4 ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS
MAJOR INFLUENCES
Roman
(55 BC – 410 AD)
Scandinavian
(750 – 1050)
Norman and French
(1066 – 1500)
Latin and Greek
(three waves 1st – 16th ct.)
MINOR INFLUENCES
Celtic
Dutch
Italian
Other languages:
Spanish, German, Russian, Czech,
Hindi, Japanese, American Indian
languages, etc.
4 ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS
MAJOR INFLUENCES
Roman (55 BC – 410 AD)
- words connected with Roman occupation (see above)
- common objects borrowed from Latin (due to trade connection with the Roman Empire by Germanic tribes)
- butter/buttyrum, wine/vinum, cheese/caseus, etc.
Scandinavian (750 – 1050)
- 20% Old Norse words
- war and violence (slaughter, war), society and culture (husband, steak), animals (bug, reindeer), landscape (sky, rotten), place names with affixes -by/-bie (yard,
village – Kirkby, Lockerbie), beck (stream – Beckton, Holbeck), -thorpe (farm, land – Scunthorpe), surnames (Johnson), they
Norman and French (1066 – 1500)
- words of Norman origin
- administration (state, reighn parliament), titles of nobility (baron, prince), military (war, peace, army, captain), law (justice, judge, prison), economy and trade
(money, tax), religion (pray, service), housing (city, village, palace), cooking (pork, beef, veal, boil), occupations and crafts (carpenter, painter, tailor)
- words borrowed from Modern French are or French origin, e.g. restaurant, chef, entrepreneur, fiancé, etc.
Latin and Greek (three waves cca 1st – 16th ct.)
- 1st period of Latin influence: during the Roman occupation
- 2nd wave: *the end of the 6th ct., 100 years, Christianisation, e.g. angel/angelus, altar/altare, candle/candel, nun/nonna, pope/papa, psalm/psalmus, etc.
- 3rd wave: (14th, 15th, 16th centuries - Renaissance), Gr+L = languages of learning, science, culture throughout the Europe; Gr through Latin; no change (genius,
species, criterion), slightly changed (explain/explanare, system/systema, temperature/temperatura); grammar system (single negation), pronunciation, stylistics.
Lexical twins/triplets
English - words with similar meaning but different origin
- used for particular register
e.g. medicine/veterinary = words of L or Gr. origin (e.g. renal, dental,/bovine, ovine)
Lexical twins:
OE sweat, happiness, house, wish vs. Fr perspire, L felicity, Fr mansion, desire
Lexical triplets:
OE ask, fast, kingly vs. L interrogate, secure, regal, Fr question, firm, royal
Latin and Greek adjectives
English: home, earth, tooth, head eye, ear, tongue, mouth, kidney, heart, dog, cow, sheep, horse
Classical: domestic, terrestrial, dental, capital, ocular, auricular, lingual, oral, renal, cordial, canine, bovine, ovine, equine
Semantic change in history
extention/generalisation (office), narrowing/specialisation (deer, girl), shift
(navigator/pilot), figurative use (crane), amelioration (mischievous),
pejoration/deterioration (notorious)
4 ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS
MINOR INFLUENCES
Celtic
(e.g. whisky, penguin, clan, corgi, shamrock); folk etymology, special sheep counting system
Dutch
maritime terminology (dock, gin, commodore, yacht), drawing, painting (sketch, landscape)
Italian
business (bank, risk, bankrupt), music (opera, aria), art and architecture (graffiti, balcony)
Other languages:
Spanish (guitar, tornado), German (muffin, schnitzel), Russian (cosmonaut,
vodka), Czech (polka, robot), Hindi (jungle, shampoo), Japanese (tycoon,
karate), American Indian languages (opossum, totem), etc.
4 ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS
NATIVE AND LOAN WORDS
Native words:
Original English stock (OE period)
Diachronic linguistics: 1. Indo-European origin
2. Common Germanic stock
Central core words (83%/1,000 but only 38%/10,000).
High lexical and grammatical valency (ability to combine with other words).
High frequency and developed polysemy.
Monosyllabic, great word-building power, set expressions
Loan words:
Borrowed words (70%),
Assimilated to English standards (length, importance, frequency)
Degree of assimilation: 1. Completely assimilated words
2. Partially assimilated words
3. Unassimilated words
Native words
Indo-European origin
• Kinship (father, mother, son)
• Nature (sun, moon, water, tree)
• Animals, birds (bull, cat, wolf)
• Human body (arm, exe, foot)
• Verbs (come, sit, stand)
Cognates in vocabularies of different
I-E languages form the oldest layer.
Common Germanic stock
(Anglo-Saxon)
• bigger part of the native vocab,
more semantic groups
• parallels in German, Norwegian,
Dutch, Icelandic, Faroese, …
• general character (summer,
winter, rain, bridge, house, shop,
shirt, shoe, life, need, to bake, to
buy, to learn, to make, to see, …)
Loan Words
The degree of assimilation depends on the
a) length of the period over which the word has been used,
b) importance for communication,
c) frequency.
1. Completely assimilated words (wine, window, chair)
2. Partially assimilated words
a) not assimilated semantically: sari, toreador
b) not assimilated grammatically:
bacillus, formula, phenomenon vs. pl. bacilli, formulae, phenomena
c)not assimilated phonetically or graphically: ballet, tobacco, café
3. Unassimilated words: chauffeur, haute couture, faux pas, barbarisms (ciao!)