Маъсул муҳаррир: Филология фанлари доктори, профессор: Г. Х. Боқиева Тақризчилар

Chapter XXIII. OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY


Key questions
1. Etymological layers of Old English Vocabulary.
2. Latin words in Old English.
3. Greek words in Old English.
4. Celtic and Scandinavians in Old English.
5. Word-Formation in Old English.


General Characteristics of the OE Vocabulary
The full extent of the OE vocabulary is not known to present day scholars. There is no doubt that many words have not been recorded in the extant texts at all. The evidence of the records has been supplemented by from other sources: from the study of the words of closely related OG languages and from later, more extensive ME texts.
Modern estimates of the total vocabulary of OE range from about 30,000 words to almost 100,000 – the latter figure being too high and unrealistic (among other causes the differences in the estimates depend on the treatment of polysemy and homonymy. But even the lowest estimates show that OE had already developed about as many words as used by a present-day cultured English speaker.) Despite the gaps in the accessible data, philological studies in the last centuries have given us a fairly complete outline of the OE vocabulary as regards its etimology, word structure, word-building and stylistic differentiation.
Etymological division of the OE Vocabulary
It is generally held that the OE vocabulary was mainly homogeneous as loan words were an insignificant part of it. The table below illustrates its etymological layers:

Native words				Borrowings
Common IE	Common Germanic	West Germanic	Specifically English	Latin Celtic
Nouns: Faeder Mo:dor Nama Tunge Fo:t Niht Heorte Mere Adjectives: Neowe Riht Long Verbs: do:n be:on sittan licʒan beran teran Pronouns: ic mi:n þæt Numerals: Twa:	Hand Sand sinʒan findan finʒer hu:s land sae heall scip ʒre:ne earm (poor)		Clipian Brid wiffman=wimman hlāford= hlāf + weard= lord. hlāfdiʒе= hlāf+ diʒе (knead bread) + lady

Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers coming from different historical periods. The three main layers of the native OE words are: a) common IE words 2) common Germanic words; 3) specifically OE words.
a) Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. They go back to the days of the IE parent-language before its extension over the wide territory of Europe and Asia and before the appearance of the Germanic group. They were inherited by the PG and passed into the Germanic languages of various subgroups, including English.
Among these groups we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; verbs belong to this group denote basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals.
b) The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. Being specifically Germanic, these words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. (The ratio between specifically Germanic and common IE words in the Germanic languages was estimated by the 19th century scholars as 1:2; since then it has been discovered that many more Germanic words have parallels outside the group and should be regarded as common IE)
Common Germanic words originated in the common period of Germanic history, i.e. in PG when the Teutonic tribes lived close together. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with sea and everyday life. See the table below.
Common Germanic words in English