Native Element in the English Vocabulary

Native Element in the English Vocabulary: Characteristic Features

n high frequency value: 80% of the 500 most frequent words;

n monosyllabic structure: eye, red, head, sun, door, help etc.;

n a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency: to raise / bend / bow / shake / bury one’s head; clear / cool / level head; above one’s head; in one’s head etc.;

n developed polysemy: head (n.): 1) the part of the body; 2) the mind or brain; 3) ability; 4) a leader; 5) side of the coin etc.;

n great word-building power: headed, heading, headache, header, headline, to behead etc;

n enter a number of set expressions: heads or tails; head over heels, to keep one’s head above water, from head to toe etc.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary

Words of Indo-European stock have cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages:

• terms of kinship: mother, father, son, brother, daughter etc.;
• parts of the human body: foot, nose, eye, heart etc.;
• names of animals and birds: bull, swine, goose, fish, wolf, cat etc;
• names of plants: tree, birch, corn etc.;
• names of celestial bodies: sun, star, moon etc.;
• calendar terms: day, year, month etc.;
• names of domestic objects: home, house, door, stool, floor etc.;
• common verbs: be, go, do, have, see, sit, think, help, love, kiss, drink, bear, eat, ask etc.;
• common adjectives: hard, slow, wide, long, dark, red, white etc.;
• numerals: one, two, three … hundred;
• pronouns: I, my, that etc.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary

Words of Common Germanic stock have cognates only in other Germanic languages, e.g. Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc. Their areal distribution reflects the contacts between the Germanic tribes at the beginning of their migration:

n common nouns: hand, sand, earth, sheep, fox, bath, child, winter, rain, ice, house, life, bridge, rest etc.;

n common verbs: make, starve, sing, come, send, learn, can, buy, drive, burn, bake, keep, meet etc.;

n common adjectives: green, brown, cold, dead, deaf, deep, damp, thick, high, old, small etc.;

n adverbs: behind, much, still, well, yet etc.;

n pronouns: we, he, you, it, self etc.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary

Words of proper English stock do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages:

n words whose roots have not been found outside English, e.g. bird;

n compounds and derived words formed from the Germanic roots in England, e.g.

woman (O.E. wifman) < wife + man;

lord (O.E. hlāford) < loaf + weard (‘keeper’);

lady (O.E. hlāfdiʒe) < loaf + knead (‘bread-kneading’); sheriff (O.E. scirʒerefa ‘chief of the shire’).

Borrowed Element
in the English Vocabulary

n The O.E. vocabulary was almost entirely Germanic and on the whole was highly resistant to borrowings.

n The English vocabulary of the 17th c. contained words derived from no less than 50 world languages.

n Over 120 languages are on record as sources of Modern English vocabulary.

Borrowed Element
in the English Vocabulary

Motivation for borrowing a word:

n to fill a gap in the vocabulary, e.g. butter (Latin), yogurt (Turkish), whisky (Scottish Gaelic), tomato (Nahuatl /’na: watl/ - the Aztec language), sauna (/’so:nə/ Finnish) etc.;

n to represent the same concept in a new aspect, supplying a new shade of meaning or a different emotional colouring, e.g. cordial (Latin), a desire (French), to admire (Latin) etc.;

n prestige, e.g. picture, courage, army, treasure, language, female, face, fool, beef (Norman French);in many cases these fashionable words simply displaced their native English equivalents, which dropped out of use.

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 term type of assimilation refers to the changes an adopted word may undergo:

n phonetic assimilation;

n graphical assimilation;

n grammatical assimilation;

n semantic assimilation.

The degree of assimilation depends upon the period of time during which the word has been used in the receiving language, its communicative importance and frequency:

n completely assimilated loans;

n partially assimilated loans;

n non-assimilated loans (barbarisms).

Поиск по сайту: