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3 Etymological survey of the English lexicon.
1 – native words (30 %); 2 – borrowed words /loans (70 %). Typical features of native words: 1 – they mean trivial notions; 2 – they have monosyllabic character; 3 – high frequency (Zipth’s law – the shorter the word is the more frequently it is used); 4 – polysemantic character; 5 – great word-building power (derivatives & compounds); 6 – high combinability (make set expressions); 7 – they are stylistically neutral in different speech styles. Native words: 1) those of the Indo-European stock: terms of kinship (father, son); objects of nature (sun, moon); animals, birds (goose, wolf); parts of human body (arm, heart, foot) 2) of Common Germanic origin (have parallels in German – Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic). E.g.: nouns – summer, winter, ice, bridge, house, life, cloth; verbs – buy, hear, meet, keep; adj. – dead, deaf. English vocabulary: archaic words; historical words (describe historical events); obsolete words; modern words; neologies (new words nami9ng new concepts, fashionable words – workaholic, cod); home-words (occasional words – box = TV-set, words of writers, of youth, slang). History of borrowings: 1 – Roman invasion; 2 – introduction of Christianity; 3 – the Danish & Scandinavian invasions; 4 – Norman Conquest; 5 – Italian Renaissance; 6 – British colonialism; 7 – modern borrowings. Types of borrowing: 1) the original l-ge (where a word was born); 2) the source (donor) l-ge – from which it was taken. Sources of borrowing: 1) from other l-ges (from Latin, French, Greek, Hindi); 2) from dialects of the same l-ge (London dialect became superior for economical & political reasons). Reasons or motives for borrowing: 1) the prestige motive – to sound clever & sophisticated, to be identical with the upper class); 2) the need-feeling motive (to fill in gaps in the vocabulary – tobacco, coffee, tomato, pizza). Loans: 1) translation loans (morpheme-for- morpheme translation; wall newspaper – стенная газета); 2) semantic loans (the development of a new meaning due to the influence of another from Russian l-ge; “pioneer” meaning “explorer” but from Russian acquired “A member of the young Pioneer’s organization). Assimilation of loans conformation to the standards of the receiving l-ge: 1) completely assimilated (complete phonetical, graphical, morphological & semantic assimilation): - Latin borrowings (cheese, animal, wall); - Scand. (husband, fellow); - French (table, chair, face) 2) partially assimilated: - not assimilated semantically (they denote notions peculiar to that country – sheik, toreador); - grammatically (crisis – crises); - phonetically (machine, police, prestige); - graphically (ballet, buffet); 3) barbarisms (non – assimilated) – words from other l-ges used by English people in conversation or writing – Italian “addio”. Etymological douplets – have the same meaning but different etymology & used in different styles (bookish & colloquial) – to start & to commence. International words (appear due to the progress in science) – e.g.: antenna, antibiotic; international of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz. Lexical assimilation: 1)specialization (narrowing, restriction); 2) generalization (extension, widening); 3)amelioration (elevation); 4) ? (degradation); 5)transference; 6) folk etymology (associating with familiar words which resemble in sound but are not related). Linguistic Puritanism – denies loan words, their right to exist. They pollute the l-ge.
3. Etymological survey of the English lexicon.
The term “etymology” comes from Greek and it means the study of the earlist forms of the word. Now etymology studies both: the form and the meaning of borrowed and native words. In every modern language there are native and borrowed words. It is quite natural and logical because contacts between people, and peoples are lead to the process of borrowing. As for English language many scientist consider the foreign influence to be the most important factor in the development of the Eng. language. There are more borrowed words in English than in any other European language. So we speak of the mixed character of the English vocabulary. It contains the native element and the borrowed elements. The native element includes Indo-European, Germanic element and English proper element: boy, girl, lord, lady – proper English word.
By the native element we mean words which were not borrowed from other languages. The number of native words is rather small, about 25%-30%. About 70% of words are borrowed. This fact gave ground to the assumption that English is not a Germanic language, but a Romenic-Germanic language.
Today the accepted point of view is that Eng. is a Germanic language and the mixed character of its vocabulary is one of its main features. It can be proved by the fact that in speech the correlation between native and borrow words is different. It was found out that in the works of English classics about 80% of words are native. (prepositions, modal and auxiliary verbs, a great many irregular verbs, some nouns and adjectives denoting everyday notions). The native element include Indo-European, Germanic and English proper words. Indo-European words have cognates in other I-E languages. EG: English words of this group denote elementary concepts without which no human communication would be possible. day, night, mother, father, son, daughter.
Germanic words have cognates in modern Germanic languages. EG: They denote parts of human body: hand, head, arm, bone. Animals: fox, bear.
English proper words don’t have any cognates in other languages: lord, lady, boy, girl.
The term “borrowing” may mean the process of borrowing and the result of the process-the word itself. The term source of borrowing means the language which from the word was taking into English. EG: delicious was taken from French so, French is the source of borrowing.
The term origin of borrowing denotes the language to ehich the word may be traced. EG: the word “school is a Latin borrowing. (It comes from Latin) of greek origin. It means that to Latin (it) came from Greek. “to adore” came from French. There are different reasons for borrowing words, linguistic and extro-lingustic (historic) reason. Historic reasons include wars and conquest and peaceful contacts as well. The main linguistic reason are the following: 1.) a gap in vocabulary. EG: potato, tomato were borrowed from Spanish, when these vegetables were brought to the British island. So, the word were borrowed together with notions which they denoted. 2.) To present the same notion in a new aspect, from a different point of view. EG: The French word “to adore” was added to native words “to like” and “to love”, to denote the strongest degree of the process.
This type of borrowing enlarge groups of synonyms. Заимствование: а) время б) историч. справка в) классиф.
The classification of English borrowings includes more than ten groups. The main groups of borrowing are:
- the three layers of dating borrowing- borrowings from French- borrowing from Scandinavian
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