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The Evolution of
Language:
How Words Are Formed
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Et y mol ogy
noun, plural et·y·mol·o·gies.
1. the beginnings of a word.
Synonyms: word origin, word source, origin.
2. a chronological account of the birth and development
of a word, often showing its spread from one
language to another and its evolving changes in form
and meaning.
Synonyms: word history, historical development.
Etymology of “Etymology”
Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English < Latin etymologia
< Greek etymología, equivalent to etymológ or
studying the true meanings and values of words
(étymo true + lógos word)
So how do words
become...words?
#1: They are created from scratch.
Many of the new words added to the
English language are just created from
scratch – they just appear.
A good example is the word dog. It is
unrelated to any other known word,
which, in the late Middle Ages,
suddenly and mysteriously displaced
the Old English word hound (or hund),
which had been in use for centuries.
Examples: jaw, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, log,
punch, freak, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, bash.
#2: They are adopted or borrowed.
Loanwords, or borrowings, are words
which are adopted into a native
language from a different source
language.
By the 1500s, English had already
adopted words from about 50 other
languages.
The majority of English words today
are actually foreign borrowings.
#3: Prefixes and suffixes are
added to root words.
The ability to add affixes, whether
prefixes (e.g. com-, con-, de-, ex-, inter-,
pre-, pro-, re-, sub-, un-, etc) and suffixes
(e.g. -al, -ence, -er, -ment, -ness, -ship, tion, -ate, -ed, -ize, -able, -ful, -ous, -ive, ly, -y, etc) makes English extremely
flexible.
This process, referred to as agglutination, is a simple way to
completely alter or subtly revise the meanings of existing words, to
create other parts of speech out of words, or to create completely
new words from new roots.
#4: They are truncated or clipped.
Some words arise simply as
shortened forms of longer words
(exam, gym, lab, bus, vet, fridge,
bra, pram, phone and burger).
Examples also include goodbye (a
shortening of God-be-with-you) and
hello (a shortened form of the Old
English for “whole be thou”).
#5: CHILLAX: They are fused or
compounded with existing words.
Like many languages, English allows the
formation of words by fusing together
shorter words (e.g. airport, seashore,
fireplace, footwear, wristwatch, landmark,
flowerpot, etc).
#6: They have their meanings changed.
Word meanings change over time usually
(but not always) due to the misuse, either
deliberate or accidental, of words.
It may be that over half of all words
adopted into English from Latin have
changed their meaning in some way
over time.
For example, smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful;
handsome merely meant easily-handled (and was generally
derogatory); bully originally meant darling or sweetheart; sad
meant full or satisfied; and insult meant to boast, brag or triumph
in an insolent (SNAP!) way.
#7: They are made from errors.
There are at least 350 words in English
dictionaries that came about that owe
because of typographical errors or other
misunderstandings.
There are many more words, often in quite common use, that
have arisen over time due to mishearings (e.g. shamefaced from
the original shamefast, penthouse from pentice, sweetheart from
sweetard, buttonhole from button-hold, etc).
#8: They are made from
sounds that imitate.
Words may be formed by the
deliberate imitation of sounds they
describe (onomatopoeia).
It is quite probable that the first
human languages developed as
imitations of natural sounds – the socalled "bow-wow theory”.
#9: They are transferred from
proper nouns.
A large number of words have been
created by the transfer of the proper names
of people, places and things.
Maverick (American cattleman, Samuel Augustus Maverick);
Saxophone (Belgian instrument maker, Adolphe Sax);
Sandwich (after the fourth Earl of Sandwich);
Silhouette (after the French finance minister, Etienne de Silhouette);
Boycott (after Charles Boycott(