s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

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Alicja Witalisz
3.2. Semantic reborrowing
There are a few instances of loan translations and renditions that develop
semantically on the soil of the receiving language. This may apply either to
adopting more English senses of the polysemous English etymon, particularly
those senses that have appeared in English after the expression was calqued in
the receiving language, or to the semantic extension of the loan translation/rendition,
independent of the semantic content of the foreign model (cf.
Witalisz 2011). It must be stressed though that the two types of semantic development
may co-occur.
The term reborrowing has been used in the literature (cf. Haugen 1950:
222) in reference to loanwords to suggest that “the loan is subject to continual
interference from the model in the other language” as various speakers use different
phonological and morphological forms of the same loanword. Adopting
the term in respect to the meaning of loan translations and renditions, we might
think of semantic reborrowing in cases where a calque from English develops
semantically by acquiring new English senses (not known in English at the time
of the first borrowing) to catch up with the semantic development of the English
etymon, as in the case of P. strefa zero (E. “ground zero”). Semantic reborrowing
may be exact or inexact, depending on whether all of the new English
senses are adopted or not. Such semantic extension may be seen as one other
stage of semantic lexicalization.
3.3. Independent semantic extension
Simultaneously to the semantic reborrowing or quite independently of it,
another process of semantic extension may occur. Loan translation or rendition
may develop one or a set of additional senses which are independent of the
senses used in English. This may happen when the translated expression has
either been well-established or has filled a lexical gap in the receiving language
by concisely naming a concept that previously demanded an elaborate, descriptive
way of referring to it. Far from this linguistic ideal, semantic extension of
this sort occurs also as a result of linguistic snobbery and as a way of catching
other language users’ attention. This reinterpretation (Bauer 1983: 57) is well
illustrated by P. strefa zero (E. “ground zero”) and P. Pierwsza dama (E. “First
Lady”), which have been used on a number of occasions to refer to specific
Polish realia (Witalisz 2011: 153). It might be argued, though, that this type of
independent semantic development may change the status of loan translations/
renditions to a subtype of semantic pseudo-loans since the corresponding English
fixed expressions never appear in English in the senses that have been
added to their Polish translations.