Etymological classification of the vocabulary

According to its origin the wordstock may be subdivided into native and borrowed words.

A native word belongs to the original English stock. A loan word ( borrowed word) is taken over from another language and modi­fied in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

The native words are further devided into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin. The words having cognates(слова общего происхождения, терм.) in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer. They fall into definite semantic groups. 1)terms of kinship: father, mother, son, daughter, brother; 2)words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature: sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood;3)names of animals and birds: bull, cat, crow, goose, wolf; 4) parts of the human body: arm, ear, eye, foot, heart. Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear, come, sit, stand. The adjectives denote concrete physi­cal properties: hard, quick, slaw, red, white..

The Common Germanic words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic. There are many semantic groups. The nouns are summer, winter, storm, rain, ice, ground, bridge, house, shop. The verbs are bake, burn, buy, drive, hear, keep. The adjectives are broad, dead, deaf, deep. Together with the words of the common Indo-European stock Common Germanic words form the bulk of speech. They are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and often polysemantic.

About 70°/ of the English vocabulary consist of loan words and only 30°/o of the words are native. It is due to specif­ic conditions of the English language development. The Roman invasion, the introduction of Christianity, the Danish and Norman conquests caused important changes in the vocabulary.

The term “source of borrowing ” should be distinguished from the term origin of borrowing”. The first should be applied to the language from which the loan word was taken into English. The second, on the other hand, refers to the language to which the word may be traced.

Sources of borrowing in English

Alongside loan words proper, we distinguish translation loans and semantic loans. Translation loans are words formed from the material already existing in the British language but according to patterns taken from another language, by way of morpheme-for –morpheme translation, e.g. wall newspaper- cmeнная газета.

The term “semantic loan ” is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language. The English word pioneer meant ‘explorer’ and ‘one who is among the first in new fields of activity’

Assimilation of loans

The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system. The degree of assimilation depends upon the length of the period of usage of the word in the receiving language, its importance for communication purpose and its frequency. Oral borrow­ings are assimilated more completely and more rapidly than borrowings through written speech.

A classification of loan words according to the degree of assimilation is general as no proper criteria have been developed. There are 3 groups: 1)com­pletely assimilated loan words; 2)partially assimi­lated loan words and 3)unassimilated loan words or barbarisms.

1)completely assimilated words are found in all the layers of older borrowings. They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e.g. cheese, street, wall or wine. Among Scandinavian loan words there are such nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing. Com­pletely assimilated French words are numerous: chair, face and figure, finish and matter.

2)partially assimilated words can be non-assimilated phonetically: prestige, regime, memoir and grammatically: crisis-crises, formula-formulae, phenomenon-phenomena.

3) unassimilated loan words or barbarisms: hos d`oeuvres.

Etymological doublets are words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage. Sometimes these words were originally been dialectal variants of the same word: shirt-skirt come of the same root, but shirt – a native word, while skirt – a Scandinavian borrowing; canal (latin)- channel (French). Some words were borrowed from the same language twice at different periods: cavalry (Norm. French) - chivalry (French); Ther are even tpiplets: hospita l(Latin)- hostel (Norman)- hotel (French); to capture (Latin)- to catch (Norman)- to chase (French).

LECTURE VI