemes doctor and professor are interchangeable in some cases, though the American and British differ in the semantic structure of the lexeme professor. Such cultural semantic differences are significant for translation and interpreting.

References

intercultural word society

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4.Berckmans P Demonstration, apposition and direct reference / Paul Berckmans // Communication and Cognition. - 1994. - Vol. 27 (4). - P. 499-512.

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