CHAPTER 1 THE MAIN PURPOSE OF ETYMOLOGY THROUGH TASK BASED LANGUAGE
1.1 Developing of Etymology
Etymology (/ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ ET-im-OL-ə-jee[1]) is the study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes.[2][3] It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics.
For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family.
Even though etymological research originated from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian
Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption of "loanwords" from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such as "click" or "grunt").
While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change, it is not readily obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning "to mark with blood").
Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word bead originally meant "prayer". It acquired its modern meaning through the practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads.
This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.
The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.
The basic sources of this work are Weekley's "An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English," Klein's "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language," "Oxford English Dictionary" (second edition), "Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology," Holthausen's "Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Englischen Sprache," and Kipfer and Chapman's "Dictionary of American Slang." A full list of print sources used in this compilation can be found here.
Since this dictionary went up, it has benefited from the suggestions of dozens of people I have never met, from around the world. Tremendous thanks and appreciation to all of you. etymology, the history of a word or word element, including its origins and derivation. Although the etymologizing of proper names appears in the Old Testament and Plato dealt with etymology in his dialogue Cratylus, lack of knowledge of other languages and of the historical developments that languages undergo prevented ancient writers from arriving at the proper etymologies of words.
Key People: August Pott Kazimieras Būga Georg Curtius Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke Julius Pokorny
Related Topics: historical linguistics word
Modern scientific etymological study is based on the methods and findings of historical and comparative linguistics, the basic principles of which were established by linguists during the 19th century. The general principles involved in present-day etymology are:
This Mercator map of the world is attributed to Edward Wright, an English mathematician who first computed navigation tables to be used with the Mercator projection. It was published in 1599. The compass roses and crisscrossing lines are in the style oft
Britannica Quiz
Word Meanings and Origins
1. The earliest form of a word, or word element, must be ascertained, as well as all parallel and related forms.
2. Every sound of a given word, or word element, must be compared with the corresponding sound in the form (often called its etymon) from which it is derived.
3. Any deviation in the previously established phonetic correspondences for the language of which the word is a part must be plausibly and rationally explained.
4. Any shift in meaning that has occurred in the historical transmission of the word must also be explained.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
5. Words that present nonnative sounds, or combinations of sounds, that appear isolated in the language, or that demonstrate marked deviation from the usual phonetic correspondences, are probably borrowed rather than inherited, and the language of origin must be determined.
assimilation, in anthropology and sociology, the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. The process of assimilating involves taking on the traits of the dominant culture to such a degree that the assimilating group becomes socially indistinguishable from other members of the society. As such, assimilation is the most extreme form of acculturation. Although assimilation may be compelled through force or undertaken voluntarily, it is rare for a minority group to replace its previous cultural practices completely; religion, food preferences, proxemics (e.g., the physical distance between people in a given social situation), and aesthetics are among the characteristics that tend to be most resistant to change. Assimilation does not denote “racial” or biological fusion, though such fusion may occur.
Attempts to compel minority groups to assimilate have occurred frequently in world history. The forced assimilation of indigenous peoples was particularly common in the European colonial empires of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. In North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Asia, colonial policies toward indigenous peoples frequently compelled their religious conversion, the removal of children from their families, the division of community property into salable, individually owned parcels of land, the undermining of local economies and gender roles by shifting responsibility for farming or other forms of production from women to men, and the elimination of access to indigenous foodstuffs. Forced assimilation is rarely successful, and it generally has enduring negative consequences for the recipient culture.
Voluntary assimilation, albeit usually effected under pressure from the dominant culture, has also been prevalent in the historical record. One such case dates to the Spanish Inquisition of the late 14th and 15th centuries, when many Muslims and Jews responded to religious persecution by voluntarily converting to Roman Catholicism. Known as Moriscos and Marranos, respectively, they secretly continued to practice their original religions.
Another example of voluntary assimilation occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries, when millions of Europeans moved to the United States. In this case, being able to “pass” as a member of the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture was an important hedge against violent nativist groups such as the Know-Nothing Party (see United States: The people). Although popular notions generally presume that complete assimilation occurred among immigrants of European descent, research in the late 20th and early 21st centuries advocated a more nuanced and pluralistic view of historical culture change among American ethnic groups.
Robert E. Park, in full Robert Ezra Park, (born February 14, 1864, Harveyville, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died February 7, 1944, Nashville, Tennessee), American sociologist noted for his work on ethnic minority groups, particularly African Americans, and on human ecology, a term he is credited with coining. One of the leading figures in what came to be known as the “Chicago school” of sociology, he initiated a great deal of fieldwork in Chicago that explored race relations, migration, ethnic relations, social movements, and social disorganization.
Park studied under the philosophers John Dewey (at the University of Michigan), William James, and Josiah Royce (the latter two at Harvard University) and the sociologist Georg Simmel (in Germany). All his graduate work was done after 11 years of experience as a newspaper reporter in various large cities, where his interest in social problems was stimulated. Park earned his A.B. at the University of Michigan (1887), his A.M. at Harvard (1899), and his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg (1904). He taught at Harvard (1904–05), the University of Chicago (1914–33), and Fisk University (1936–43).
In 1906 Park wrote two magazine articles about the oppression of the Congolese by Belgian colonial administrators. Turning to the study of the black population in his own country, he became secretary to Booker T. Washington and is said to have written most of Washington’s The Man Farthest Down (1912). Park believed that a caste system produced by sharp ethnic differences tends, because of the division of labour between the castes, to change into a structure of economic classes.
With Ernest W. Burgess, Park wrote a standard text, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921). In The Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922), Park argued that foreign-language newspapers would, in the long run, promote assimilation of immigrants. Three volumes of his Collected Papers, edited by Everett C. Hughes and others, were published between 1950 and 1955. The second volume deals with the city and with human ecology, which was the title of a course taught by Park at the University of Chicago in 1926.
social Darwinism, the theory that human groups and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin perceived in plants and animals in nature. According to the theory, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the weak were diminished and their cultures delimited while the strong grew in power and cultural influence over the weak. Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |