МІНІСТЕРСВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ

МІНІСТЕРСВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ

ІНСТИУТ ІНОЗЕМНОЇ ФІЛОЛОГІЇ

НПУ ім. М. П. Драгоманова

Реферат з лексикології

на тему

«Etymological characteristics of Modern English Vocabulary»

Виконала судентка 32за

Ніколенко Катерина....

Перевірила Стефанова

Наталія Олександрівна

Київ – 2014

It is true that English vocabulary, which is one of the most extensive among the world's languages contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Explanations for this should be sought in the history of the language which is closely connected with the history of the nation speaking the language.

The first century B. C. Most of the territory now known to us as Europe was occupied by the Roman Empire. Among the inhabitants of the Europe are Germanic tribes. Theirs stage of development was rather primitive, especially if compared with the high civilization of Rome. They are primitive cattle-breeders and know almost nothing about land cultivation. Their tribal languages contain only Indo-European and Germanic elements.

Etimology – branch of lexicology, which deals with the different possesses of assimilation or adaptation of the English words The English vocabulary is very rich. From the point of view of etymology, English vocabulary can be divided into 2 parts: 70% of borrowings in English language, 30% of native words. ¹

^{The Etymological Structure}^{of English Vocabulary}

The nativeelement	The borrowedelement
1. Indo-European element	I. Celtic (5^th – 6^th c. A. D. ).
2. Germanic element	II. Latin
1^st group: 1^st c. B. C.
2^st group: 7^th c. A. C.
3^st group: the Renaissance period
3. English Proper element (no earlier than 5^th c. A. D. )	III. Scandinavian (8^th – 11^th c. A. D. )
IV. French
1. Norman borrowings: 11^th –13^th c. A. D.
2. Parisian borrowings (Renaissance)
V. Greek (Renaissance)
VI. Italian (Renaissance and later)
VII. Spanish (Renaissance and later)
VIII. German
IX. Indian
X. Russian and some other groups

^{The first column of the table consists of three groups, only the third being dated: the words of this group appeared in the English vocabulary in the 5th century or later, that is, after the Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles. The tribal languages of the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, by the time of their migration, contained only words of Indo-European and Germanic roots plus a certain number of the earliest Latin borrowings.}

By the Indo-European element are meant words of roots common to all (or most) languages of the Indo-European group. The words of this group denote elementary concepts without which no human communication would be possible. The following groups can be identified:

1. Family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter.

2. Parts of the human body: foot, nose, lip, heart.

3. Animals: cow, swine, goose.

4. Plants: tree, birch, corn.

5. Time of day: day, night.

6. Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.

7. Numerous adjectives: red, new, glad, sad.

8. The numerals from one to a hundred.

9. Pronouns - personal (except “they” which is a Scandinavian borrowing) and demonstrative.

10. Numerous verbs: be, stand, sit, eat, know.

TheGermanic element represents words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the Indo-European element:

1. Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone.

2. Animals: bear, fox, calf.

3. Plants: oak, fir, grass.

4. Natural phenomena: rain, frost.

5. Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer[7].

6. Landscape features: sea, land.

7. Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench.

8. Sea-going vessels: boat, ship.

9. Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good.

10. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.

The English proper element is opposed to the first two groups. For not only it can be approximately dated, but these words have another distinctive feature: they are specifically English have no cognates [8] in other languages whereas for Indo-European and Germanic words such cognates can always be found, as, for instance, for the following words of the Indo-European group.

Star: Germ. - Stern, Lat. - Stella, Gr. - aster.

Stand: Germ. – stehen, Lat. - stare, R. – стоять.

Here are some examples of English proper words: bird, boy, girl, lord, lady, woman, daisy, always.

Structural elements of borrowings

There are certain structural features which enable us to identify some words as borrowings and even to determine the source language. We have already established that the initial (sk) usually indicates Scandinavian origin. We can also recognize words of Latin and French origin by certain suffixes, prefixes or endings. Here are some typical and frequent structural elements of Latin and French borrowings:

Latin affixes of nouns:

The suffix (-ion): legion, opinion, etc.; the suffix (-tion): relation, temptation, etc.

Latin affixes of verbs:

The suffix (-ate): appreciate, create, congratulate, etc.; the suffix (-ute): attribute, distribute, etc.; the remnant[9] suffix (-ct): act, collect, conduct, etc.; the prefix (dis-): disable, disagree, etc.

Latin affixes of adjectives:

The suffix (-able): detestable, curable, etc.; the suffix (-ate): accurate, graduate, etc.; the suffix (-ant): constant, important, etc.; the suffix (-ent): absent, evident, etc.; the suffix (-or): major, senior, etc.; the suffix (-al): final, maternal, etc.; the suffix (-ar): solar, familiar, etc.

French affixes of nouns:

The suffix (-ance): endurance, hindrance, etc.; the suffix (-ence): consequence, patience, etc.; the suffix (-ment): appointment, development, etc.; the suffix (-age): courage, marriage, village, etc.; the suffix (-ess): actress, adventuress, etc.

French affixes of verbs:

The prefix (en-): enable, enact, enslave, etc.

French affixes of adjectives:

The suffix (-ous): curious, dangerous, etc.

It’s important to note that later formations derived from native roots borrowed Latin and French affixes (e. g. eatable, lovable).

Why Are Words Borrowed?

Sometimes it is done to fill a gap in vocabulary. When the Saxons borrowed Latin words for " butter", " plum", " beet", they did it because their own vocabularies lacked words for these new objects. For the same reason the words “potato” and “tomato” were borrowed by English from Spanish when these vegetables were first brought to England by the Spaniards.

But there is also a great number of words which are borrowed for other reasons. There may be a word (or even several words) which expresses some particular concept, so that there is no gap in the vocabulary and there does not seem to be any need for borrowing. However a word is borrowed because it supplies a new shade of meaning or a different emotional colouring though it represents the same concept. This type of borrowing enlarges groups of synonyms and provides to enrich the expressive resources of the vocabulary. That is how the Latin “cordial” was added to the native “friendly”, the French “desire” to “wish”, the Latin “admire” and the French “adore” to “like” and “love”.

The historical circumstances stimulate the borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close contact. The nature of the contact may be different. It may be wars, invasions or conquests when foreign words are imposed upon the conquered nation. There are also periods of peace when the process of borrowing is due to trade and international cultural relations.

A borrowed (loan) word is a word adopted from another language and modified in sound form, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English.
    According to Otto Jespersen loan-words are “the milestones of philology, because in a great many instances they permit us to fix approximately the dates of linguistic changes”. But they may be termed “the milestones of general history” because they show the course of civilization and give valuable information as to the inner life of nations.
    Through its history the English language came in contact with many languages and borrowed freely from them. The greatest influx of borrowings mainly came from Latin, French and Old Norse (Scandinavian). Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse and French (its Norman dialect) were the languages of the conquerors: the Scandinavians invaded the British Isles and merged with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 Norman French was the language of the upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.
    Etymologically the English vocabulary is said to have a particularly mixed character. Therefore some linguists (L. P. Smith, I. H. Bradley) consider foreign influence to be the most important factor in the history of English. Other linguists (Ch. Hockett, J. A. Sheard) and our linguists, on the contrary, point out the stability of the grammar and phonetic system of the English Language and consider it necessary to examine the volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed elements in the development of the English vocabulary.
The greatest number of borrowings has come from French. Borrowed words refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. About 41 per cent of them are scientific and technical terms. L. P. Smith calls English «half-sister» to the Romance languages. The number and character of borrowings depend on many factors: on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts and also on the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the language the deeper and more versatile is the influence. Thus, from the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related to Old English, some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages: the personal pronouns: they, their, them; also same, till, though, fro (adv).
    Sometimes words were borrowed to fill in gaps in the vocabulary. Thus, the English borrowed Latin, Greek, Spanish words paper, tomato, potato when these vegetables were first brought to England and because the English vocabulary lacked words for denoting these new objects. ²

Borrowings usually take place under 2 circumstances: 1) when people have a direct contact with another people; 2) when there is a cultural need to borrow a word from another languages. ³

Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech and through written speech. Oral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history, in recent times, written borrowings did. Words borrowed orally (L. Street, mill, inch) are usually short and undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e. g. French communique, belles-letres, naivete) preserve their spelling, they are often rather long and their assimilation is a long process.
The terms «source of borrowing» and «origin of borrowing» should be distinguished. The first denotes the language from which the loan was taken into English. The second denotes the language to which the word may be traced:
E. g. paper
Words like paper, pepper, etc. are often called by specialists in the history of the language «much-travelled words» which came into English passing through several other languages and not by means of direct borrowing.
Though the borrowed words always undergo changes in the process of borrowing, some of them preserve their former characteristics for a long period. This enables us to recognize them as the borrowed element. Examples are:
the initial position of the sounds [v], [d], [z] is a sign that the word is not native: vacuum (Lat), valley (FR. ), volcano (Ital. ), vanilla(Sp. ), etc;
may be rendered by «g» and «j» gem (Lat), gemma, jewel (O. Fr. ), jungle (Hindi), gesture (Lat), giant (O. Fr. ), genre, gendarme (Fr. );
the initial position of the letters «x», «j» «z» is a sign that the word is a borrowed one: zeal (Lat), zero (Fr. ), zinc (Gr. ), xylophone (Gr. );
the combinations ph, kh, eau in the root: philology (Gr. ), khaki (Indian), beau (Fr. ); «ch» is pronounced [k] in words of Greek origin: echo, school, [S] in late French borrowings: machine, parachute; and [tS] in native words and early borrowings.
The morphological structure of the word may also betray the for-eign origin of the latter: e. g. the suffix in violencello (Ital. ) polysyllabic words is numerous among borrowings: government, condition, etc.
Another feature is the presence of prefixes: ab-, ad-, con-, de-, dis-, ex-, in-, per-, pre-, pro-, re-, trans- /such words often contain bound stems.
The irregular plural forms: beaux/from beau (Fr), data/from datum (Lat).
The lexical meaning of the word: pagoda (Chinese). ⁴

ROMANIC BORROWINGS. Latin borrowings(Latin words became the earliest group of borrowings in the future English language which was - much later - built on the basis of the Germanic tribal languages): they are divided into 3 periods: 1) 5 century, words are connected with trade (pound, inch, kitchen, wall, port); 2) the time of Christianity, words are connected with religion (Latin words: alter, cross, dean; Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem); 3) time of renaissance, words were borrowed after great vowel shift (17 century) (item, superior, zoology, memorandum, vice versa, AM, PM). ( “cup” (Lat. “cuppa”), “kitchen” (Lat. “coquina”), “mill” (Lat. “molina”), “port” (Lat. “portus”), “wine” (Lat. “vinum”). (“cherry” (Lat. “cerasum”), “pear” (Lat. “pirum”), “plum” (Lat. “prunus”), “pea” (Lat. “pisum”), “beet” (Lat. “beta”), “pepper” (Lat. “piper”). French: the largest group of borrowings is French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman Conquest. Normans belong to the race of scand. origin but during their residence in Normandy they had given up the native language and adopted the French dialect. During 3 centuries after the Norman Conquest French was the language of the court, of the nobility. There are following semantic groups of French borrowings: 1) words relating to government (administer, empire, state); 2) ~military affairs (army, war, battle); 3) ~jurisprudence (advocate, petition, sentence); 4) ~fashion (luxury, coat, collar); 5)~jewelry (topaz, pearl); 6)~ food and cooking (lunch, cuisine, menu); 7)~literature and music (pirouette, ballet). Italian: cultural and trade relations between England and Italy in the epoch of renaissance brought in many Italian words: 1) musical terms: concert, solo, opera, piano, trio; 2) political terms: manifesto; 3) geological terms: volcano, lava. Among the 20th century Italian borrowings, we can mention: incognito, fiasco, and graffiti. Spanish: a large number of such words was penetrated in English vocabulary in 1588 when Phillip 2 sent a fleet of armed ships against England (armada, ambuscade); trade terms: cargo, embargo; names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, guitar; names of vegetables and fruits: tomato, tobacco, banana, ananas.

GERMANIC BORROWINGS: Scandinavian: By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles. As a result of this conquest there are about 700 borrowings from Scandinavian into English (pronouns: they, them, their; verbs: to call, to want, to die; adj: flat, ill, happy; noun: cake, egg, knife, window. Here are some examples of early Scandinavian borrowings: call (v. ), take (v. ), cast (v. ), die (v. ), law (n. ), husband (n. ), window (n. ), ill (adj. ), loose, (adj. ), low (adj. ), weak (adj. ). Some of Scandinavian borrowings are easily recognizable by the initial (sk-) combination. E. g. sky, skill, skin, ski, skirt. Certain English words changed their meanings under the influence of Scandinavian words of the same root. So, the old English “bread” which meant " piece" acquired its modern meaning by association with the Scandinavian “braud”. The old English “dream” which meant " joy" assimilated the meaning of the Scandinavian “draumr’’ German: in the period of Second World War such words were borrowed as: luftwaffe (возд. авиация); bundeswehr (вооруженные силы ФРГ). After the Second World War the following words were borrowed: Volkswagen, berufsverbot ( запрет на профессию ( в ФРГ )), and some other words(cobalt, wolfram, iceberg, rucksack). Dutch: Holland and England have had constant interrelations for many centuries and more then 2000 Dutch words were borrowed into English. Many of them are nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14th century, such as: skipper, pump, keel, dock; and some words from everyday life: luck, brandy, boss. Russian: Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rubble, kopeck, sterlet, vodka, and words relating to nature: taiga, tundra, steppe. After the October revolution many new words appeared in Russia, connected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them were borrowed into English: collectivization, udarnik, Komsomol and also translation loans: five-year plan, collective farm. One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, suck as: glasnost, nomenclature, and apparatchik.

Native words are divided into 3 basic groups: 1) the words which have cognates (words of the same etymological root, of common origin) in many Indo-European languages. For ex: family relations: father (Vater), mother, daughter, son; parts of human body: foot, heart, nose; wolf, cow, cat; numerous verbs: stand, sit; the numerals from 1 to 100; heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star. 2) the words, which have cognates with words of the language of the Germanic group. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the I-E group/ For ex: parts of human body: head, hand, arm, finger; animals: bear, fox; natural phenomena: rain, frost; human dwellings and furniture: house, bench; adj: green, blue, old, good, small, high; verbs: see, hear, tell, say, drink, give. 3) the English element proper. Ex.: bird, boy, girl, woman, lord, always. Assimilation – the process of adaptation phonetic, gram. and semantic features of language. 3 basic types: phonetical – sounds are adopted; grammatical – when a borrowed word occurs (спутник); semantic – connected with the meaning of the word.

International words. It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages and not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts, which are significant in the field of communication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sciences are international, e. g. philosophy, chemistry, biology; sports terms: football, baseball, tennis; foodstuffs and fruits imported from exotic countries: coffee, chocolate, banana, grapefruit; clothing: pullover, shorts.

Etymological doublets – are pairs of words, which have one and the same original form, but which have acquired different forms and even different meanings during the course of linguistic development. Ex: the words shirt and skirt etymologically descend from the same root. Shirt is a native word, skirt is a Scandinavian borrowings. Their phonetic shape is different, and yet there is a certain resemblance, which reflects their common origin. Their meanings are also different but easily associated: they both denote articles of clothing. Etymological triplets (groups of three words of common root) – hospital (Lat) – hostel (Norm. Fr) – hotel (Par. Fr).

Translation-Loans. This term is equivalent to borrowing. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonetic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation. It is obvious that it is only compound words, which can be subjected to such an operation, each stem being translated separately. Ex: collective farm (колхоз); wonder child (Wunderkind); five-year plan (пятилетка)

Borrowings or loans are seldom limited to one language. «Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called INTERNATIONAL WORDS». (I. V. Arnold).

Such words usually convey notions which are significant in the field of communication. Most of them are of Latin and Greek origin.

Most scientists have international names; e. g. physics, chemistry, biol-ogy, linguistics, etc.

Modern means of communication expand global contacts which result in the considerable growth of international vocabulary.

International words play a very prominent part in various spheres of terminology, such as vocabulary of science, art, industry, etc. The great number of Italian words, connected with architecture, painting and music were borrowed into all the European languages and became international: arioso, baritone, allegro, concert, opera, etc.

Examples of new or comparatively new words due to the progress of science illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: bionics, genetic code, site, database, etc.

The international word-stock has also grown due to the influx of exotic borrowed words like bungalow, pundit, sari, kraal, etc.

The English language has also contributed a considerable number of international words to all the world languages. Among them the sports terms: football, hockey, rugby, tennis, golf, etc.

International words should not be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages. Thus, one should not make a false conclusion that the English 'son', the German 'Sohn' and the Russian 'сын' are international words due to their outward similarity. They represent the Indo-European element in each of the three languages and they are COGNATES, i. e. words of the same etymological root and not borrowings.

Література:

1. Курс лекцій Стефанова Н. О.

2. Лексикология английского языка - теория и практика Ніколенко А. Г.

3. Лексикология английского языка. Антрушина Г. Б., Афанасьева О. В.

4. F. R. Palmer. Semantics. A new outline.

5. Grammarway. 3, 4. Express Publishing.

6. http: //youreng. narod. ru/lexicology. html

7. http: //samlib. ru/g/gvozdika/lexicology. shtml

8. http: //window. edu. ru/library/pdf2txt/542/64542/35370/page1