The process of borrowing foreign language (English particularly) vocabulary is one of the most significant ones among others occurring in the modern Ukrainian language. The specifics of this process are not limited to its intensity. The problem of borrowing and functioning of vocabulary of foreign origin in the Ukrainian language is one of the most relevant research fields in modern linguistics.
Borrowings that appeared in the Ukrainian language as a result of the process of lexical interference experience semantic and stylistic changes, being, along with the active Ukrainian vocabulary, the object of all processes occurring in the language. The phenomenon of lexical borrowing is not new to the Ukrainian language – foreign lexemes began to appear in the lexicon in the end of the 19th century, but over the past three decades there has been an unprecedented intensification of the lexical borrowing process, which began in the end of 20th – beginning of the 21st century. and which takes place in the context of other active processes in the modern Ukrainian language vocabulary.
The thesis focuses on lexical units borrowed from the English language, although the vocabulary of foreign origin in Ukrainian is heterogeneous and consists of borrowings from different languages –there are words borrowed from French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic exoticisms. However, the most commonly used borrowings today are English ones, due to the status of English as it is considered the language of international politics, science and culture.
Despite the fact that Ukrainian linguistics includes many studies on the problem of lexical borrowing, this problem is still relevant. At the present stage of Ukrainian linguistics development, the issue of functional and stylistic differentiation of foreign lexical borrowings has not been studied sufficiently, as for three decades they were considered by researchers mostly as part of scientific and technical terminology and exoticisms in journalistic, writing or colloquial styles.
The variety of genres and stylistic features of lexical borrowings were not considered either due to a certain bias of linguists and fears of purists, who consider borrowing a threat to the purity of the Ukrainian language. However, despite all these factors, lexical borrowings have become an integral part of the lexical structure of the modern Ukrainian language and their functioning has its own specifics in each of the styles of the Ukrainian language, which determines the relevance of this study.
The aim of the research is to develop approaches to a comprehensive analysis of the lexical borrowings in the Ukrainian language and study their functional and stylistic features in different styles and genres of the modern Ukrainian language.
The object of the research is the words of the English origin in the late 90s of the 20th century – 10s of the 21st centuries, which were selected from the texts of different styles.
The scientific novelty of the thesis lies in the fact that this research: 1) explains the need for functional and stylistic differentiation of lexemes of foreign origin; 2) reveals new thematic groups of borrowings in different styles; 3) explains the need for a register of new borrowings and proves their belonging to the lexicon of the modern Ukrainian language; 4) considers words of English origin as an independent branch of vocabulary, and not just as exoticisms; 5) describes the processes of substandardization of vocabulary of foreign origin; 6) proves the connection of the lexical borrowing process with the democratization and colloquialization of the literary language, which has resulted in the diffusion of lexical borrowings and blurring of stylistic boundaries of functional styles of the modern Ukrainian language.
Research results. Nowadays the differentiation of the newest lexical borrowings according to their stylistic distinction has been traced. Thus, the thematic groups of the words of English origin in the field of computer information technology are common in such writing styles as scientific, formal and sacred ones. Compared to scientific and formal styles, English lexical borrowings are rarely used in sacred texts, and we have not found a variety of thematic groups of English lexical borrowings in the sacred style. In the writing style of the modern Ukrainian language, the words of English origin borrowed from the field of computer and information technologies are expanding their semantic structure. There are also elements of standard vocabulary of English origin. Elements of profanity of English origin.
