Download ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS

THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS
Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being
homogeneous. According to their origin English words may be subdivided into
two main sets. The elements of one are native words, the elements of the other
are borrowed words.
The borrowed stock of words is considerably larger than the native stock of
words. In fact native words comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the
English vocabulary, but the native words form the bulk of the most frequent words
actually used in speech and writing . Besides the native words have a wider range
of lexical and grammatical valency, they are highly polysemantic and productive
in forming word clusters and set expressions.
A native word is a word which belongs to the original English word stock, as
known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. In
linguistic literature the term ‘native’ 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 to 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. Professor A.I.Smirnitsky
relying on the earliest manuscripts of the English language suggested another
interpretation of the term native – as words which may be presumed to have existed
in the English word-stock of the 7th century. Thus 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.
The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting
words from other languages and also the result of this process in the language
material itself.
A borrowed word or a borrowing is a word taken over from another language and
modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the
standards of the English language.
Words of Native Origin
Diachronically native words are subdivided into three main groups.
1. Words of the Indo-European origin. Indo-European elements are meant
words of roots common to all or most languages of the Indo-European group.
English words of this group denote elemantary concepts without which no
human communication would be possible and express the most vital, important
and frequently used concepts.
The following semantic groups can be identified:
- family relations (kinship terms), e.g. father, mother, son, daughter, brother;
—words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature, e.g.
sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood, hill, stone;
—names of animals and plants, e.g. goose, wolf, cow, swine, corn, tree, birch;
—words denoting parts of the human body, e.g. ear, tooth, eye, foot, heart,
lip; nose;
—words naming concrete physical properties and qualities (including some
adjectives denoting colour), e.g. hard, quick, slow, red, white, new;
—numerals from one to a hundred,
—- pronouns' (personal, demonstrative, interrogative), e.g. /, you, he, my,
that, who;(except the personal pronoun they which is a Scandinavian
borrowing)
—some of the most frequent verbs, e.g. hear, do, be, sit, eat, know, stand
and others.
2. Words of Common Germanic origin
The Common Germanic stock includes words having parallels in German,
Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic.
It contains a great number of semantic groups some of which are the
same as in the Indo-European group of native words:
—nouns denoting parts of the human body, e.g. head, hand, arm, bone, finger;
—nouns denoting periods of time (seasons of the year), e.g. summer, winter,
spring, time, week; (autumn is a French borrowing).
—words naming natural phenomena, e.g. storm, rain, flood, ice, ground,
sea, frost, earth;
—words denoting artefacts and materials, (human dwellings and
furniture) e.g. bridge, house, shop, room, coal, iron, lead, cloth;
—words naming different kinds of garment, e.g. hat, shirt, shoe;
—words denoting abstract notions, e.g. care, evil, hope, life, need;
—names of animals, birds and plants, e.g. sheep, horse, fox, crow, bear,
fox, calf, oak, grass;
— landscape features, e.g. sea, land;
—various notional verbs, e.g. bake, burn, buy, drive, hear, keep, learn,
make. meet, rise, see, send, speak, tell, say, answer, give, drink, shoot;
—adjectives, denoting colours, size and other properties, e.g. broad, dead,
deaf, deep. grey, green, white, blue, small, thick, high, old, good;
—adverbs, e.g. down, out, before.
3. English words proper
Engluish words proper do not have cognates in other languages. These
words are few and stand quite alone in the vocabulary system of IndoEuropean
languages,
e.g.
bird,
boy,
girl, lord, lady.
Native words for the most part are characterized by:
1) a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency and high frequency value
(e.g. the verb watch (from OE wseccan) can be used in different sentence
patterns, with or without object and adverbial modifiers and can be combined
with different classes of words:
Do you mind if I watch?
Harriet watched him with interest.
She's a student and has to watch her budget closely. American companies
are watching Japanese developments closely.
I feel like I’т being watched;
2) a developed polysemy (e.g. the noun watch has the following meanings: 'a
small clock to be worn, especially, on the wrist, or carried'; 'the act of
watching'; 'a person or people ordered to watch a place or a person'; 'a fixed
period of duty on a ship, usually lasting four hours'; 'a film or programme
considered in terms of its appeal to the public'; etc.);
3) a great word-building power (e.g. watch is the center of a numerous wordfamily: watch-dog, watcher, watchful, watchfulness, watchword, watchable,
watchfire, etc.);
4) the capacity of forming phraseological units (e.g. watch enters the structure and
forms the semantics of the following phraseological units: to be on the watch, to
keep watch, to watch one's back, to watch one's step).
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 and 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
characteristic of borrowings to be nonmotivated 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 majorities 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 as abundant as it was before. Even more so, English now has
become a «giving» language.
Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:
a) according to the aspect which is borrowed,
b) according to the degree of assimilation (partial or total conformation to the
phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the English language and its
semantic system),
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).
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by
immediate contact between people) and through written speech (through books,
newspapers, etc.). Oral borrowings took place in the early periods of history,
whereas in recent times written borrowings have gained importance. Words
borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo considerable changes during
the act of adoption.
Written borrowings preserve their spelling and peculiarities of their sound form,
their assimilation is a long process.
Borrowings may be direct or indirect, i.e. through another language. Such
languages-intermediaries were, for example, Latin through which many Greek
words came into the English language and French by means of which many Latin
words were borrowed.
Thus, distinction should be made between the term ‘source of borrowing’
and the term ‘origin of borrowing’. The first should be applied to the language
from which the loan word was taken into English. The second refers to the
language to which the word may be traced.
For example, the word paper < Fr papier Lat papyrus<Gr papyrus has French as
its source of borrowing and Greek as its origin.
Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed aspect
Alongside borrowings proper (borrowings proper are words taken over
from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or
meaning according to the standards of the English language), the following groups:
phonetic borrowings, translation borrowings (loans), semantic borrowings,
morphemic borrowings can be distinguished.
I. Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they are called
loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and
meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is
substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases,
the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The
position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the
borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the
borrowed word are also changed.
Such words as labour, travel, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French;
apparatchik, nomenсlaturе, sputnik are phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank,
soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc.
II. Translation loans (borrowings) are word-for-word (or morpheme-formorpheme) translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the
notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical
units, ‘to take the bull by the horns’ (Latin), ‘fair sex’ (French), ‘living space’
(German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the
Old English period, e.g. Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from the
languages of Indians, such as pipe of peace, pale-faced, from German masterpiece,
homesickness, superman.
III. Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit
existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative
languages which have common words with different meaning, e.g. there are
semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning
to live for the word to dwell which in Old English had the meaning to wander. Or
else the meaning дар, подарок for the word gift which in Old English had the
meaning выкуп за жену.
Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into
some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was
borrowed back into English, e.g. brigade was borrowed into Russian and formed
the meaning a working collective, бригада. This meaning was borrowed back into
English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word pioneer
meant explorer and one who is among the first in new fields of activity. Under the
influence of the Russian word пионер it has come to mean a member of the Young
Pioneers’ Organization.
IV. Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the
language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language
into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar
to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we can find a lot of Romanic
affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words –
hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, e.g. goddess,
beautiful etc.
Borrowing plays a very important role in the development of the English
language. Due to this process the English word-stock was replenished by
international words, (i.e. words of identical origin that occur in several languages
as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowing from one ultimate source, )e.g.
antenna, music, radio. International words are often confused with other words
which ultimately come from the same source but have diverged in meaning. Such
words are called ‘false friends’ or ‘false cognates’, e.g. accurate and аккуратный,
conserves and консервы.
Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation
/The term assimilation of borrowing is used to denote a partial or total
conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the
English language and its semantic system/
The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors:
a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to
the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is
assimilated easier,
b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words
borrowed orally are assimilated quicker,
c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its
usage, the quicker it is assimilated,
d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated
it is.
Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly
assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).
I. Completely assimilated borrowed words follow all morphological,
phonetical and orthographic standards. They take an active part in word-formation.
The morphological structure and motivation of completely assimilated borrowings
remain usually transparent, so that they are morphologically analyzable and
therefore supply the English vocabulary not only with free forms but also with
bound forms, as affixes are easily perceived and separated in series of borrowed
words that contain them (e.g. the French suffixes -age, -ance and –ment).
Completely assimilated words are found in all the layers of older borrowings,
e.g. cheese (the word of the first layer of Latin borrowings), husband (Scand), face
(Fr), animal (the Latin word borrowed during the Revival of Learning - R.of
L.Возрождение, Ренессанс /о литературе/).
It is important to mention that a loan word never brings into the receiving
language the whole of its semantic structure if it is polysemantic in the original
language.
And even the borrowed variants may change and become specialized in the new
system. For example, the word sport had a much wider scope in Old French
denoting pleasures, making merry and entertainments in general. Being borrowed
into Middle English in this character, it gradually acquired the meaning of outdoor
games and exercise. Russian borrowing sputnik is used in English only in one of its
meanings.
II. Partially assimilated borrowed words may be subdivided into the
following groups:
a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and
notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed,
e.g. sari, sombrero, toreador, shah, pilau, taiga, kvass etc.
b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g.nouns borrowed from Latin or
Greek have kept their original plural forms: crisis – crises, phenomenon –
phenomen, datum – data etc.,
c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial
sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are
used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss-lose,
life-live).
Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of
consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc. (
in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph /sh/,
e.g.shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get,
give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization, e.g. German, child.
Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, e.g.
police, machine, cartoon. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of
sounds, e.g. /a:/ in the words: camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the
combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard; d) borrowings can
be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greak borrowings /y/ can be spelled in the
middle of the word (symbol, synonym). /ph/ denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme,
morpheme), /ch/ denotes the sound /k/ (chemistry, chaos), /ps/ denotes the sound
/s/ (psychology). French borrowings that came into English after 1650 retain
spelling in which the final consonant is not pronounced: ballet, buffet. Some may
keep a diacritic mark: cafe`, cliche`. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou,
etc.)may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche.
III. Unassimilated borrowing or barbarisms
This group includes words from other languages used by English people in
conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are
corresponding English equivalents, e.g. Italian addio, ciao – ‘good-bye’. The
changes a borrowed word has had to undergo depending on the date of its
penetration are the main cause for the existence of the so-called etymological
doublets. Etymological doublets are two or more words originating from the same
etymological source, bur differing in phonetic shape and meaning. For example,
the words whole (originally meant ‘healthy’, ‘free from disease’) and hale both
come from OE hal: one by the normal development of OE a into o, the other from
a northern dialect in which this modification did not take place. Only the latter
/hale/ has survived in its original meaning.