On the lexical composition of the Khmer language

Abstract

Introduction. The article is devoted to the description of the lexical composition of the Khmer language. The basis of the research is the works in the field of lexicology of Russian and foreign linguists such as Yu. Apresyan, D. Elovkov, L. Krysin, N. Yudina.

Materials and methods. The study is based on the analysis of 500 words extracted by sampling from 25 000 contexts (sentences) from the Khmer-language newspaper Phnom Penh Post.

Analysis. The article examines and describes in detail the vocabulary of the Khmer language from the point of view of etymology (native and borrowed vocabulary), analyzes the main sources of borrowings, provides classifications of the vocabulary of the Khmer language from the point of view of the scope of distribution and age of existence. Borrowings are classified by donor language, topics and method of adaptation. By donor language, lexical units borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali, French, English, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Chinese are identified. Borrowings in the Khmer language are divided by topics into 11 semantic fields: information technology, economics, gastronomy, social and political vocabulary, medicine, chemistry, transport, sports, religion, culture and environment. According to the method of adaptation, borrowings are classified into phonetic, morphological-phonetic and semantic. Results. Based on the results of the study, the author proposed the following classification of the vocabulary of the Khmer language according to universal criteria: in terms of origin – native Khmer and borrowed, in terms of the sphere of distribution – commonly used and of limited use (dialects and terminology), in terms of the length of existence – modern, obsolete (archaisms and historicisms) and new. The analysis showed that the main ways of the appearance of neologisms in the Khmer language include the formation of new words according to word-formation models known to the language, borrowing and semantic derivation.