Chapter Two词汇学 Sources of English Vocabulary

1、 Chapter 2 The sources of the English Vocabularythe Angles, Saxons and Jutes. These three tribes landed on the British coast, drove the Britons west and north and settled down on the island. The Indo-European is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the n e a r E a s t , a n d I n d i a .Indo-

2、European LanguageEastern Set Western Set Armenian AlbanianEastern SetBalto-Slavic Indo-Irannian Balto-SlavicCzech Russian Prussian Polish Slovenian Lithuanian BulgarianIndo-IranianPersian Bengali Hindi RomanyDerived from Sanskrit(梵文)Armenian AlbanianArmenian AlbanianWestern SetCeltic Italic Germanic

3、 HellenicCelticScottish Irish Welsh BretonItalicItalian Portuguese SpanishFrench RomanianNorwegian Icelandic Danish SwedishGermanicGerman Dutch Flemish EnglishHellenicGreekA Historical Overview of the English VocabularyEnglish can be roughly divided into: Old English Middle English Modern EnglishOld

4、 English (450-1150)Middle English ( 1150-1500)Modern English (1500-Now)Early: 1500-1700Late :1700- presentAfter 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 A

5、nglo-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 Englis

6、h 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, a m e n , a p o s t l e .In

7、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

8、and objects. They were everyday words for which the E n g l i s h h a d t e r m s a n d 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

9、 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,

10、verbs and adverbs ahs complex endings or vowel changes, or both, which differ greatly from the language w e u s e t o d a y .Middle EnglishOld 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 E

11、nglish.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 p o l i t e s p e e c h . By the end of the 11th century, almost all of the people who held political or social power and man

12、y 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, t h e l a w c o u r t s , a n d government and regained social status thanks to Wycliff translation of the Bible and the writings of Chaucer. Canterbury

13、Tales 前言中头四行诗：A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,That fro the tyme that he first biganTo ryden out, he lived chivalrye,Trouthe and honour, fredom and courteisye.w English words: knight, man, worthy, tyme, first, bigan, ryden, loved, trouthe (truth), freedom(freedom);w French words: chivalrye (

14、chivalry), honour, courteisye (courtesy);w Danish words: froBetween 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, f o o d , f a s h i o

15、 n , e t c .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 d i s t i n c

16、 t i v e f o r m s . 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. wLatin and Greek were recognized as the languages of the

17、Western worlds great literary heritage and of great scholarship, but translators were rapidly making great literary works available in English.w1500-1700: Renaissance brought great changes to the vocabulary. wFrom the 16th century onward, English borrowed words from an increasing number of languages

18、, the majors ones being the three Romance languages, French, Spanish and Italian.w French: cafw Italian: in the fields of music such as concert, piano, balconyw Spanish: cocoa, cargo, cigar In the mid-seventeenth century, England experienced Bourgeois Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution

19、 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

20、 created to express new ideas, etc. ,yet more words are created by means of w o r d - f o r m a t i o n . 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:the basic word

21、 stock and non-basic vocabulary; content words and functional words; native words and borrowed wordsBasic Word Stock:A l l n a t i o n a l c h a r a c t e r :These words cannot be avoided by any speaker of English, irrespective of class origin, education, profession, geographical regions, culture, e

22、tc.Stability:Productivity:Words of the basic word stock are most root words or monosyllabic words; They can form new words with other roots and affixesWaterline waterhead waterfall waterfront waterlocks waterman waterskin waterway waterproof water-sic water-skiwatermanship watered-down watercart wat

23、er-police water-fastFootage, football, footpath, footfall, footloose, footman, footing, footprintdoglike, dogcart, dog-cheap, dog-ear, dog-fall, dogfight, doghole, dog-paddle, dogsleepPolysemy:Words belonging to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have under

24、gone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous.take: to move or carry from one place to another;to remove or use without permission or by mistake; to seize or capture; to get for oneself; to get hold of sth. with the hands; to be willing to accept, etc.Collocability:Many words of t

25、he basic word stock have strong collocability:A change of heart, after ones heart, cry ones heart out, eat ones heart out, break ones heart, cross ones heart, have ones heart in ones mouth, heart and soul, take sth to heart, wear ones heart upon ones sleeve, Non-basic word stock:1) usu. words techni

26、cal in science: arthritis cerebritis algebra2)SlangIt belongs to the sub-standard language:cancer stick: cigarettedish the dirt: gossip or spread rumours about othersfeel no pain: be drunkin the soup: in serious troublebring down: disappoint Content words denote clear notions and thus are known as n

27、otional words. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and numerals, which denote objects, phenomena, action, quality, state, degree, quantity, etc. w Functional words do not have notions of their own. Therefore, they are also called empty word. w Prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and a

28、rticles belong to this category. Native words and Borrowed wordsNative 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 occasi

29、ons, and at all times.They are not stylistically specific.They are neutral in style:Begin (E)- commence (French)brotherly(E)- fraternal (F)answer (E) - reply (F)fall (E) - autumn (F)Frequent in use: Native words are most frequently used in everyday speech and writing. The proportion of its use in re

30、lation to borrowings is perhaps just the opposite of its number. The percentage of native words in use runs as high as 70 to 90 percent.Borrowed words ( loan words or borrowings)Borrowed words are divided into four kinds:denizens: they are words borrowed early in the past and now are well assimilate

31、d into the English language.Change: changier(F)pork: porc(F)Aliens: they are words which have r e t a i n e d t h e i r o r i g i n a l pronounciation and spelling. These w o r d s a r e i m m e d i a t e l y recognisable as foreign in origin.Decor: 装饰blitzkrieg闪电战kowtow磕头bazaar集市status quo现状interme

32、zzo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 hum

33、our:humour noirSemantic 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 o t h e r l a n g u a g e s .“Dream” originally meant “joy” and “music”, and its moder

34、n meaning was borrowed later from the Norse(挪威语).“Pioneer” once signifying “explorer” only or “ person doing pioneering work” has now taken on the new meaning of “ a member of the Young Pioneer” f r o m R u s s i a nThe meaning “stupid” of the word dumb comes from the German word dumm. The Foreign Elements in the English vocabulary The Scandinavian element in EnglishAn interesting feature of the language is a number of Dan