Реферат: The etymology of english words (Этимология английских слов)

Considering the high percentage of borrowed words, one would have to clas­sify English as a language of international origin or, at least, a Romance one (as French and Latin words obvi­ously prevail). But here another factor comes into play: the native element in English comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.).

Furthermore, the grammatical structure is essen­tially Germanic and it remains unaffected by foreign influence.

The Etymological Structure[6]  of English Vocabulary

table 1

The native element	The borrowed element
1.Indo-European element	I. Celtic (5th – 6th c.A.D.).
2.Germanic element	II. Latin
	1st group: 1st c.B.C.
	2st group: 7th  c.A.C.
	3st group: the Renaissance period
3.English Proper element (no earlier than 5th c.A.D.)	III. Scandinavian (8th – 11th c.A.D.)
	IV. French
	1. Norman borrowings: 11th–13th c.A.D.
	2. Parisian borrowings (Renaissance)
	V. Greek (Renaissance)
	VI. Italian (Renaissance and later)
	VII. Spanish (Renaissance and later)
	VIII. German
	IX. Indian
	X. Russian and some other groups

The first column of the table consists of three groups, only the third being dated: the words of this group appeared in the English vocabulary in the 5th century or later, that is, after the Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles. The tribal languages of the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, by the time of their migration, con­tained only words of Indo-European and Germanic roots plus a certain number of the earliest Latin bor­rowings.

By the Indo-European element are meant words of roots common to all (or most) languages of the Indo-Eu­ropean group. The words of this group denote ele­mentary concepts without which no human communi­cation would be possible. The following groups can be identified.

1.    Family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter.

2.    Parts of the human body: foot, nose, lip, heart.

3.    Animals: cow, swine, goose.

4.    Plants: tree, birch, corn.

5.    Time of day: day, night.

6.    Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.

7.    Numerous adjectives: red, new, glad, sad.

8.    The numerals from one to a hundred.

9.    Pronouns - personal (except “they” which is a Scandinavian borrowing) and demonstrative.

10. Numerous verbs: be, stand, sit, eat, know.

The Germanic element represents words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the Indo-European element.

1.    Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone.

2.    Animals: bear, fox, calf.

3.    Plants: oak, fir, grass.

4.    Natural phenomena: rain, frost.

5.    Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer[7].

6.    Landscape features: sea, land.

7.    Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench.

8.    Sea-going vessels: boat, ship.

9.    Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good.

10. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.

The English proper ele­ment  is opposed to the first two groups. For not only it can be approximately dated, but these words have another distinctive feature: they are specifically English have no cognates[8] in other lan­guages whereas for Indo-European and Germanic words such cognates can always be found, as, for in­stance, for the following words of the Indo-European group.

Star: Germ. - Stern, Lat. - Stella, Gr. - aster.

Stand: Germ. – stehen, Lat. - stare, R. – стоять.

Here are some examples of English proper words: bird, boy, girl, lord, lady, woman, daisy, always.

Structural elements of borrowings

There are certain structural features which enable us to identify some words as borrowings and even to de­termine the source language. We have already estab­lished that the initial (sk) usually indicates Scandinavian origin. We can also recognize words of Latin and French origin by certain suffixes, prefixes or endings. Here are some typical and frequent structural elements of Latin and French borrowings:

Latin affixes of nouns:

The suffix (-ion): legion, opinion, etc.; the suffix (-tion): relation, temptation, etc.

Latin affixes of verbs:

The suffix (-ate): appreciate, create, congratulate, etc.; the suffix (-ute): attribute, distribute, etc.; the remnant[9] suffix (-ct): act, collect, conduct, etc.; the prefix (dis-): disable, disagree, etc.

Latin affixes of adjectives:

The suffix (-able): detestable, curable, etc.; the suffix (-ate): accurate, graduate, etc.; the suffix (-ant): constant, important, etc.; the suffix (-ent): absent, evident, etc.; the suffix (-or): major, senior, etc.; the suffix (-al): final, maternal, etc.; the suffix (-ar): solar, familiar, etc.

French affixes of nouns:

The suffix (-ance): endurance, hindrance, etc.; the suffix (-ence): consequence, patience, etc.; the suffix (-ment): appointment, development, etc.; the suffix (-age): courage, marriage, village, etc.; the suffix (-ess): actress, adventuress, etc.

French affixes of verbs:

The prefix (en-): enable, enact, enslave, etc.

French affixes of adjectives:

The suffix (-ous): curious, dangerous, etc.

It’s important to note that later formations derived from native roots borrowed Latin and French affixes (e.g. eatable, lovable).

Why Are Words Borrowed?

Sometimes it is done to fill a gap in vocabulary. When the Saxons borrowed Latin words for "butter", "plum", "beet", they did it because their own vocabu­laries lacked words for these new objects. For the same reason the words “potato” and “tomato” were borrowed by English from Spanish when these vegetables were first brought to England by the Spaniards.

But there is also a great number of words which are borrowed for other reasons. There may be a word (or even several words) which expresses some particular concept, so that there is no gap in the vocabulary and there does not seem to be any need for borrowing. However a word is borrowed because it supplies a new shade of meaning or a different emotional colouring though it represents the same concept. This type of borrow­ing enlarges groups of synonyms and provides to enrich the expressive resources of the vocabulary. That is how the Latin “cordial” was added to the native “friendly”, the French “desire” to “wish”, the Latin “admire” and the French “adore” to “like” and “love”.

The historical circumstances stimulate the borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close contact. The nature of the contact may be different. It may be wars, invasions or conquests when foreign words are imposed upon the conquered nation. There are also periods of peace  when the process of borrowing is due to trade and international cultural relations.

Do Borrowed Words Change or

do They Remain the Same?

When words migrate from one language into another they ad­just themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language. They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their foreign features, and, finally, they are assimilated. Sometimes the process of assimilation develops to the point when the foreign origin of a word is quite unrec­ognizable. It is difficult to believe now that such words as “dinner”, “cat”, “take”, “cup” are not English by origin. Others, though well assimilated, still bear traces of their foreign background. “Distance” and “development”, for instance, are identified as borrowings by their French suffixes, “skin” and “sky” by the Scandinavian ini­tial (-sk), “police” and “regime” by the French stress on the last syllable.

Borrowed words are adjusted in the three main areas of the new language system: the phonetic, the grammatical and the semantic.

The lasting nature of phonetic adaptation is best shown by comparing Norman French borrowings to later (Parisian) ones. The Norman borrowings have for a long time been fully adapted to the phonetic system of the English language: such words as “table”, “plate”, “courage”, “chivalry” bear no phonetic traces of their French origin. Some of the later (Parisian) borrowings, even the ones borrowed as early as the 15th century, still sound surpris­ingly French: “regime”, “valise”, “matinee”, “cafe”, “ballet”. In these cases phonetic adaptation is not completed.

Grammatical adaptation consists in a complete change of the former paradigm of the borrowed word.  If it is a noun, it is certain to adopt, sooner or later, a new system of declension; if it is a verb, it will be conjugated according to the rules of the recipient language. Yet, this is also a lasting process. The Russian noun “пальто” was borrowed from French early in the 19th century and has not yet acquired the Rus­sian system of declension. The same can be said about such English Renaissance borrowings as “datum” (pl. da­ta), “phenomenon” (pl. phenomena), “criterion” (pl. crite­ria) whereas earlier Latin borrowings such as “cup”, “plum”, “street”, “wall” were fully adapted to the grammati­cal system of the language long ago.

By semantic adaptation is meant adjustment to the system of meanings of the vocabulary. Sometimes a word may be borrowed "blindly" for no obvious reason: they are not want­ed because there is no gap in the vocabulary nor in the group of synonyms which it could fill. Quite a number of such "accidental" borrowings are very soon rejected by the vocabulary and forgotten. But some “blindly” borrowed words managed to estab­lish itself due to the pro­cess of semantic adaptation. The adjective “large”, for in­stance, was borrowed from French in the meaning of "wide". It was not actually wanted, because it fully co­incided with the English adjective “wide” without adding any new shades or aspects to its meaning. This could have led to its rejection. Yet, “large” managed to establish itself very firmly in the English vocabulary by se­mantic adjustment. It entered another synonymic group with .the general meaning of “big in size”. Still bearing some features of its former meaning it is successfully competing with “big” having approached it very closely, both in fre­quency and meaning.

International Words

It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages, not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts which are significant in the field of com­munication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin.

Most names of sciences are international (e. g. philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology). There are also numerous terms of art in this group: music, theatre, drama, tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna, etc.; and the sports terms: football, volley-ball, baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc. It is quite natural that political terms frequently oc­cur in the international group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution, progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism. 20th century scientific and technological advances brought a great number of new international words: atomic, antibiotic, radio, television, sputnik (a Russian borrowing). Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic coun­tries often transport their names too and become inter­national: coffee, cocoa, chocolate, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit.

The similarity of such words as the English “son”, the German “Sohn” and the Russian “сын” should not lead one to the quite false conclusion that they are international words. They represent the Indo-European group of the native element in each respec­tive language and are cognates, i. e. words of the same etymological root, and not borrowings.

Etymological Doublets

The words originating from the same etymological source, but differing in phonemic shape and in meaning are called etymological doublets.

They may enter the vocabulary by different routes. Some of these pairs consist of a native word and a borrowed word: “shrew”, n. (E.) – “screw”, n. (Sc.). Others are represented by two borrowings from dif­ferent languages: “canal” (Lat.) - “channel” (Fr.), “captain” (Lat.) — “chieftain” (Fr.). Still others were borrowed from the same language twice, but in different periods: “travel” (Norm. Fr.) - “tra­vail" (Par. Fr.), “cavalry” (Norm. Fr.) - “chivalry” (Par. Fr.), “gaol” (Norm. Fr.) - “jail” (Par. Fr.).

A doublet may also consist of a shortened word and the one from which it was derived: “history” - “story”, “fantasy” - “fancy”, “defence” - “fence”, “shadow” - “shade”.

Etymological triplets (i. e. groups of three words of common root) occur rarer, but here are at least two ex­amples: “hospital” (Lat.) — “hostel” (Norm. Fr.) — “hotel” (Par. Fr.), “to capture” (Lat.) — “to catch” (Norm. Fr.) — “to chase” (Par. Fr.).

Translation-Loans[10]

By translation-loans we indicate borrowings of a special kind. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own lan­guage, but undergo the process of translation. It is quite obvious that it is only compound words (i. e. words of two or more stems). Each stem was translated separate­ly: “masterpiece” (from Germ. “Meisterstuck”), “wonder child” (from Germ. “Wunderkind”), ”first dancer” (from Ital. “prima-ballerina”).

Are Etymological and Stylistic Characteristics

of Words Interrelated?

The answer must be affirma­tive. Among learned words and terminology the for­eign element dominates the native.

It also seems that the whole opposition of "formal versus informal" is based on the deeper underlying opposition of "bor­rowed versus native", as the informal style, especial­ly slang and dialect, abounds in native words even though it is possible to quote numerous exceptions.

In point of comparing the expressive and stylistic value of the French and the English words the French ones are usually more formal, more refined, and less emotional. “to begin” – “to commence”, “to wish” — “to desire”, “hap­piness" — “felicity”.

English words are much warmer than their Latin synonyms, they don’t sound cold and dry: “motherly” — “maternal”, “fatherly” — “paternal”, “childish” — “infan­tile", “daughterly” — “filial”, etc.

1.     Г.Б.Антрушина, О.В.Афанасьева. Лексикология английского языка. - М. Изд. Дрофа. 1999

2.     F.R.Palmer. Semantics. A new outline. - M. V.Sh. 1982

[1] Roman invasion in Britain began in 43 A.D. Romans had held on the country for 400 years (till 407 A.D.).

[2] By a borrowing or loan-word we mean a word which came into the vocabulary of one language from another and was assimilated by the new language.

[3] Sc. “hus+bondi” means "inhabitant of the house".

[4] Sc. “vindauga” means "the eye of the wind".

[5] By the native element we mean words which were not borrowed from other languages but represent the original stock of this particular language.

[6] By etymology of words is understood their origin.

[7] “Autumn” is a French borrowing.

[8] Cognates - words of the same etymological root, of com­mon origin.

[9] By remnant suffixes are meant the ones that are only partially preserved in the structure of the word: Lat. (-ctus) >Lat. (-ct).

[10] The term “loan-word” is equivalent to “borrowing”.