A study of loan words in Bengali language

Abstract

This research is a qualitative analysis of the loanwords which exist in Bengali language. We divided our entire treatise in four chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to the thesis; the second chapter reviewed the literature, the third chapter discussed and analyzed the loanwords of Bengali language phonologically, morphologically and semantically and the fourth chapter concluded the research work. The purpose of this research is to analyze the borrowed words of Bengali language from linguistic point of view. The methodology of this research work includes data collection, data analysis and presenting results. We collected our data from the secondary sources. In this case we took some dictionaries to collect our data which were the main source for our research. Since this is a linguistic research based on loanwords of Bengali language, we had to select the Bengali to Bengali dictionary, English pronouncing dictionary and Perso-Arabic dictionary for data collection. Findings which we got as the result of our research are - 1. There are loanwords in Bengali from 11 languages belong to 6 origins. 2. The phonological change occurred in the case of every language while borrowing. 3. The morphological change occurred in Perso-Arabic, English, Portuguese and Hindi loanwords. 4. By morphological nature, loanwords which exist in Bengali vocabulary are noun, adjective, conjunction and interjection. 5. The semantic values of the loanwords of Bengali language retained intact in all languages except Perso-Arabic and English. In the case of Perso-Arabic and English loanwords, other semantic changes occurred which are different meaning, expansion and contraction.