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Chapter 2
      The sources
of the English Vocabulary
The English people are of a mixed
blood. At the beginning of the fifth
century Britain was invaded by three
tribes from the Northern Europe: the
Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
These three tribes landed on
the British coast, drove the
Britons west and north and
settled down on the island.
These three three tribes
merged into one people: the
English people and the three
dialects they spoke naturally
grew into a single language:
the English language.
The world has nearly 3,000
languages, which can be grouped into
roughly 300 language families on the
basis of similarities in their basic
word stock and grammar. The Indo-
European is made up of most of the
languages of Europe, the near East,
and India.
Indo-European Language



Eastern Set         Western Set
Eastern Set



Balto-Slavic                 Indo-Irannian




     Armenian          Albanian
Balto-Slavic



 Czech Russian   Prussian    Polish




Slovenian   Lithuanian      Bulgarian
Indo-Iranian




Persian   Bengali     Hindi     Romany



              Derived from Sanskrit
Armenian   Albanian




Armenian   Albanian
Western Set




Celtic   Italic   Germanic Hellenic
Celtic




Scottish   Irish      Welsh   Breton
Italic



Italian       Portuguese      Spanish

     French             Romanian
Germanic



Norwegian Icelandic Danish Swedish




  German Dutch Flemish English
Hellenic




Greek
A Historical Overview of the
    English Vocabulary
English can be roughly divided into:
Old English,
Middle English
Modern English.
Old English (450---1150)
Middle English ( 1150---1500)
                            Early: 1500---1700


Modern English (1500---Now)

                           Late :1700---
                           present
After the Romans, the Germanic
tribes called angles, Saxons, and
Jutes came. Soon they took
permanent control of the land, which
was to be called England. Their
language, historically known as
Anglo-Saxon, dominated and almost
totally blotted out the Celtic.
Celtic made only a small contribution
to the English vocabulary with such
words as crag and bin and some place
names like Avon, Kent, London,
Themes. Now people generally refer
to Anglo-Saxon as old English.
Two events in the Old English Period:

in the 6th century:Latin speaking Roman
missionaries came to spread Christianity in
Britain. The introduction of Christianity
had a great impact on the English
vocabulary. It brought many new ideas
and customs and also many religious
terms: abbot, candle, altar, amen, apostle.
In the 9th century: the land was
invaded again by Norwegian and
Danish Vikings. They came first to
plunder, then to conquer. Finally
they succeeded in placing a Danish
king on the throne of England. With
the invaders, many scandinavian
words came into English.
These new words did not identify new
ideas and objects. They were everyday
words for which the English had terms
and expressions. Many words were
exactly alike, such as father, husband,
house, life, man,mother, summer and
winter.Other words were so much alike
that they were used interchangeably.
It is estimated that at least 900 words
of Scandinavian origin have survived
in modern English, such as skirt,
skill, window, leg, grasp, birth,
they ,their, them and egg.
Old English has a vocabulary of
about 50,000 to 60,000 words. It was
a highly inflected language just like
modern German. Therefore, nouns,
pronouns, adjectives, verbs and
adverbs ahs complex endings or
vowel changes, or both.
Middle English
Old English began to undergo much
change when the Normans invaded
England from France in 1066.The
Norman conquest started a continual
flow of French words into English.
The English were defeated, but not killed
off, nor were they driven from their
country. They were reduced to the status
of an inferior people. Norman French
became the polite speech.
By the end of the 11th century,
almost all of the people who
held political or social power
and many of those in powerful
church positions were of
Norman French origin.
By the end of the 13th century,
English gradually came back into the
schools, the law courts, and
government and regained social status
thanks to Wycliff translation of the
Bible and the writings of Chaucer.
Between 1250 and 1500 about 9,000
words of French origin poured into
English. We can find words relating
to every aspect of human society, e.g.
Government, social scales, law,
religion, moral matters, military
affairs, food ,fashion, etc.
For example: state, power,
prince, duke, judge, court, crime,
angel, mercy, peace, battle, pork,
bacon, fry, roast, dress, coat.
Middle English retained much fewer
inflections. Endings of nouns and
adjectives marking distinction of number,
came and often of gender lost their
distinctive forms. If we say old English
was a language of full endings, Middle
English was one of levelled endings.
Modern English began with the
  establishment of printing in
           England.
  In the early period of Modern
English, Europe saw a new upsurge
  of learning ancient Greek and
 Roman classics. This is known in
   history as the Renaissance.
Latin and Greek were recognized as the
languages of the Western world’s great
literary heritage and of great scholarship,
but translators were rapidly making
great literary works available in English.
Translators and scholars borrowed
heavily from the Latin vocabulary of
their source materials during this
period and many Latin words became
part of English vocabulary.
In the mid-seventeenth century,
England experienced Bourgeois
Revolution followed by the
Industrial Revolution and rose to be
a great economic power. With the
growth of colonization. British
tentacles began stretching out to
every corner of the globe.
Since the beginning of the last
century, esp, after World War II, the
world has seen breathtaking
advances in science and technology.
Many new words have been created
to express new ideas, etc. ,yet more
words are created by means of
word-formation.
In modern English, word endings
were mostly lost with just a few
exceptions. English has evolved
from a synthetic language to the
present analytic language.
Classification of words:
English words may fall into the
basic word stock and non-basic
vocabulary by use frequency, into
content words and functional words
by notion and into native words and
borrowed words by origin.
Basic Word Stock:
All national character: Words of
the basic word stock denote the
most common things and
phenomena of the world around
us, which are indispensable to all
the people who speak the
language.
Stability:


As they denote the commonest
things necessary to life, they are
likely to remain unchanged.
Stability, however, is only relative.
Productivity:
Words of the basic word stock are
most root words or monosyllabic
words; They can form new words
with other roots and affixes
Waterline waterhead waterfall
waterfront waterlocks waterman
waterside waterskin waterway
waterproof water-sic water-ski
watermanship watered-down
watercart water-rate water-police
water-fast
见: 23 页
Footage, football, footpath, footer,
footfall, footed, footloose, footling,
footman, footing, footprint
doglike, doghood, dogcart, dog-
cheap, dog-ear, dog-fall, dogfight,
doghole, dog-paddle, dogsleep
Polysemy:
Words belonging to the basic word
stock often possess more than one
meaning because most of them
have undergone semantic changes
in the course of use and become
polysemous. 见 21 页
Collocability:
Many words of the basic word stock
have strong collocability:
见 22 页
A change of heart,
after one’s heart,
cry one’s heart out,
eat one’s heart out,
a heart of gold,
at heart,
break one’s heart,
cross one’s heart,
have one’s heart in one’s mouth,
heart and hand,
heart and soul,
take sth to heart,
wear one’s heart upon one’s sleeve,
with all one’s heart.
Non-basic word stock:
1) usu. Words technical in sense:
 arthritis
 cerebritis
 algebra
 calculus
2. Slang
It belongs to the sub-standard language:
cancer stick: cigarette
dish the dirt: gossip or spread rumours
about others
feel no pain: be drunk
in the soup: in serious trouble
bring down: disappoint
Native words and Borrowed
words
Native words are words brought
to Britain in the 5th century by
the German tribes: the Angles,
the saxons, and the Jutes.
Native words denote the commonest
things in human society, they are
used by all people, in all places on all
occasions, and at all times.They are
not stylistically specific.
They are neutral in style:
Begin (E)--- commence (French)
brotherly(E)--- fraternal (F)
answer (E) --- replay (F)
fall (E) --- autumn (F)
Borrowed words ( loan words or
borrowings)
It is estimated that English borrowings
constitute 80 percent of the modern
English vocabulary.
                         见 25 页
Borrowed words are divided into four
kinds:
denizens: they are words borrowed
early in the past and now are well
assimilated into the English language.
Change: changier(F)
pork: porc(F)     见 25 页
Aliens: they are words which have
retained their original pronounciation and
spelling. These words are immediately
recognisable as foreign in origin.
Decor: 装饰
blitzkrieg 闪电战
kowtow 磕头
bazaar 集市
status quo 现状
intermezzo 幕间剧
Translation-loans: translation loans
are words and expressions formed
from the existing material in the
English language but modelled on
the patterns taken from another
language.
mother tongue: lingua materna (L)
long time no see(CH)
surplus value:mehrwert(G)
masterpiece: meisterstuck (G)
black humour:humour noir
Semantic loans:
Words of this category are not
borrowed with reference to the
form, but their meanings.
Semantic borrowings also refer to
words which have acquired a new
meaning under the influence of
other languages.
“Pioneer” once signifying” explorer”
only or “ person doing pioneering
work” has now taken on the new
meaning of “ a member of the Young
Pioneer” from Russian
“Fresh” has adopted the meaning of “
impertinent, sassy, cheeky” under the
influence of the German word “ frech”.
The Foreign Elements
in the English vocabulary


        见 27 页
The Scandinavian element in English
An interesting feature of the language
is a number of Danish forms existing
side by side with the English forms in
the English vocabulary


见 28 页
The Scandinavian words into English
were not only nouns, adjectives, but
also pronouns, prepositions, adverbs,
and verbs.


见 29 页
Words from French can be divided
into two groups:
1. French loan words in the middle
English period
2. French loan words after the
middle English period


见 32 页
1. French loan words in the middle
English period


connected with government:
government, administration, state,
crown, authority, court
connected with religion:
religion, theology, prayer, dean,
lesson, clerk, devotion
Words connected with Law


Justice, judgment, crime, evidence,
proof, blame, arrest,
Words connected with army:


Army, peace, enemy, arms,
captain, defence, soldier, guard,
Words connected with fashion and
food


Dress,cloak, collar, button, boots,
diamond, beef, pork, mutton, bacon,
biscuit, cream, sugar, orange, lemon.
Words connected with arts, literature


Art, painting, learning, beauty,
colour, figure, image, tragedy, title,
story, pen
2. French loan words after the
Middle English period:


The words are connected chiefly
with arts, with food and drink, with
fashion and with diplomacy.
见 33 页
The Latin Element in the English
  Vocabulary
1) The First period of Latin influence:
    There was no opportunity for direct
  contact between Latin and Old English
  in England, so many words came in
  through Celtic transmission.
见 35 页

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Chapter2

  • 1. Chapter 2 The sources of the English Vocabulary
  • 2. The English people are of a mixed blood. At the beginning of the fifth century Britain was invaded by three tribes from the Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
  • 3. These three tribes landed on the British coast, drove the Britons west and north and settled down on the island.
  • 4. These three three tribes merged into one people: the English people and the three dialects they spoke naturally grew into a single language: the English language.
  • 5. The world has nearly 3,000 languages, which can be grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities in their basic word stock and grammar. The Indo- European is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the near East, and India.
  • 7. Eastern Set Balto-Slavic Indo-Irannian Armenian Albanian
  • 8. Balto-Slavic Czech Russian Prussian Polish Slovenian Lithuanian Bulgarian
  • 9. Indo-Iranian Persian Bengali Hindi Romany Derived from Sanskrit
  • 10. Armenian Albanian Armenian Albanian
  • 11. Western Set Celtic Italic Germanic Hellenic
  • 12. Celtic Scottish Irish Welsh Breton
  • 13. Italic Italian Portuguese Spanish French Romanian
  • 14. Germanic Norwegian Icelandic Danish Swedish German Dutch Flemish English
  • 16. A Historical Overview of the English Vocabulary
  • 17. English can be roughly divided into: Old English, Middle English Modern English.
  • 18. Old English (450---1150) Middle English ( 1150---1500) Early: 1500---1700 Modern English (1500---Now) Late :1700--- present
  • 19. After the Romans, the Germanic tribes called angles, Saxons, and Jutes came. Soon they took permanent control of the land, which was to be called England. Their language, historically known as Anglo-Saxon, dominated and almost totally blotted out the Celtic.
  • 20. Celtic made only a small contribution to the English vocabulary with such words as crag and bin and some place names like Avon, Kent, London, Themes. Now people generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as old English.
  • 21. Two events in the Old English Period: in the 6th century:Latin speaking Roman missionaries came to spread Christianity in Britain. The introduction of Christianity had a great impact on the English vocabulary. It brought many new ideas and customs and also many religious terms: abbot, candle, altar, amen, apostle.
  • 22. In the 9th century: the land was invaded again by Norwegian and Danish Vikings. They came first to plunder, then to conquer. Finally they succeeded in placing a Danish king on the throne of England. With the invaders, many scandinavian words came into English.
  • 23. These new words did not identify new ideas and objects. They were everyday words for which the English had terms and expressions. Many words were exactly alike, such as father, husband, house, life, man,mother, summer and winter.Other words were so much alike that they were used interchangeably.
  • 24. It is estimated that at least 900 words of Scandinavian origin have survived in modern English, such as skirt, skill, window, leg, grasp, birth, they ,their, them and egg.
  • 25. Old English has a vocabulary of about 50,000 to 60,000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like modern German. Therefore, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs ahs complex endings or vowel changes, or both.
  • 26. Middle English Old English began to undergo much change when the Normans invaded England from France in 1066.The Norman conquest started a continual flow of French words into English.
  • 27. The English were defeated, but not killed off, nor were they driven from their country. They were reduced to the status of an inferior people. Norman French became the polite speech.
  • 28. By the end of the 11th century, almost all of the people who held political or social power and many of those in powerful church positions were of Norman French origin.
  • 29. By the end of the 13th century, English gradually came back into the schools, the law courts, and government and regained social status thanks to Wycliff translation of the Bible and the writings of Chaucer.
  • 30. Between 1250 and 1500 about 9,000 words of French origin poured into English. We can find words relating to every aspect of human society, e.g. Government, social scales, law, religion, moral matters, military affairs, food ,fashion, etc.
  • 31. For example: state, power, prince, duke, judge, court, crime, angel, mercy, peace, battle, pork, bacon, fry, roast, dress, coat.
  • 32. Middle English retained much fewer inflections. Endings of nouns and adjectives marking distinction of number, came and often of gender lost their distinctive forms. If we say old English was a language of full endings, Middle English was one of levelled endings.
  • 33. Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the Renaissance.
  • 34. Latin and Greek were recognized as the languages of the Western world’s great literary heritage and of great scholarship, but translators were rapidly making great literary works available in English.
  • 35. Translators and scholars borrowed heavily from the Latin vocabulary of their source materials during this period and many Latin words became part of English vocabulary.
  • 36. In the mid-seventeenth century, England experienced Bourgeois Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution and rose to be a great economic power. With the growth of colonization. British tentacles began stretching out to every corner of the globe.
  • 37. Since the beginning of the last century, esp, after World War II, the world has seen breathtaking advances in science and technology. Many new words have been created to express new ideas, etc. ,yet more words are created by means of word-formation.
  • 38. In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions. English has evolved from a synthetic language to the present analytic language.
  • 39. Classification of words: English words may fall into the basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary by use frequency, into content words and functional words by notion and into native words and borrowed words by origin.
  • 40. Basic Word Stock: All national character: Words of the basic word stock denote the most common things and phenomena of the world around us, which are indispensable to all the people who speak the language.
  • 41. Stability: As they denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged. Stability, however, is only relative.
  • 42. Productivity: Words of the basic word stock are most root words or monosyllabic words; They can form new words with other roots and affixes
  • 43. Waterline waterhead waterfall waterfront waterlocks waterman waterside waterskin waterway waterproof water-sic water-ski watermanship watered-down watercart water-rate water-police water-fast 见: 23 页
  • 44. Footage, football, footpath, footer, footfall, footed, footloose, footling, footman, footing, footprint
  • 45. doglike, doghood, dogcart, dog- cheap, dog-ear, dog-fall, dogfight, doghole, dog-paddle, dogsleep
  • 46. Polysemy: Words belonging to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have undergone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous. 见 21 页
  • 47. Collocability: Many words of the basic word stock have strong collocability: 见 22 页
  • 48. A change of heart, after one’s heart, cry one’s heart out, eat one’s heart out, a heart of gold,
  • 49. at heart, break one’s heart, cross one’s heart, have one’s heart in one’s mouth, heart and hand,
  • 50. heart and soul, take sth to heart, wear one’s heart upon one’s sleeve, with all one’s heart.
  • 51. Non-basic word stock: 1) usu. Words technical in sense: arthritis cerebritis algebra calculus
  • 52. 2. Slang It belongs to the sub-standard language: cancer stick: cigarette dish the dirt: gossip or spread rumours about others feel no pain: be drunk in the soup: in serious trouble bring down: disappoint
  • 53. Native words and Borrowed words Native words are words brought to Britain in the 5th century by the German tribes: the Angles, the saxons, and the Jutes.
  • 54. Native words denote the commonest things in human society, they are used by all people, in all places on all occasions, and at all times.They are not stylistically specific.
  • 55. They are neutral in style: Begin (E)--- commence (French) brotherly(E)--- fraternal (F) answer (E) --- replay (F) fall (E) --- autumn (F)
  • 56. Borrowed words ( loan words or borrowings) It is estimated that English borrowings constitute 80 percent of the modern English vocabulary. 见 25 页
  • 57. Borrowed words are divided into four kinds: denizens: they are words borrowed early in the past and now are well assimilated into the English language. Change: changier(F) pork: porc(F) 见 25 页
  • 58. Aliens: they are words which have retained their original pronounciation and spelling. These words are immediately recognisable as foreign in origin.
  • 59. Decor: 装饰 blitzkrieg 闪电战 kowtow 磕头 bazaar 集市 status quo 现状 intermezzo 幕间剧
  • 60. Translation-loans: translation loans are words and expressions formed from the existing material in the English language but modelled on the patterns taken from another language.
  • 61. mother tongue: lingua materna (L) long time no see(CH) surplus value:mehrwert(G) masterpiece: meisterstuck (G) black humour:humour noir
  • 62. Semantic loans: Words of this category are not borrowed with reference to the form, but their meanings. Semantic borrowings also refer to words which have acquired a new meaning under the influence of other languages.
  • 63. “Pioneer” once signifying” explorer” only or “ person doing pioneering work” has now taken on the new meaning of “ a member of the Young Pioneer” from Russian
  • 64. “Fresh” has adopted the meaning of “ impertinent, sassy, cheeky” under the influence of the German word “ frech”.
  • 65. The Foreign Elements in the English vocabulary 见 27 页
  • 66. The Scandinavian element in English An interesting feature of the language is a number of Danish forms existing side by side with the English forms in the English vocabulary 见 28 页
  • 67. The Scandinavian words into English were not only nouns, adjectives, but also pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and verbs. 见 29 页
  • 68. Words from French can be divided into two groups: 1. French loan words in the middle English period 2. French loan words after the middle English period 见 32 页
  • 69. 1. French loan words in the middle English period connected with government: government, administration, state, crown, authority, court
  • 70. connected with religion: religion, theology, prayer, dean, lesson, clerk, devotion
  • 71. Words connected with Law Justice, judgment, crime, evidence, proof, blame, arrest,
  • 72. Words connected with army: Army, peace, enemy, arms, captain, defence, soldier, guard,
  • 73. Words connected with fashion and food Dress,cloak, collar, button, boots, diamond, beef, pork, mutton, bacon, biscuit, cream, sugar, orange, lemon.
  • 74. Words connected with arts, literature Art, painting, learning, beauty, colour, figure, image, tragedy, title, story, pen
  • 75. 2. French loan words after the Middle English period: The words are connected chiefly with arts, with food and drink, with fashion and with diplomacy. 见 33 页
  • 76. The Latin Element in the English Vocabulary 1) The First period of Latin influence: There was no opportunity for direct contact between Latin and Old English in England, so many words came in through Celtic transmission. 见 35 页