Doublet (linguistics)

In etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins (or possibly triplets, etc.) when they have the same etymological root but have entered the language through different routes. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage.

Etymological twins are usually a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved.

e.g. warranty (гарантия) and guarantee.

Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language (usually Latin and some other Romance language). In many cases involving Indo-European languages, words such as beef and cow, the one Germanic the other Romance, actually do share the same proto-Indo-European root. The forward linguistic path also reflects cultural and historical transactions; often the name of an animal comes from Germanic while the name of its cooked meat comes from Romance. Since English is unusual in that it borrowed heavily from two distinct branches of the same linguistic family tree, it has a relatively high number of this latter type of etymological twin.

Examples in English include:

ü shirt and skirt (both Germanic, the latter from Old Norse)

ü chief and chef (both from French at different times)

ü secure and sure (from Latin, the latter via French)

ü plant and clan (from Latin, the latter via Old Irish)

ü right, rich, raj (господство), regalia, reign and real (from Germanic, Celtic, Sanskrit, Latin, French and Portuguese cognates respectively)

ü ward and guard (from Germanic, the latter via French); also warden and guardian.

Sometimes etymological doublets are the result of borrowing different grammatical forms of the same word, e.g. the Comparative degree of Latin «super» was «superior» which was borrowed into English with the meaning «high in some quality or rank». The Superlative degree (Latin «supremus»)in English «supreme» with the meaning «outstanding», «prominent». So «superior» and «supreme» are etymological doublets.

21, The layers of Latin borrowings in English. Their influence on the system of English W-building

Among words of Romanic origin borrowed from Latin during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as: street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. These borrowings are usually called classical borrowings. Here belong Latin words: alter, cross, dean, and Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem.

Latin and Greek borrowings appeared in English during the Middle English period due to the Great Revival of Learning. These are mostly scientific words because Latin was the language of science at the time. These words were not used as frequently as the words of the Old English period, therefore some of them were partly assimilated grammatically, e.g. formula - formulae. Here also belong such words as: memorandum, minimum, maximum, veto etc.

Classical borrowings continue to appear in Modern English as well. Mostly they are words formed with the help of Latin and Greek morphemes. There are quite a lot of them in medicine (appendicitis, aspirin), in chemistry (acid, valency, alkali), in technique (engine, antenna, biplane, airdrome), in politics (socialism, militarism), names of sciences (zoology, physics). In philology most of terms are of Greek origin (homonym, archaism, lexicography).

22.The Norman conquest and its impact on English

The largest group of borrowings are French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman conquest. French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by French scribes. As it was difficult for French scribes to copy English texts they substituted the letter «u» before «v», «m», «n» and the digraph «th» by the letter «o» to escape the combination of many vertical lines. The were also some phonetical changes/

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