Etymological survey of the English lexicon

The term “etymology” comes from Greek and it means the study of the earlist forms of the word. Now etymology studies both: the form and the meaning of borrowed and native words. In every modern language there are native and borrowed words.

1 – native words (30 %); 2 – borrowed words /loans (70 %). Typical features of native words: 1 – they mean trivial notions; 2 – they have monosyllabic character; 3 – high frequency (Zipth’s law – the shorter the word is the more frequently it is used); 4 – polysemantic character; 5 – great word-building power (derivatives & compounds); 6 – high combinability (make set expressions); 7 – they are stylistically neutral in different speech styles. The term “borrowing” may mean the process of borrowing and the result of the process-the word itself. The term source of borrowing means the language which from the word was taking into English. History of borrowings: 1 – Roman invasion; 2 – introduction of Christianity; 3 – the Danish & Scandinavian invasions; 4 – Norman Conquest; 5 – Italian Renaissance; 6 – British colonialism; 7 – modern borrowings. Types of borrowing: 1) the original l-ge (where a word was born); 2) the source (donor) l-ge – from which it was taken. Sources of borrowing: 1) from other l-ges (from Latin, French, Greek, Hindi); 2) from dialects of the same l-ge (London dialect became superior for economical & political reasons). The main linguistic reason are the following: 1.) a gap in vocabulary. EG: potato, tomato were borrowed from Spanish, when these vegetables were brought to the British island. So, the word were borrowed together with notions which they denoted. 2.) To present the same notion in a new aspect, from a different point of view. EG: The French word “to adore” was added to native words “to like” and “to love”, to denote the strongest degree of the process.

The classification of English borrowings includes more than ten groups. The main groups of borrowing are:

- the three layers of dating borrowing- borrowings from French- borrowing from Scandinavian

Translation-loan(s) (калька) – are borrowings which are made up by means of literally translating words and word combinations. EG: from the Russian language: пятилетка – five-year plan.

Doublets are words which have the same origin but they are different in phonetic shape and in meaning. EG: the word “shirt” is a native one. “skirt” was borrowed from Scandinavian. (одежда)

International words are the words, which borrowed by several language, among international words are names of sciences (phonetic, political terms, sports, name of fruits, foods)

Here is a very brief list of examples of Norman French borrowings. Administrative words: state, council, power. Legal terms: court, crime, prison. Military terms: army, war, battle, Educational terms: pupil, lesson, pen, pencil.

Loans: 1) translation loans (wall newspaper – стенная газета); 2) semantic loans (the development of a new meaning due to the influence of another from Russian l-ge). Assimilation of loans conformation to the standards of the receiving l-ge: 1) completely assimilated (complete phonetical, graphical, morphological & semantic assimilation): - Latin borrowings (cheese, animal, wall); - Scand. (husband, fellow); - French (table, chair, face) 2) partially assimilated: - not assimilated semantically (they denote notions peculiar to that country – sheik, toreador); - grammatically (crisis – crises); - phonetically (machine, police, prestige); - graphically (ballet, buffet); 3) barbarisms (non – assimilated) – words from other l-ges used by English people in conversation or writing – Italian “addio”. Etymological douplets – have the same meaning but different etymology & used in different styles (bookish & colloquial) – to start & to commence.

4 Types of word meaning. Word meaning & motivation

Meaning – the reflection of an object, phenomenon, relations in a lg. According to the aspect relation of a word to the components of the situation where it is used:

Referential meaning - determined by the relation of linguistic sign to the referent in the material world

Significative meaning - determined by the relation of a linguistic sign to its user, the speaker’s intention

Differential (systematic) meaning - determined by the relation of the given linguistic sign to other signs in the language system of speech

Another typology is based on the conception of word meaning as specific structure:

Part-of-speech meaning (functional) 1Grammatical — may be defined as the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, e.g., the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked, etc.) or the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns (girl’s, boy’s, night’s, etc.) 2Lexical — may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word. E.g. the word-forms go, goes, went, going, gone possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement.

Denotational (reference of a word or other lexical unit to individual object or concept) REVEALED IN THE DICTIONARY DEFINITION

CONNOTATIONAL (includes ideas or emotions)

vEmotional implications (personal, studied by pragmatics)

vEmotive charge (may be inherent in word meaning or created by prefixes and suffixes)

Stylistic reference (refers the word to a certain style register (neutral, colloquial, literary) Motivation – a direct connection between the structure of the word & its meaning. Morphological motivation implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word. The degree of morphological motivation may be different varying from the extreme of complete motivation to lack of motivation. Phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its meaning. Phonetical motivation is not universally recognised in modern linguistic science. It is argued that speech sounds may suggest spatial and visual dimensions, shape, size, etc. Experiments carried out by a group of linguists showed that back open vowels are suggestive of big size, heavy weight, dark colour, etc.

Semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the central and marginal meanings of the word. This connection may be regarded as a metaphoric extension of the central meaning based on the similarity of different classes of referents denoted by the word.

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