Etymological composition of the English vocabulary

Lecture 9. Sociolinguistic dimension of the English vocabulary

Outline

Etymological composition of the English vocabulary

2. " Old" and " young" words

Neutral words and stylistically marked words. Functional styles and registers in the English language

Etymological composition of the English vocabulary

If looked at from a diachronical point of view, the vocabulary of any language, including English, is not a finite set of elements, but an adaptive, ever-changing system, constantly adjusting itself to the new requirements and conditions of human communication. Every speaker is consciously making a choice among the existing lexical elements to express his intended meaning, or, failing that, borrows a foreign word or coins a new one, while words no longer needed are gradually restricted in use, and finally drop into disuse altogether.

However, the extent of the language and its vocabulary is so great that it can hardly – except perhaps in the most general way – be studied as one system. There are several interrelated classifications of the English vocabulary that are now in common use. Apart from various morphological classifications dealt with earlier, English words are also classified according to their origin and the sphere of usage (the latter, аs it belongs to the sphere of stylistics rather than lexicology, is treated very briefly here).

The diachronic approach to the English word-stock includes the study of its etymology, i.e. of the origin of words and word-equivalents. According to their origin, all present-day English words can be classified into two groups. The first of these are the native words, which have been part of the English vocabulary ever since the Old English period, or possibly earlier. The other is borrowed words, also known as loan-words, loans, or borrowings, which were taken over from another language at a certain stage in the history of English. Some of the later borrowings are easily recognized as such, as their phonetic form, or their paradigm, or both, are alien to English (e.g. taxi – a native English word NEVER has “i” as the last element). Most borrowed words, however, have beenmodified in phonemic shape, paradigm, spelling, or even meaning, to fit the standards of the English language – which is known as assimilation.

The native words are further subdivided into the common Indo-European stock and Common Germanic stock. The common Indo-European words have parallels in other Indo-European languages like Latin, Russian or French. Here belong words with the most fundamental meanings, as kinship terms (mother, father, etc,); words for natural phenomena (sun, moon, water, etc.); names of animals (wolf, goose, etc.); words for parts of human body and numerals also belong here. Words of Common Germanic stock have parallels in other Germanic languages like German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, but nonein Russian or French or Latin. Here belong: summer, winter, house, shirt, etc. Although the native words are not too numerous in Modern English, they are the most frequently used words: among the 500 most frequent English words listed byThorndike and Lodge, there are no less than 80 per cent native words.

On the other hand, a general count of the English words shows that only 30 per cent of these are native words at present. These are, however, probably the most important 30 per cent of the English word-stock, since they include: 1) most prepositions and conjunctions; 2) all the numerals except second, dozen and million; 3) all the auxiliary and modal verbs; 4) all the irregular verbs; 5) all nouns and adjectives with ablaut forms in the paradigm (mouse – mice, good – better – best); 6) all the pronouns except they and them (Old Norse); 7) almost all monosyllabic words expressing vital notions (whether nouns, adjectives or verbs); 8) all names of colours except blue (Old French).

The process of borrowing words has been veryactive in English since the earliest of times. Words from almost any civilized language of Europe, Asia and Africa, and even a few exotic ones, have found their way into English. Most borrowings, however, came from French, Latin or Greek, which account for 60 per cent out of a total of 70 per cent borrowed words in English.

The earliest borrowings came from Latin, dating back to the first contacts of the Germanic tribes with Romans. Those were the names of foods (cheese), fruit and vegetables (plum, pear, pepper), other words connected with cooking (cup, kitchen). The borrowing of mill, port and wine also dates back to this period.

Later, when Germanic tribes came to settle in Britain, they borrowed both native Celtic words and, through Christian missionaries, Latin words connected with religion (priest, bishop, monk, etc.).

The period between Vlll^th and XI^th centuries was perhaps the stormiest in the English history. Repeated Scandinavian invasions and, later, a French invasion brought about a massive influx of Scandinavian and French (actually Norman-French) words. Some of the Scandinavian borrowings of this period are easily recognized by the initial sk combinations: sky, skill, skin, skirt. They are mostly words connected with everyday activities: call, take, cast, low, weak. Norman-French words, on the other hand, are those connected with politics (state, government, parliament), law (court, judge), war (army, enemy, officer), education (pupil, lesson, library).

Renaissance period brought Latin and Greek words to English soil. Unlike earlier borrowings, they were mostly abstract words (major, minor, intelligent) or scientific terms (status, phenomenon, philosophy). Numerous French borrowings of this period came from the Parisian dialect, and so look and sound rather different from the earlier Norman-French borrowings: regime, routine, police, machine, ballet, etc.

Borrowings from other languages (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.) also date back to this and later periods. They mostly served to fill the gaps in the vocabulary (as Italian musical terms, or potato, tomato and tobacco borrowed from Spanish), but have never been very numerous.

Borrowings may be classified according to their type or decree of assimilation, and/or the source of borrowing. They can also be subdivided into direct and indirect borrowings. Direct borrowings are actual words adopted from aforeign language: river (Fr. riviere), umbrella (It. ombrella), etc. Indirect borrowings are further subdivided into 1) translation loans, or loan translations, and 2) semantic borrowings. Translation loans are words built up from the English material but according to a pattern set by a foreign language. In other words, they are word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translations of foreign words or phrases: world-famous (German weltberü hmt), masterpiece (Germ, Meisterstü ck). In a semantic borrowing, an English word appears to have changed its original meaning due to an influence of a related foreign word. For example, dream meant ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’ in Old English, acquiring its present-day meaning under the influence of the Scandinavian draumr. Bread meant ‘a loaf or piece of bread’; its present meaning is due to the influence of Scottish brauđ.

According to their degree of assimilation, borrowed words may be classified into denizens, aliens and barbarisms. Denizens are completely assimilated words, fully conforming to the standards and rules of the English language. They do not differ in any way – whether phonetically, graphically, semantically or grammatically – from native words. Examples are: street, wall, wine, ass, belonging to the earliest Latin borrowings. Aliens, or partly assimilated words, are the borrowings which still preserve some of their native features. They keep either their original spelling, or foreign pronunciation, or stress, or semantic/grammatical peculiarities. Thus distance and development still keep their French suffixes, skin, ski, skirt and sky the Scandinavian initial sk, police and regime their French stress onthe last syllable, criterion and phenomenon their Latin plurals – criteria and phenomena respectively. Finally, barbarisms are veryrecent borrowings which preserve all the features of the language they come from, as French adieu or Italian ciao.

Even if a word is fully assimilated, there are some telltale details giving away its foreign origin. Thus, words with [v], [ʤ ], or [ʒ ] in an initial position are not of English stock: vacuum (Lat,), valley (Fr.), voivode (Russ,), vanilla (Sp,), gem (Lat.), jewel (Fr.), genre (Fr.); ph and kh in spelling, ch pronounced as [ʃ ] (Fr.) or [k] (Gr.) also give borrowed words away.

Apart from denoting objects and phenomena alien to Britain, borrowed words dominate in the spheres of so-called learned words and terminology. In fact, the whole opposition of formal and informal words seems to be based on a deeper opposition of native and foreign, and many neutral English words pair off with correlates of either Latin or French origin (sometimes both): motherly – maternal, childish – infantile, handy – manual, sunny – solar, toothy – dental, nosy – nasal. In many cases the meanings of correlated words so far apart that they can hardly be considered synonyms.

2." Old" and " young" words

Language is linked to the world outside it by a process specialists in computers call " feedback". Thousands of individual innovations are made by individual speakers daily – but whether they survive or not depends on the other speakers approval, or lack of it. Only those variations which have proved useful are allowed to stay in the vocabulary in order to enrich it. In most cases, these are connected with new objects and phenomena which are constantly entering our lives. Sometimes, too, a word is deliberately created as a name for something new – or a more expressive way to define an existing object.

Phenomena to be so named range all the way from new forms of social relations (Soviets) and important technical and scientific achievements (A-bomb) to fashions in dancing (lambada) or dress (mini-skirt). Newly-coined words naming these phenomena are known as neologisms. (The term also includes words borrowed from other languages, or words with extended meaning for new phenomena.)

Neologisms are often formed in ways that are themselves an innovation to the morphological system of the language: conversion of verbs with postpositions (teach-in, hold-up), abbreviation and acronyms (laser, radar), blending (workaholic, bookaholic), semi-suffixes (trigger-happy).

Neologisms should not be confused with nonce-words, or contextual words, which are often coined by individual authors " for the nonce", and hardly ever go beyond the context of their original use. Sometimes, however, what started аs a nonce-word may develop into a neologism and thus become established in the language. This often happens when an idea that seems fantastic is implemented in real life, as robots or spaceships. (Robot was coined in 1926 by the Czech SF writer Karel Č apek, on the basis of the Czech robotnic, meaning a slave.) Some of the neologisms are short-lived, dropping out of active use and becoming obsolete together with the fashion or political system that brought them into life. Others become established in the language after a while, and are no longer treated or felt as innovations.

Neologisms can be contrasted with words that have dropped out of use altogether (obsolete words), have been replaced by synonyms but are still recognized by speakers (archaic words), or name objects no longer used or existing (historical words). Archaic words like damsel (= a young lady), perchance or mayhap (both replaced by perhaps), and historical words battering ram or crossbow, are to be found in old-fashioned poetry (or imitations thereof), or historical novels, in a number of cases, historical words are brought back into active use, either with anew meaning (as the Russian вратарь, which changed from a door-keeper into a goal-keeper), or with the old meaning (as is the case with the crossbow, now ratherpopular among amateur hunters and sportsmen).