SCANDINAVIAN LOANWORDS IN IRISH IN THE SHIPBUILDING AREA: ANCHOR, SAIL, BOARD (MOTIVATION AND FURTHER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT)

A limited number of Scandinavian loanwords in Irish represent a group of motivated borrowings connected with cultural influence, including trade, fishing, weaponry, markets, dress, and shipbuilding. The direct sources of these loanwords could also be of Anglo-Saxon origin, reflecting the cultural and social impact on the Irish language. Some terms have Latin origin and even more have parallels in other Celtic languages. In some cases, the presence of lexical doublets is observed. Later, they are distributed according to dialect zones or disappear from language use. The paper concentrates on three lexemes representing complex and controversial cases. The Irish terms accaire, séol, and bord could have been borrowed from Scandinavian language regions, but at the same time might have come from other sources. Their semantic development represents non-standard cases, due to the specific Irish point of view. The anchor designation in Irish is known from the VII—VIII century and represents a Latin borrowing — ingor. It is mainly used to denote something that morally attracts a person, not always in a positive sense. Subsequently, it merges with a Scandinavian loanword in a hybrid form ancaire. The lexeme séol denotes sail but also signifies the semantic transition from cloth, coverlet to bed. The etymology is disputable, and it may have an autochthonous origin. The noun bord is found in relatively later texts. Its origin is debated (whether it is a Scandinavian loan or an Old English borrowing), and following the pattern seen in the English language, it evolves to mean table, and from there, the semantic extension to division, department occurs (cf. Russian stolonachalnik).