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111Volume 4 Issue 2, 2020, pp. 21-30
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Anglicisms and loanwords: The contribution of English exemplified by contemporary Italian tourist terminology
by Alla G. Sokolova
Alla G. Sokolova Moscow State University of Civil Engineering [email protected] Date of submission: 13.02.2020 | Date of acceptance for publication: 28.05.2020
Recommended citation format: Sokolova, A. G. (2020). Anglicisms and loanwords: The contribution of English exemplified by contemporary Italian tourist terminology. Training, Language and Culture, 4(2), 21-30. Doi: 10.22363/2521-442X-2020-4-2-21-30
The English language has enriched Italian with numerous words and expressions that complement existing Italian lexis. Many linguists perceive the extent of English influence as a potentially overwhelming and dangerous tendency. However, the percentage of English lexis in Italian remains relatively low if compared to the language's overall structure and is noticeable mostly in the sphere of politics, pop culture, mass media, journalism, sport and tourism. Borrowing is regarded as one of the major means of enriching language vocabulary that often engulfs foreign elements in its structural patterns. The adaptation process incorporates the borrowed structure as a natural part of the borrowing language. This study attempts to examine and exemplify in chronological order the progressive development of such an influence demonstrating modifications and nomenclature of English loanwords in the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The key findings are exemplified by contemporary tourist terminology.
KEYWORDS: Anglicism, borrowing, loanword, italianisation, substitution, calque, false friends
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This paper attempts to analyse the impact of the English language on Italian both in the linguistic perception and the influence of Anglo-American culture on the modern Italian language and society. Borrowing from a foreign language occurs either out of necessity or luxury, with the purpose of filling semantic or lexical gaps (lacunas) in the target language. Some of the borrowed terms do not have a corresponding word in the Italian language, while the majority exhibits the tendency to
1. INTRODUCTION
replace an existing or pre-existing Italian word. When a target language attempts to assimilate terms and expressions in order to bridge a semantic or lexical gap, borrowing out of necessity is commonly applied out of neccesity. This usually happens when a new object or a concept is introduced from another culture, language or country. For example, most IT words used in contemporary Italian or sport-related lexis originated from foreign countries. On the other hand, borrowing as a luxury may be applied to the words and expressions
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from a foreign language or culture though the target language already has equivalent terms perfectly expressing the same concept, e.g. words such as weekend, display, babysitter, manager are widely used instead of their Italian equivalents fine settimana, schermo, bambinaia and dirigente, correspondingly. Lately, there has been observed an ever-growing trend in excessive unjustified use of English borrowings in contemporary Italian, in particular among government officials, ministers and experts at various levels of authority. They unceremoniously use the words like review, jobs act, devolution, spending or stepchild adoption when these terms can be clearly expressed by the Italian words revisione, legge sul lavoro, devoluzione, adozione de figlio, respectively (Burke, 2006, p. 108).
To introduce the topic and give a social, cultural and political background of the linguistic exchange between English and Italian languages, we commence our study with the coverage of the in-terlanguage contact in historical perspective. To give a general overview, the profound exposure to the English language commenced after World War II, and has led to the expansion of the Italian vocabulary as well as syntactic changes in economic and business spheres.
This paper tries to examine and exemplify in chronological order the progressive development of such an influence demonstrating modifications and nomenclature of English loanwords in their qualitative and quantitative aspects.
From the linguistic perspective, the starting point is to make a comparative analysis of both languages in terms of phonological and writing systems. Speaking of the morphological level, the study considers the additions brought into Italian lexis mainly through borrowing, paying further attention to the process of loanword incorporation, where applicable. Lexical blending in Italian could be seen as a conscious wordplay comprising ongoing processes of contact-induced language change. The numerous forms of blending include borrowings, adaptations, hybrid blends, pseudo-Anglicisms, foreign-sounding word formations, and others (Görlach, 2001, p. 35).
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The previous studies have also shown that the patterns of English borrowing in contemporary written Italian vary on a regional basis and give a picture of their geographical distribution (Asnaghi, 2017, p. 128).
The effect of English can be noticed on a syntactic level as well, especially in certain areas such as the economy and business. Syntactic changes are most vividly manifested in casual youth jargon, everyday conversations and media. Anglicisms are thoughtfully picked to attract the attention of the readers, viewers or listeners in the spheres of marketing and journalism, while the greatest influence is clearly observed in politics, technology, science, sport, tourism and culture. To sum up, English lexis could be found in all social Italian strata, which makes the English language the most influential as a source of borrowing.
2. MATERIAL AND METHODS
The object of the study is Anglicisms (borrowed or loan words) and lexical neologisms with the borrowed elements that are widespread in the lexis of the Italian tourist industry. The main sources of material are the official Italian website on tourism, the websites of Italian travel agents, travel sections of the online version of the Italian periodical La Repubblica, travel online resource Tripadvi-sor, the corpus of Italian language, as well as the course book La Guida Turistica by Giorgio Castol-di (Castoldi, 2012) recommended for the undergraduate students majoring in tourism. This material was used to analyse Anglicisms in contemporary Italian tourism terminology, and the peculiarities of their phonetic, orthographic and morphological assimilation. Evaluation and analysis of the data were backed by quantitative methods of research that helped present systematically the information obtained.
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
3.1. English-Italian language contact in its historical overview
Linguistically speaking, the Italian language is considered a member of the Italic subfamily of the Romance group, i.e. it is a romance language, spo-
ken mainly in the Italian peninsula, San Marino, Corsica, Sicily, the southern part of Switzerland, in the north of Sardinia, part of Croatia, and due to the 20th century immigration wave, in North and South America, though the Italian-speaking community there is not very numerous.
Italian could be seen as a direct offspring of the Latin language obviously imposed by the Romans throughout their dominion. However, despite its similarity with other Romance languages, Italian has the strongest resemblance to Latin of all the major Romance languages. Following the reunification of Italy in 1861, Italian is regarded as one language comprising many different dialects that have sprung up during its long language evolution. Throughout its history, the diversity of dialects has always presented a difficulty when selecting a particular version reflecting the entire peninsula in its cultural entity. In the 10th century, the earliest written documents were produced in dialects, and throughout subsequent centuries, this tendency has prevailed and has created a number of literature schools competing in their skills in native dialects.
The English language, as an effective mediator, has not only produced 'native' English words diffused into Italian, but also created some foreign-isms and lexical items, i.e. terms used by the inhabitants of the former British colonies, neologisms retaining Greek and Latin morphology and roots, and - last but not least - internationalisms. English also served as a productive and fertile source of new borrowings thanks to the surrounding linguistic policy and the unique structure of English vocabulary.
During many centuries, English has continued the adoption and assimilation of words from diverse languages and has been always prone to external impact, predominantly French and Latin. The presence of Romance elements in English is also essential and cannot be neglected. Vulgar Latin, a form of spoken Latin, with the course of time, evolved into the Italian language, however, numerous regional variants of the vulgar speech have developed into the vast number of Italian dialects existing nowadays.
In the 14th century, domination of the Tuscan dialect in the Italian language was observed due to Tuscany's central position and the aggressive commerce carried out by Florence, its most significant and influential city. More to say, the Tuscan dialect, out of all the Italian dialects, retains the greatest resemblance to morphology and phonology with the classical Latin language, synchronising best with the Italian traditions of Latin culture. Eventually, Florentine heritage gave the world culture Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and Boccaccio, who best summed up the Italian culture and thought of the early Renaissance period.
La Questione della Lingua, or the 'question of the language', engrossed writers of all persuasions in their attempt to codify the language and to establish linguistic norms. During the 15th and 16th centuries, grammarians conferred upon the syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation of the Tuscan dialect the status of classic Italian speech. Finally, this classical approach has been widened to insert some organic changes inevitable in a living tongue and has not converted Italian into another dead language. Compromises between classical purism and living Tuscan usage were successfully implemented in the dictionaries and publications of the year 1583. However, the most important literary event of that time did not occur in Florence but in Venice. Influenced by the creations of the modern classics of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the Venetian, Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), set out his proposals (Prose della volgar lingua) for standardisation of the language and style.
With the course of time, promotion of the regional variant originated in Florence by famous scholars, academicians and poets has led to constructing a language common for the Italian territories. That is exactly the language we know today as standard Italian or Italiano Standard, i.e. the language created by the classical poets and scholars for establishing, unifying and synchronising grammar rules. Despite its roots in Vulgar Latin, standard Italian is considered a fully-fledged language of literature and the arts and then a national language following the consolidation of different states of the Italian peninsula into the Kingdom of
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'Vast and rapid development of trade, technology and craftsmanship served as another principal factor in language contact as new products and cutting-edge inventions had to be named somehow. Here, commerce steps in as one of the major reasons for borrowing.'
Italy (risorgimento, meaning 'resurgence') in 1861. The process of unification commenced with the revolution of 1848, which was inspired by rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s and was completed when Rome became the official capital of the Kingdom. This event had a profound impact not only on the political scene but led to dramatic social, economic and cultural transformation. The literacy rate increased immensely with the introduction of compulsory schooling, and many native speakers abandoned their dialect in favour of the national language.
Not surprisingly, a large part of the Italian vocabulary can be traced back to Latin roots. At the same time, the results of previous studies (Cacchia-ni, 2016, p. 320) have demonstrated that neolati-nisms came from other languages, such as English and French, and can be detected by their phonological form, or appeared by means of linguistic reconstruction of Latin. Comparing pairs of Italian and English words, one can observe the similarities of forms and meanings, so-called true pairs. However, it might be interesting to look at some illustrative examples of how the words' meanings could be confused due to misleading similarities in two languages. Occurrences of false friends and wrong semantic interpretation could impose some difficulties for translators and lead to communication breakdown. Ferguson (1994, p. 118) emphasises that "accurate translation, as well as the proper appreciation of advanced Italian texts, hinge on the confident handling of the key words'. He illustrates this statement with the examples such as attuale ('present, 'topical', never 'actual') and eventuale ('possible' but not 'eventual'), being false friends of
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the English words resembling them in form. In a similar way, translating the English luxurious with the Italian expression lussurioso would be committing a big faux pas. In this case, the correct translation would be lussuoso but not lussurioso, which has the same meaning as English lascivious. Some vivid examples of wrong semantic interpretation and false friends' occurrences will be illustrated later in the current analysis.
Throughout world history, cross-influence of the languages developed as an inevitable phenomenon. With the invention of writing, the analysis of such an influence has become easier. Geographic proximity of neighbouring interacting countries has had a significant impact on the systematic influence of one language on another. In its essence, language is regarded as a means of conveying and codifying messages, and with the invention of writing, storing and codifying information across space and time has become more practical. This opinion explains the primary cause and the nature of borrowing as cross-influence is not intrinsically an intrusive occurrence. If a language is studied as an extension of a society, researching the spread of language we can identify the amount of prestige it may bring to its users. Vast and rapid development of trade, technology and craftsmanship served as another principal factor in language contact as new products and cutting-edge inventions had to be named somehow. Here, commerce steps in as one of the major reasons for borrowing.
Launching new products and naming them could have two possible outcomes: the society created a product and is attempting to name it in its own native language; or the name is borrowed from a more powerful and influential language, e.g. English, in order to reach a much wider audience of consumers. The borrowing language is most likely to ultimately adopt a foreign word if it has no lexical units to express new notions or objects. In the course of time, this borrowed word can establish itself as a native item functioning in compliance with the rules of the borrowing language and can sound natural to native speakers. In the words of Gorlach (2001, p. 89), 'loanwords
from English can be integrated beyond recognition or lost altogether'. The second scenario comes on the scene when an appropriate semantic translation can be found which substitutes for the foreign word. As a result, the lending language fills the gap in the semantic inventory of the borrowing language and enriches it in this manner. This type of borrowing cannot be described as invasive from the pragmatic-linguistic perspective as a native term does not exist in a language.
Even though Italian and English have been in contact since the 13th century, this exchange was not so fruitful for either nation until the 18th century and after the World War II. The only scarce early linguistic exchange was reflected in the appearance of such words as sterlino, for 'pound sterling'. This word could be traced in the earliest documents accompanying contact and trade between diplomats and merchants.
Historical works are another invaluable source for Anglicisms comprising cultural and political terminology. Here are some examples listed in Enciclopedia dell'Italiano: parlamento (from the English 'parliament'), coronatore (from the English 'coroner'), alto tradimento (transformed by means of calquing from the English 'high treason'). English borrowings commenced their permanent embedding in the Italian language only in the 18th century. Moreover, the Industrial Revolution and later on the American Revolution facilitated the spread of English-American influence. Before the 18th century, English was treated mostly as a barbaric language by the Italian nobility. However, the situation dramatically changed when many Italian intellectuals and academicians started travelling to England. This led to the emergence of a new phenomenon called anglomania in English or l'anglomania in Italian, referring to excessive admiration of English customs. This historical period is characterised by the numerous translations of major works from English literature into Italian, and the urgent need to possess good command of English for commercial purposes. Another interesting factor that contributed to the sudden growth of English language popularity was the appearance of bilingual dictionaries, e.g. Giuseppe Baretti's (Itali-
an literary critic, poet, writer, translator, linguist and author of two influential language-translation dictionaries) bilingual dictionary, which was reissued six times in the 18th century.
Nevertheless, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, an extensive corpus of borrowings came into Italian not directly from English but through the French language (Sergio, 2014, p. 167). This could be explained by the dominance of French as the most influential foreign language on the Italian territory until 1945, when it was victoriously dethroned by English. Still, the 18th century is regarded as the period when the first true English borrowings started to become embedded into Italian. These so-called angolatinisms represented easily integrated calques from the political sphere, such as autodeterminazione ('self-determination'), coa-lizione ('coalition'), comitato ('committee'), legislatura ('legislation'), opposizione ('opposition'), sen-so commune ('common sense'), and many others.
Another major sphere of borrowings in this historical period relates to commerce and navigation and could be exemplified by the words biglietto di banco ('bank cheque'), importare ('to import'), brick ('brick'), cutter ('cutter'). Due to the rise of mass media, many loan words appeared in the sphere of communication, news and everyday life, namely bar, manager, dandy, fashion, festival, boss, scout, camping, shopping, gangster, killer, etc.
Notably, the borrowed word 'manager' originated from the verb 'to manage' that appeared in the English language in 1560s, with the meaning 'to handle, train, or direct (a horse)', from the now-obsolete noun 'manage' (a modern revival of it is manege), from Italian maneggio, from maneggiare meaning 'to handle, touch, to control a horse'. The latter ultimately can be traced back to the Latin noun manus ('hand').
3.2. The new pipeline for word borrowing
New technological advancements and scientific inventions that had to be named were adopted into the Italian language. The examples are numerous, such as locomotiva ('locomotive'), vagone ('wagon'), tunnel, cargo, ferry, yacht, bus, cinema,
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cartoni animati ('cartoons'), film, cast. Especially fruitful was the semantic area of sport that was enriched by the words goal, cross, dribbling, fuori gioco (calque from 'offside'), ring, knock-out, tennis, derby, outsider and many others.
However, the period of extensive borrowing ceased in the wake of the First World when the Italian Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini came to power. This period of Italian history is described as an era of linguistic purism when any foreign elements were deemed unnecessary and excessive or corrupting the Italian language. The policy imposed by the Fascist regime was to 'cleanse' the language and to replace all borrowed words by Italian equivalents, e.g. gioco or ludo instead of 'sport'. However, this attempt ultimately failed as the newly invented replacements and substitutions never caught on in actual practical use regardless of the hefty fines that people would have faced for their usage.
The dominance of the French language has declined gradually since World War I and following the economic boom of the 1950s, English has prevailed as the most influential foreign language on the Italian territory (Pulcini, 2019, p. 130). Later on, when the USA had gained economic supremacy and the political power, the diffusion of American English has facilitated the spread of ideas and cultural influence, in particular in the youth and pop culture sphere. The boost for intercultural contacts occurred when Italy joined the international organisations such as NATO and the EU, with the USA and the UK as the most powerful and influential members in both organisations. The phenomenon of this historical stage in the development of language contacts is quite specific, as it includes not only the elite of the society but all the social strata.
The effect has been amplified by the development of cutting-edge technology and scientific advance as English has become the means of communication and information diffusion. In the most recent wave of borrowing, the most noticeable proliferation of Anglicisms has occurred in the spheres of information technology, marketing, politics and sports (Laviosa, 2007, p. 124). This
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phenomenon had taken place in most European languages and has led to the appearance of various forms of the so-called 'pseudo-English', e.g. Chinglish, Franglais, and Itangliano. The Italian version, sometimes referred to as Italiese, is a form of simplified or corrupted English used by Italian native speakers. Many linguists (see e.g. Vettorel, 2013, p. 270) consider the use of Italiese largely condemned, as the frequent excessive use of mispronounced words is regarded as unnecessary exhibitionism, in particular in mass media, social networks and journalism.
4. STUDY AND RESULTS
4.1. Expanding the Italian lexis by means of borrowing
Many linguists consider lexis or vocabulary as the backbone of a language. At the same time, this part of language is greatly affected by outside influence providing the link from the human's mind to the external world while grammar, being a crucial part of language, is much more rigid in form and, as a result, more resistant to the impact of foreign languages. Moreover, grammar is the least conscious and the most habitual part of language. However, this scenario does not work for foreign learners taking their first steps in language acquisition. In their understanding, grammar appears automatically to some degree when certain patterns of language reproduction have been internalised and the ideas have been conceptualised.
Changes into Italian grammatical construction do exist in certain registers; however, they represent only a miniscule part. To sum up, while lexis links words and the real world, grammar regulates the relations between words. The situation with phonology related to the native language reproduction patterns is very similar. While introduction of new phonemes is present in some cases, nevertheless, it occurs rarely.
The term 'borrowing' is widely used to describe the adopting of linguistic structures aimed at expansion of the language vocabulary. Borrowing could be seen as an attempt to reproduce patterns previously found in another language (Sobrero & Miglietta, 2006, p. 254).
by Alla G. Sokolova
It is worth mentioning that reproduction is rarely done perfectly thanks to contradictions between the graphological and phonological systems of the languages in contact. This phenomenon is manifested when comparing the English and Italian language systems. This process is described by some linguists (see e.g. Cacchiani, 2016) as adaptation or transportation, when the speakers attempt to use borrowed linguistic structures typical of a foreign language but uncommon or just non-existent
in their mother tongue. Borrowing also demonstrates how by filling up the gaps it enables the creation of new vocabulary patterns and items in the borrowing language.
4.2. Classification of the Anglicisms related to tourist terminology
The lexical items we have researched relating directly to the tourism industry could be divided into the following thematic subgroups (Table 1):
Table 1
Classification of tourism-related borrowings
NO. CATEGORY EXAMPLES
1 Notions and terms describing individual or group accommodation hotel, motel, B&B, hostel, spa, bungalow, resort, reception, all inclusive
2 Means of transport, carriers and passengers transportation charter, voli low-coster, business class, il check-in, connection time, duty free, eurocity, il pullman, intercity, hostess, jet, lo shuttle, ticket, autobus, minibus, lounge, car sharing, backpacking, car pooling
3 Notions and terms associated with meals and catering facilities American breakfast, catering, il cocktail, il welcome-drink, selfservice, happy hour, lo snack, fast food, bar, slow food, continental breakfast, banqueting, party, reception, il minibar, il bartender, la barmaid
4 Notions and terms related to sport, recreation and leisure Il mountain bike, la canoe, fare tarzaning, il trekking, pratticare numerosi sport outdoor, il birdwatching, city sightseeing, kayak, il rafting, lo shopping, special event, banana boot, yacht, race, lo hiking, surfing
5 Travel agent services
Online booking, package tour, tour operator, city package, travel agent
4.3. The principal types of assimilation of Anglicisms in the Italian language
In this section, the main types of loanwords assimilation are considered, such as phonetic, orthographic and morphological (grammatical) assimilation (Trifone & Palermo, 2014, p. 278).
Phonetic assimilation plays the most insignificant role seeing that many English phonemes are pronounced in a similar manner to Italian ones, for instance [«] > [e] (snack), [«] > [a] (fan, manager); [a] > [a] (fast food, transfer). The consonant 's' at the beginning of the word preceding a voiced consonant is always vocalised, as in snowboard ['znobord], slogan ['zlogan]. Another speci-
fic feature of Italian phonetics is the absence of reduction, therefore usually reduced vowels and consonants (phonemes expressed by the letters 'r', 'ng', 'e') are pronounced very clearly, e.g. boarding pass ['bording], tarzaning ['tardzaning]. Some Anglicisms retain their spelling but they are to be read according to the Italian pronunciation rules, i.e. reception [re'tjepjon], receptionist [re'tjepjon ist]. Italian 'h' does not correspond to any sound, and this rule is also applied to the borrowed words: hotel [o'tell], hostess ['ostes].
Orthographic assimilation occurs very rarely as both contact languages are based on the Latin alphabet. In the materials studied, only two cases of
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orthographic assimilation have been identified, as in mountain bike which has been substituted by mountain byke.
In the TV advertisement of the 'all inclusive' tariff, the elderly TV-presenter recommends scelga olinclusiv (the stress is on the second syllable). Then a male voice in the background gives comments on the tariff calling it olinclusiv (the stress is on the third syllable). Mostly likely, advertisers have chosen the form with the third syllable stressed due to hypercorrection, as both in English in-
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clusive [in'clu:siv] and in Italian inclusivo, the stress is in on the second syllable from the end of the word.
The most popular type of assimilation is morphological (grammatical) one. Thus, it has always been of great interest for researchers. Considering the fact that in the English language the category of grammatical gender of nouns is absent, their morphological (grammatical) assimilation is implemented in correspondence with the following principles (Table 2):
Table 2
The principles of morphological (grammatical) assimilation
NO. PRINCIPLE EXAMPLES
1 The category is given as of co-referent word il barman, la barmaid, il travelblogger / la travelblogger, la
gender hostess
2 The category is given in accordance with the la banana boat (la barca)
gender of hyperonym of the borrowed word la email (la posta elettronica)
3 Suffixes and inflexions in the English borrowed lo shopping, il hiking, il tarzaning, il rafting
words (usually masculine)
In the process of adaptation, English verbs acquire some features of Italian regular verbs of the first conjugation. They are generally related to the Internet communication sphere and could be found on tourism websites, forums, blogs designated for sharing comments and reviews, e.g. chattare ('to chat'), cliccare ('to click'), monitorare ('to monitor'), filmare ('to film'), postare ('to post'). Ever more often one can come across the verb piacciare derived from mi piace ('to like', meaning to show that you think something is good on a social networking website by clicking on a symbol or the word 'like').
5. DISCUSSION
Loanwords can form compounds that never existed in English and become quite productive in the borrowing language. As mentioned above, the principal ways of grammatical assimilation are administered by adding suffixes or even lexical morphemes or so-called borderline suffixes. Thus, the use of the suffix -man is appropriate thanks to the
need to express agency in words that are mainly used in collocations but are not subject to derivation in English. The second element is rendered by the suffix -man in Italian, e.g. barman (130 search results in Corpus dell'Italiano), salesman (6 search results), chairman (66 search results), etc.
Another way of rendering the second element is by adding the suffix -ista, also denoting agency, e.g. tassista (340 search results). In the touristic terminology, the most frequent example is barista (519 search results) with quite a curious etymology reminding of a similar process with the word manager. Barista originated from the word barman obviously borrowed by Italian from English around 1908. However, in the 1940s, the word barista became widespread and gradually replaced the borrowed version. It is disputable that the initial Anglicism barman had undergone a process of Italia-nisation by means of morphological transformation, i.e. the English suffix was substituted by an authentic Italian equivalent. The second wave of popularity of the word barista was around 1990,
regardless of the change in the meaning. The example demonstrates how the impact of English language on Italian ultimately led to the reciprocal effect of Italian influencing English. Finally, the word barista has become international and is popular all over the world thanks to globalisation.
Words of a language different from English are often pronounced or spelt as though they were truly English. This phenomenon has led to the appearance of the so-called pseudo-English words, i.e. non-English words by origin but created from English morphemes. These words should not be confused with false friends that do exist in English, but possess a different main meaning between English and Italian. As far as the entertainment industry is concerned, a good example is the Italian word for the joker in a pack of cards - il jolly (259 search results). Throughout the 19th century, the English word for this was the jolly joker, but as time went by, the Italians dropped the second part and native English speakers dropped the first one.
Also the word afterhour bearing the acquired meaning 'until well after the sun comes up' seems rather odd to English ears. For example: Nello stes-so periodo scrive per il disco di Roberto Dellera (bassista del gruppo after hour) il singolo AMI LEI AMI ME che riceve l'attenzione di moltissime radio e sempre per lui compone i testi di alitri brani con-tenuti nel disco di prossima uscita.
A relatively significant transformation occurs in English compound borrowed words as well. In Italian, formation of words via the compounding method (parole composte) is less frequent than English, as in telecommando, telespettatori, autostrada. In addition to this, in English the common pattern is a modifier accompanied by the head noun. On the contrary, in Italian it is noun + modifier, as in fermacarta ('paperweight'), or pastasciutta ('dried pasta'). Therefore, the latter component of English compound words could be wrongly taken for a modifier that results in the head noun being omitted or eliminated. Thus, the lexis is enriched with such words as dancing instead of dancing hall (102 search results), parking instead of parking lot (31 search results), night instead of night club (264 search results).
'Having studied the specifics of borrowed words assimilation into the newest tourist terminology, we have concluded that English loanwords are blended and adopted according to the norms of contemporary Italian language, while the mechanism of Anglicisms' activation is based on the interaction between referring words of the recipient language and their equivalent and hyperonyms'
6. CONCLUSION
The unprecedented influx of Anglicisms into the contemporary Italian language and the subsequent influence on Italian lexis has revealed the issues connected with the structural assimilation of those loan words. Once the loanword has travelled beyond the restricted province of the individuals having a proficient command of English pronunciation and grammar, there comes the problem of how it can function in the framework of the phonological and morphological systems of the Italian language.
Having studied the specifics of borrowed words assimilation into the newest tourist terminology, we have concluded that English loanwords are blended and adopted according to the norms of contemporary Italian language, while the mechanism of Anglicisms' activation is based on the interaction between referring words of the recipient language and their equivalent and hyperonyms.
Notably, the use of borrowed words, especially from English, is more about sounding cool, open-minded, global and international rather than filling a linguistic gap between the two languages (Varia-no, 2018, p. 270). Excessive use, if not abuse, of Anglicisms in the contemporary Italian language seems unjustified in the majority of cases as substituting existing words with loanwords leaves an overwhelming majority of Italians (84% as concerns English) in the dark. The average number of Italians speaking proficient enough English accounts for only 16% of the population.
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