English etymology

1q- The problems of Eng etymology

2q- The native component

3q- The borrowed component

4q- Problems of borrowings

a- Causes

b- Criteria

c- Types

5q- Assimilation as a result of a pressure of a native component

1- The word “Etymology” = etymol (true) and logos (learning). E. reveals word origin and through it represents all language sources of a studied tongue, explains many peculiarities in a structure of a vocabulary, ways of its development etc. Statistics show that modern Eng vocabulary is peredoxicaly disproposial. The native component runs to 30% where is the borrowed component comes to 70%. But the native comp thanks to its powerful properties serves as a nominative basis of a vocabulary. Borrowings in their turn more adopted into Eng for a most part as a additional units. In the course of development vocabulary endlessly keeps being enriched and changed by new meaning of old words and appears in secondary words. New meaning appear not only in native words but in assimilated borrowings. So we may conclude that the native component is not stable, unchangeable and homogeneus. On the contrary it keeps developing both in number of units thanks to polysemy and word-building as well as number of meanings. There must be the table from p6-7 of the methodics ^_^

2- By the native components we mean words which were not borrowed from other languages but represent the original stock of this particular language. It consists of 3 groups of elements. The interEur element includes words of roots common to al or most of the interEur group, Eng word of this group denote elementary concepts without which no human communication would be possible. A- Family relations. B- Part of a human body. C- Name of some animals. D- Plants, E- Time of day, F- Heavenly bodies, G- Numerous adjectives, H- Numerals (1-100), I- Nouns/Pronouns, J- Numerous verbs. Germanic elements represent words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups are the same. A- Parts of human body, B- Animals, C- Plants, E- Natural phenomena, F- Seasons (autumn is a French word), G- Landscape features, H- Dwelling, furniture, etc

3- The Eng proper element is opposed to the first two groups, these words are specifically Eng having their cogmates in other languages. Native words posses such properties which make them dominant units of nomination. A-They name vitally important fields in human activities (Symantic leadings), B- They are distinguished by high polysemy (many meanings of 1 word), C- Morphemically they are simple words, mostly root words, D- They are characterized by high word-building potential thanks to their morphemic simplicity and semantic importance, E- Stylistically they are neutral words, F- They take part information of phraseological units, G- Its free lexical collocability and unlimited syntactic behavior.

Italian borrowings, the main groups: Trait or financial operation, military terms, connected with art, music, Italian word proper (umbrella, volcano, spaghetti, bandit, vendetta ect). Spanish borrowings, the main groups are: Trait terms, objects of trait, denoting natural phenomena, plants and animals, military terms, Spanish words proper (Mosquito, siesta, ect). Dutch borrowings: mostly ship-building and painting. Russian borrowings: in the 60-80 connected with the Moscow traits and the second period denotes the words of the period of socialism. Others in methodics.

The causes of Borrowings. Borrowing can be accounted for some social and linguistic causes: Historical and Linguistic groups. The main emphasis is made in the middle period.

Historical borrowings. When to nations come into close contact certain borrowings are imminent. Years of wars or peace. The number and character of borrowings not only depend on the historical conditions, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The close the languages the greater the influence.

As for the Linguistics courses a re very sided. Sometimes a word in borrowed to fill a gap in the vocabulary which lacks such words. In other cases the word is borrowed because it represents the same notion in some new aspects, supplies a new shade of meaning or a different emotional coloring. And this type of borrowings enriches new types of synonymes.

There is a group of accidental or blind borrowings which appear in language for no particular reasons, some of them were soon rejected and forgotten, other change their meaning. Linguistic causes still open to investigation. Borrowings enter the language from two ways: Oral speech and Written speech. Oral b. took place in an early period of the human history. Words borrowed orally are usually short and undergo considerable changes in the act of adoption. Written b. on the contrary preserve their sparring and some peculiarities of their pronunciation and their assimilation is a long process.

Criteria. In some cases the pronunciation of a word, its spelling are the indication of the foreign origin of the word. Second – the morphological structure of the words and its grammatical forms may also betray the character of these words. Third - the lexical meaning of a word. It means that the concept meaning of a word displays that we deal with a foreign word. Sometimes the form of a word and its meaning enable us to tell the source of borrowing.

The types of borrowings. They are divided into:

- Translitteraton. The preservation of spelling with different pronunciation.

- Transcription.

- Translation loads. Being taken into the vocabulary of another language they undergo the process of translation.

- Semantic loads.

- Ethymological doublets. The words originating from the same ethymological source but differing in phonemic shape and meaning. And they may enter the vocabulary by many ways. They may be represented but 2 borrowing from different languages which historically have the same root. They may be borrowed from the same language twice but the different period. Ethymological doublets may consist of the shortened word and from the one which it came (?).

Ethymological triplets are groups of 3 words of common roots. They are rather rare.

International word. They are borrowed by several languages at once. Many of them are Greek or Latin. Besides not only words can be borrowed.

Hybrid words. Borrowed suffix is joined with the native root or reverse. When the word is borrowed only in one of its meanings.

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