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The etymological structure of the English vocabulary
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. 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. ROMANIC BORROWINGS. Latin borrowings: 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). 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. 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)
Phraseology. Principals of classification of phraseological units.
Lexicology – is that branch of linguistics which is concerned with the study of words. Lexicology studies meaning and making words, their ways and manners, where they come from, their appearance in the language. As a branch of linguistics, lexicology has four subbranches: 1. semantics or semasiology; 2. etymology; 3. phraseology; 4. lexicography. Phraseology – subbranch, which studies sat expressions and stock phrases. Phraseology is a new linguistics science. Its basic principles were given by academician Vinogradov in the Russian language, which may be also taken in English language. Phraseological expressions may be divided into: 1. ph. combinations; 2. ph. unities; 3. ph. phusions and idioms. Ph. combination (to make a report, to deliver a speech, to take a look) is rather free and not strictly, stable. We may change it a little bit. It does not present a semantic unit. Elements of such expressions are, to a certain degree, independent. We may substitute one part of ph. combination by synonyms. For ex: to deliver a speech, to make a speech, to have a look, to take a look, задеть чувство гордости, затронуть чувство гордости. But these expressions are limited in their combinative power. For ex: to make a report but not to do a report, обдать холодом но не обдать восхищением. Ph. unities (to play the first fiddle, to take the bull by his horns, to skate on thin ice = to risk. In ph. unities, the meaning of the words whole expression differs from the meaning of the words of the group, because it has the figurative meaning. In ph. unities, we may have a homonym. Here we cannot substitute the elements and we cannot change them. Thought it is very difficult, but we can get the meaning of the whole expression. For ex: положить зубы на полку = голодать. Ph. phusions and idioms present the most stable and very complicated relations between the elements. For ex: to show the white feather = струсить, to pull one’s leg = насмехаться, to get a bird = уволить. Ph. phusions form a semantic unit and usually they are equivalents to a word. For ex: to pull one’s leg = to mock. The meaning of an idiom doesn’t grow out of the meanings of the words it consists of. Not a single element may be replaced. Idioms can’t be separated from the point of the syntax. Idioms have no homonyms. It’s necessary to look up the meaning of idioms in the dictionary, otherwise it is impossible to understand them or we must know the history of phusions. Idioms may be taken from different spheres of human activity –history, literature, mythology. Idioms taken from history reflect customs of England. For ex: 1. white elephant = обременительное имущество. A king of England presented a white elephant to that member of the court, whom he wanted to ruin. 2. to carry one’s heart upon one’s sleeve – выставить свои чувства. This expression came from middle ages. The knights had the custom to wear the tokens of their ladies on their sleeves. 3. to ride the high horse = важничать. This expression also came from middle ages, when the distinguished knight rode on high horses. 4. Idioms from literature: to be born with a silver spoon in the mouth = родиться счастливым (from Galthworthy- to “Let”, little John). We also distinguished international idioms, when one and the same notion is expressed by one word in different languages (to burn boat – жечь лодки); when one and the same notion is expressed differently in different languages (to wash dirty linen in public – выносить сор из избы)
Word building. Affixation
Affixation is the formation of new words by means of suffixes and prefixes. Affixes may be grouped 1) according to their linguistic origin. We distinguish affixes of Germanic origin (full, less), of Romanic origin (ion), of Greek origin (ise, izm); 2) according to the parts of speech. We distinguish noun forming, adj. forming and verb forming affixes; 3) according to semantic functions. They may denote persons, quality, negation. Many suffixes originated from separate words: hood originated for the noun hood, which meant state or condition; full – полный (adj. In O.E) now it is suffix. Suffixes may change the part of speech: critic (al). All suffixes are divided into lexical and grammatical. Lexical suffixes build new word. For ex: read-readable, happy-happiness, act-actor. Grammatical suffixes change the grammatical form of a word. For ex: finish-finished, say-says, rose-roses. Very often grammatical suffixes fulfill the function of lexical suffixes. Such phenomenon is called lexicolization. For ex: color – colors – знамена; work – works – завод. Suffixes are productive and unproductive. Productive – form new word: ful, less, painter, actor. Unproductive – don’t do it: hood, childhood.
Suffixes: er-a noun-forming suffix, productive, of Germanic origin, denotes persons (painter); ism-a noun-forming suffix, productive. It has become almost international. It forms abstract nouns, denote theory, political doctrine, movement in art; ful-adj-formation suffix, productive, of Germanic origin, means some quality (beautiful, hopeful); less-adj-formation suffix, productive, of Germanic origin, meaning free of something (hopeless). Suffixes may be homonyms: ish-an adj- formation suffix, meaning nationality (English), quality in a slight degree (reddish-красноватый), likeness-значение сходства (boyish, womanish).
Prefixes change the meaning of the root of the word. We analyze them from the point of view of their productivity, origin, meaning (re-productive, of Romanic origin, meaning-again; pre- productive, of Romanic origin, means-before (prewar); post- productive, of Romanic origin, means-after (postwar).
Word building. Conversion
Conversion is such a phenomena in modern English, when two or more words belong to different part of speech and posses the same form (to smile-a smile, fall-to fall). Conversion may be the result of shading of English endings. This shedding has made it possible to use a great many words in functions of different part of speech without any change of the form. The historical changes may be briefly outlined as follows: in O.E. a verb and a noun of the same root were distinguished by their endings. For ex: the verb ‘to love’ had a form (o.e.) ‘lufian’. This verb had personal conjunctions. The noun ‘love’ had the form ‘lufu’ with different case endings. But in the course of time, the personal and case endings were lost. Then there were some changes with vowels. UA in 17 century (great vowel shift) and as a result of such historical changes we have 1 form for a noun and for a verb.
One should guard against thinking that every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. There are numerous pairs of words (e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc.) which did, not occur due to conversion but coincided as a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems) when before that they had different forms (e. g. O. E. lufu, n. — lufian, v.). On the other hand, it is quite true that the first cases of conversion (which were registered in the 14th c.) imitated such pairs of words as love, n. — to love, v. for they were numerous in the vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as one of the typical language patterns.
The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others.
Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I''ve ever come across. Do — event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go — energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.
Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.
Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion as the following examples show: to down, to out (as in a newspaper heading Diplomatist Outed from Budapest), the ups and downs, the ins and outs, like, n, (as in the like of me and the like of you).
Lexicography. Types of dictionaries
Lexicography is the subbranch of lexicology, which studies different dictionaries. The problem of compiling new dictionaries is a problem of great importance. The richer is a vocabulary, the richer and more developed is the language. The dictionaries should reflect the richness of the language. It should contain all the meanings of the words. The change of the vocabulary is connected with the change of the life of the society. The dictionary should reflect all these changes. There are different types of dictionaries. They are: 1. explanatory or etymological (Webster and Skeat); 2. dictionary of synonyms and antonyms (Апресян); 3. parallel or bilingual (E-R Мюллер; R-E Смирнитский); 4. phonetic by Jones; 5. Phraseological by Кунин. Etymological dictionary learns not only the meaning, but also the usage of the word. The author of the dictionary must know the language perfectly well. When compiling a dictionary it is necessary to take into consideration that the word in one language does not fully correspond to its equivalents in other languages. For ex: to go – идти (человек, дождь, время). It is impossible to use ‘to go’ in all this cases (time flies, it is raining). Usually equivalent of the word corresponds only to one of the meaning, in other cases they are used differently. As a rule, words in the dictionary are arranged in alphabetical order. The catchword is usually given in heavy type. The part of speech to which this word belongs is usually indicated. This is of great importance especially for the English language. In English dictionaries usually pronunciation is given. In Russian dictionaries a stress is given. Sometime the pronunciation is given too. Each dictionary has its own way of showing pronunciation. Usually phonetic signs are explain in preface. The terms are usually indicated to which branch of science they belong. In England, the first English dictionary was published in the beginning of the 17th century (in the 1604). It was a dictionary of so-called hard words-words, difficult to understand. It was compiled by Cawdray. That dictionary comprised words, which were explained in the same language. This dictionary past several editions, but it continued to treat only difficult words. In 1721, The Universal Etymological Dictionary was published. This dictionary was compiled by Johnson. Johnson’s dictionary was based on historical principles and comprised quotations from the books of different writers and had literary illustrations. In the following centuries, a number of lexicographers and writers began to work at the compiling new dictionaries. The result if this great work was the appearance of the Oxford New Dictionary. It was edited by Bradley. It consisted of 123 volumes. It includes pronunciation; it shows parts of speech and etiology of words. The meanings are numbered and lettered. Each meaning of the word is dated and illustrated by some quotations from the works of the best writers (Shakespeare). From this dictionary, we learn when the word came to be used, its exact meaning and so on. We have several abbreviated editions of this dictionary. In 1811 a Concise Oxford Dictionary appeared. It has no quotations from the works of different writers. The words in this dictionary are explained in English. We see the etymology of every word and find some expressions with it. Then a Pocket Oxford dictionary appeared. Now we have 4 editions of this dictionaries. The first edition belongs to July 1924. This Pocket dictionary contains a long preface. It also gives pronunciation of every English word. At the end of this book, the author gives a list of suffixes of different origin and a list of abbreviations. To know not only the meaning of the word we should use Encyclopedia. ‘Britannica’ – dictionary on different branches of science. There are also phonetic dictionaries compiled by Johns. For ex: an English pronouncing dictionary, compiled by Johns. It deals with phonemes. In English, we have a special dictionary by Patridge – dictionary of slang and unconventional English. Only slang and vulgar words are in this dictionary. There are also phraseological dictionary compiled by Кунин. He gives phraseological combinations, unities and phusions in alphabetic order. Art the end of this dictionary we can see an article, where Кунин gives his own point of view on phraseological expressions. He gives intimidiate categories between phraseological combinations and unities. He also gives examples of intimidiate categories between phraseological unities and phusions. He gives such examples of intimidiate category as: it’s raining cats and dogs, to talk through one’s hat (бессмыслица). In this article he says, that there are 3 principal types of idiom classification: 1)grammatical, etymological, semantical or lexical. He gives examples of adjective phrases: (mad as March hair (не в своем уме)); adverbial phrases (on the alert (на страже)); verb phrases (to show the white further (струсить)); noun phrases (blue-devils (уныние).
Homonymy. The origin of Homonyms.
Classification of homonyms
Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning. Traditional classification includes 3 types of homonyms:
1. homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling are traditionally termed homonyms proper (bank – a shore; bank-an institute for receiving, lending, exchanging and safeguarding money; school-косяк рыбы; school - школа).
2. homophones – they are the same in sound but different in spelling (night-knight; piece –peace).
3. homographs – these are words which are the same in spelling but different in sound (bow [bau]-поклон; bow [bэu]-лук; to lead [ li:d] – to conduct on the way, go before to show the way; lead [led] – a heavy, rather soft metal)
Homonyms should be distinguished from polycemantic words, because homonyms – we discuss 2 different forms with their own lexical and semantic structure, polycemantic – only one word (homonyms – 2 different words, polycemantic – 2 different meanings).
Classification:
1. lexical homonyms – differ in lexical meaning only, grammatical meaning is the same (one and the same part of speech)
2. lexico-grammatical homonyms – differ both lexical and grammatical meanings (different parts of speech) Ex: pale, adj – to pale , verb; reading- {Present Participle, gerund, Verbal noun.
3. grammatical homonyms – differ in grammatical meaning only, the lexical meaning is the same (brothers – plural; brother’s – possessive case)
Partial Homonyms –are those one which are the same only in one form of their grammatical paradigm (mine – шахта; mine – possessive noun (first form is my)).
Sources of Homonyms
- phonetic changes which words undergo in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms - Night and knight, to knead (О.Е. cnēdan) and to need (О.Е. nēodian).
- Borrowing is another source of homonyms. Match, n. ("a game; a contest of skill, strength") is native, and match, n. ("a slender short piece of wood used for producing fire") is a French borrowing.
- Word-building
conversion - comb, n. — to comb, v., pale, adj. — to pale, v., to make, v. — make, n. they are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms
Shortening fan, n. in the sense of "an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc." is a shortening produced from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan, n. which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air. The noun rep, n. denoting a kind of fabric (cf. with the R. репс) has three homonyms made by shortening: rep, n. (< repertory), rep, n. (< representative), rep, n. (< reputation)'', all the three are informal words.
- sound-imitation - bang, n. ("a loud, sudden, explosive noise") — bang, n. ("a fringe of hair combed over the forehead"). Also: mew, n. ("the sound a cat makes") — mew, n. ("a sea gull") — mew, n. ("a pen in which poultry is fattened") — mews ("small terraced houses in Central London").
- Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same word when, for some reason, the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type of formation of homonyms is called split polysemy.
board, n. — a long and thin piece of timber
board, n. — daily meals, esp. as provided for pay,
e. g. room and board board, n. — an official group of persons who direct
or supervise some activity, e. g. a board
of directors
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