Etymological characteristics of English vocabulary

According to Professor Smirnitsky, the vocabulary of English falls into 3 major layers: 1) native words - are those units which existed in the Eng. language from the 5th - 7th century and later formations from native elements. The history of the Eng. language begins in the 5th century in 449 when the Germanic tribes landed on the British Isles. Tribes: Angles, Saxes, Jutes, they were nomadic. The native words fall into 3 subgroups: a) indo - european elements, these are cognate words which have parallels in other ind. - europ. languages /terms of kinship, objects and phenomenon of nature, animals and birds, parts of human body/: tree, moon, star, bull, cat, wolf, arm, ear, eye, foot, son, do, red, that, the same; b) Common germanic: summer, drink, ground, bridge, drive, make, room, house, short, dead, deaf, deep; c) native proper: must,may, girl, boy, you, he, five, shall/will. Features on the native vocab. a) they denote basis notions: stand, short, three; b) they are polysemantic, mono syllabic, non - motivated; c) frequently used, because they are articles, prepos., conjunc., modal and irreg. words; d) stylistically neutral: hand; they possess word and phrase building power. Graphic peculiarities: -ee, -ea, -ou, -ow; -gh, -wh /daughter, where/; -ld, -nd at the end /cold, find/. 2) borrowings: they say that engl. began to borrow words before there was any English. It means that the germanic tribes with the Romans brought some things together with their names: monger - seller of mango. Groups of borrowings: a) according to what aspect it was borrowed: sound, meaning or both complete or total borrow. make up 19,9% of all borrowings; b) graphic borrow. - they are usually cognate words: sister, get, give; c) translation borrow. - translat. of elements from other languages: collective farm, wall newspaper. 3) HYBRIDS. As a general rule, native prefixes or suffixes are added to na­tive words, Greek to Greek, French to French. But most foreign prefixes and suffixes have now become neut­ralized in English, and many derivative words are of mixed origin. Such words are called hybrids. Hybrids are very common in English. Hybrids may also be exemplified by numerous French borrow­ings: native roots with Latin or French prefixes: em-body, en-dear, dis-band, dis-burden, per-haps, re-call. Not less characteristic are hybrid-words with native roots, and Latin or French suffixes: drink-able, stream-let, starv-ation. There are also Latin roots with Eng. prefixes: a-cross, after­piece, be-siege, fore-close, un-deceive; Latin roots with Eng. suffixes: false-hood, merci-ful, use-ful, quarrel-some, rapid-ly. Hybrid compounds are also not uncommon, e. g. blackmail, faint-hearted, long-legged, salt-cellar.

 

 

Word structure

Word - the basic unit of language, a minimum meaningful free form. It is a two - faced unity of form (phonetic, graphic) and content (meaning). These 2 facets are inseparable for a definite period of language development, but historically they are changeable. The form of the words is devisible into elements. Phoneme - is a minimum form. Morpheme - it is a minimum lexico - grammatical meaningful form. When a morpheme becomes free it turns into a word if only occasional. May be free - can act as separate word: day, type, way; bound - can't act as a separate word: receive, deceive. Root morpheme - is the semantic nuclear of a word. It has a very general and abstract lexical meaning which is common to one word family: water - watery - to water - water - melon. Roots have no part of speech meaning. Affixes - words which have particles at the beginning or end of the words which modify the meaning of the root in some way. may be: derivational - suff., prefix.; functional - they convey grammatical meaning: -s /verbs of 3 person singul./, degrees of comparison /er, est/, tenses of verbs /ed, ing/.

 

 

Kinds of morphemes.

Morpheme - it is a minimum lexico - grammatical meaningful form. When a morpheme becomes free it turns into a word if only occasional. Root morpheme - is the semantic nuclear of a word. It has a very general and abstract lexical meaning which is common to one word family: water - watery - to water - water - melon. 1) May be free - can act as separate word: day, type, way, winter, table, red; bound - can't act as a separate word: receive, deceive, conceive. 2) Affixational morph.: - derrivational: suff., preff. /worker, botanist/; - functional (grammatical): /n./ -s,'s - goods; /adj./ -er, est - deeper, deepest; /v./ - s,-ed,-ing - helps, helped, helping.; 3) Allomorphs - are positional variants of morph.: -root allomorph: please, pleasure, pleasant; - affixal: eatable, addable, -ir, -im, -ill: impossible, irregular.

 

Narrowing (specializa­tion)

A lexeme be­comes more specialized in meaning: 'Room' originally meant 'any space', now it has specialized only to a particular space; 'meat'- food and drink in general; 'bread' - a small piece of anything; 'fruit' - product or something enjoyed; 'wife' - woman; 'worm' - any kind of reptile or insect; 'garage' - any safe place; 'grocer' - a wholesale dealer; 'engine' - anything used to do something; Extension (generaliza­tion) - A lexeme wid­ens its mean­ing: 'Salon' meant aristocratic social interac­tion, now it means more like in 'cosmetics salon, hairdressing salon, beauty salon; 'manuscript' meant something handwritten; 'picture' - something painted; 'foreigner' - one who lives out of doors; 'pipe' - a simple musical instrument; 'ready' - prepared for a ride; 'to fly" - to move by wings as a bird. Amelioration (elevation) - a lexeme develops a positive meaning (approval): nice - earlier meant foolish or simple; fame - rumour; splendid - bright; knight - a boy. Pejoration (degradation) - a lexeme develops a negative meaning (disapproval): sly - earlier meant wise; vulgar - common, ordinary; gossip - a god parent; silly - happy; insane - not well; idiot - a private person; clown - a farmer.