Etymology. What makes it important for contemporary Lex. The role and place of borrowings in e

The etymology of a word refers to its origin and the historical roots of the term as a linguistic form. Etymology, in general, is the theory and study of the origins and history of linguistic form., it’s a science of true sense of a w, studies the origin? history and changes in the mng of the w.Studies the following problems: 1) native ws and borrowings 2) assimilation? its types and degrees 3) ways of enriching E w-stock. To comprehend the nature of the English vocabulary and its histori­cal development it is necessary to examine the etymology of its differ­ent layers, the historical causes of their appearance, their volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed elements in replenishing the English vocabulary. Before embarking upon a descrip­tion of the English word-stock from this point of view we must make-special mention of some terms Borrowings Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically. English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries, that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion, the adoption of Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings are fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.

English continues to take in foreign words, but now the quantity of borrowings is not so abundunt as it was before. All the more so, English now has become a «giving» language, it has become Lingva franca of the twentieth century.

Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:

a) according to the aspect which is borrowed,

b) according to the degree of assimilation,

c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed.

(In this classification only the main languages from which words were borrowed into English are described, such as Latin, French, Italian. Spanish, German and Russian.)

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