Some Basic Assumption

VI. Etymological Survey of the English Word-Stock

The most characteristic feature of English is usually said to be its mixed character. Many linguists consider foreign influence, especially that of French, to be the most important factor in the history of English. This wide-spread viewpoint is supported only by the evidence of the English word-stock, as its grammar and phonetic system are very stable and net easily influenced by other languages. While it is altogether wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a whole, the composite nature of the English vocabulary cannot be denied.

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.

1. In linguistic literature the term n a t i v e is conventionally used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes— the Angles, the-Saxons and the Jutes. Practically, however, the term is often applied to words whose origin cannot be traced 10 any other language. Thus, the word path is classified as native just because its origin has not yet been established with any degree of certainty. It is possible to conjecture that further progress of linguistic science may throw some light upon its ori-gin and it may prove to have been borrowed at some earlier period. It is for this reason that Professor A. I. Smirnitsky relying on the earliest manuscripts of the English language available suggested another interpretation of the term n a t i v e— as words which may be presumed to have existed in the English word-stock of the 7th century. This interpretation may have somewhat more reliable criteria behind it, but it seems to have the same drawback— both viewpoints present the native element in English as static.

In this book we shall proceed from a different understanding of the term native as comprising not only the ancient Anglo-Saxon core but also words coined later on their basis by means of various processes operative in English.

2. The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself. It has already been stated that not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English (as is the case with -able, -ment, -ity, etc.).[1] It must be mentioned that

some word-groups, too, were borrowed in their foreign form (e.g. coup d'etat, vis-a-vis).

In its second meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in a wider sense. It is extended onto the so-called translation-loans (or loan-translations) and semantic borrow-'ing. Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the material available in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e. g. mother tongue<L. lingua materna; it goes without saying <fr. cela va sans dire; wall newspaper <Russ.cmeH.za3emct). Semantic borrowing is the appearance of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g. the word propaganda and reaction acquired their political meanings under the influence of French, deviation and bureau entered political vocabulary, as-in right and left deviations, Political bureau, under the influence of Russian).

Further on we shall use the term b o r r o w i n g in its second meaning, as a borrowing proper or a word taken over in its material form. Distinction should be made between true borrowings and words formed out of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek, e.g. telephone, phonogram. Such words were never part of Latin or Greek and they do not reflect any contacts with the peoples speaking those languages.

It is of importance to note that the term borrowing belongs to diachronic description of the word-stock. Thus the words wine, cheap, pound introduced by the Romans into all Germanic dialects long before the Angles and (he Saxons settled on the British Isles, and such late Latin loans as alibi, memorandum, stratum may all be referred to borrowings from the same language in describing their origin, though in modern English they constitute distinctly different groups of words.

3. There is also certain confusion between the terms source of borrowings and origin of the word. This confusion may be seen in contradictory marking of one and the same word as, say, a French borrowing in one dictionary and Latin borrowing in another. It is suggested here that the term source of borrowing should be applied to the language from which this or that particular word was taken into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowings we point out their source but not their origin. The term origin o f the word should be applied to the language the word may be traced to. Thus, the French borrowing table is Latin by origin (L, tabula), the Latin borrowing school came into Latin from the Greek language (Gr. schole), so it may be described as Greek by origin.

It should be remembered, however, that whereas the immediate source of borrowing is as a rule known and can be stated with some certainty, the actual origin of the word may be rather doubtful. For example, the word ink was borrowed from Old French, but it may be traced back to Latin and still further to Greek (cf. Gr. K aio)-and it is quite possible that it was borrowed into Greek from some other language.

The immediate source of borrowing is naturally of greater importance for language students because it reveals the extra-linguistic factors respon-

sible for the act of borrowing, and also because the borrowed words bear, as a rule, the imprint of the sound and graphic form, the morphological and semantic structure characteristic of the language they were borrowed from.

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