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WORDS, MEANING AND VOCABULARY
An introduction to Modern English Lexicology
CH. 1: What is lexicology? 1.1 Lexicology defined What is lexicology? = lexicology may be defined as the study of lexis, understood as the stock of words in a given language. (from Greek lexis ‘word’, leikos ‘of/for words’). The notion of word is central in the study of lexicology (we use it in the usual traditional sense of a sequence of letters bounded by spaces). Vocabulary – lexis – lexicon = more or less synonymous but: the 1 is more colloquial, the 3 more learned and technical and the 2 is in the half-way between the other two. Vocabulary – lexis – lexicon (total word stock of the language) ≠ dictionary (it’s only a selective recording of that word stock at a given point in time). Lexicology relies on information derived form morphology, the study of the forms of words and their compounds. Lexicology is also linked to etymology → the study of the origins of words. Lexicology is ≠ form lexicography = that is the writing or compilation of dictionaries, with a special technique rather than a level of language study. Lexicology so is a level of language analysis. We will examine the 4 related fields: Morphology Semantics Etymology Lexicography 1.1.1 Morphology It is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units which may constitute words or parts of words → smallest in the sense that they cannot be broken down further on the basis of meaning. → meaningful because we can specify the kind of relationship they have with the non-linguistic world. “Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built”. Ex: cat, child, with, sleep, -ing, arma, chair, -s, farm, -er. Some morphemes are simple words such as cat, child, sleep, arm, chair. Others are only parts of words such as: -ing, -s and -er. They are: a) Minimal= because they cannot be broken down into further meaningful units b) Meaningful= because we can establish a stable relationship between each item and the non- linguistic word of experience.
Ex: -er designate things or persons with a function describable in terms of meaning of the preceding morpheme (farmer → farm + -er, dreamer → dream + -er) Morphemes can be: a) Free morphemes= they occurs alone as individual words Ex: cat, chair, farm… b) Bound morphemes= the can occur only with another morpheme Ex: -ing, -s, -er… they are bound, with an hyphen. The morph is → any concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance. Morphs should not be confused with syllables. The difference is that → morphs are manifestation of morphemes and represent a specific meaning ≠ syllables are parts of words which are isolated only on the basis of pronunciation. Morphs may have a lot of meanings or the same meaning (ex: indefinite article may be realized as a or an , depending on the sound at the beginning of the following word). → morphs which are different representations of the same morpheme are called allomorphs of that morpheme. For ex. In a / an when the allomorph an occurs, its counterpart a cannot occur and vice versa, they are mutually exclusive and they are in complementary distribution (= distribution is the total set of distinct linguistic contexts in which a given form occurs, sometimes under different morphological shapes). Simple, complex and compound words and morphology: a) Simple words (door, knob, wild, animal) are free morphemes. So they are morphologically unanalysable. b) Complex words (spoonful, wildish, reanimate, mentally) are formed from simpler words by the addition of affixes of some other morphological modification. There is the case of zero modification or conversion, for ex: in answer, call, question that may be either nouns or verbs, without the addition of further letters. c) Compounds words are formed by combining 2 or more words with o without a morphological modification (door-knob, cheeseburger, pound saver). 1.1.2 Semantics It’s the study of meaning, and its aim is to explain and describe meaning in natural languages. There are several kinds of semantics: pragmatic semantics (meaning of utterance), sentence semantics (meaning of sentences and relations between them), lexical semantics (meaning of words). Semantics is approached form two perspectives: philosophical (logical properties of language) or linguistic (involves all aspects of meaning in natural language). So semantics, as it covers all aspects of human language, must be consider a division of lexicology and also a part of phonology, syntax, discourse analysis, textlinguistics and pragmatics. There are two important concepts, distinct but related: Acceptability “That woman is a man” → it’s meaningless but acceptable. Because with a bit of imagination it can be: in a film a character is a man but play the role of a woman.
Initially lexicography developed its own principles independently of linguistics in general. But now it is no longer the case, in fact current dictionaries are compiled mainly by lexicographers who have studied linguistics. Lexicology is not the only branch of linguistic which provides an input to lexicography. In fact also morphology, syntax.. do and socio linguistics too. 1. 2 Lexicology as a level of language analysis Lexicology is one possible level of language analysis, others are: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are all linked. 1.2.1 Lexicology and phonology In many cases the difference between two otherwise identical lexical items can be reduced to a difference at a level of phonology. Ex: sheep and ship → differ only in one sound unit, yet the difference has serious effects at the level of lexicology. The sounds responsible of the difference can be at the initial, medial or final position. Sometimes the phonological difference doesn’t involve discrete sound units but suprasegmental or prosodic features → such as stress (‘). Compounds are a good example to show the relevance of phonology in lexicology. They aren’t a simple juxtaposition of two words. Ex: green and house → put together to form greenhouse (a glass house for growing plants) green and house → put together in the same order to produce green house (a house that is green) The major difference between the two is a matter of stress → a phonological feature. So this phonological feature can distinguish compounds from noun phrases containing the same words. Ex: ‘blackbird - ,black ‘bird ‘greyhound (levriero) - ,grey ‘hound (segugio grigio) General rule= the primary stress falls on the first word of the compound. The phrases (black bird) aren’t words, so they function as units at the syntactic level. The stress, which is a phonological feature, has a direct influence on syntax. So → interdependence of phonology – lexicology – syntax. 1.2.2 Lexicology and syntax Syntax: is a particular knowledge which enables us to assemble words when we construct sentences. Syntax is responsible for the understanding of the sentences we hear and we read. Syntax deals with the relationships between words in constructions and the way these words are put together to form sentences. Syntax and lexicology, despite being (although they are/ even though they are) comparable they may be kept distinct. → First of all a distinction (syntax ≠ lexicology) is required because a given sentence may be syntactic but unacceptable form the lexical point of view/ on the lexical grounds. So if a sentence
can satisfy the rules of syntax but be unacceptable lexically, this means that the rules of syntax are different from those of lexicology → so the two levels are distinct. Distinction = between sentences that are unacceptable on syntactic grounds / those that are deviant from the lexical point of view. Syntax= it deals with the general facts of language Lexicology= it deals with special aspects of the language (general → versus → particular) So syntax is general → because it deals with rules that apply to classes of words as a whole. Lexicology is particular → because it is concerned with the way individual words operate and affect other words in the same context. Lexical restrictions are not a matter of well-established rules but of tendencies. Ex: “Sophisticated mice prefer to eat red elephants” → it’s syntactic but it’s lexically doubtful because it doesn’t correspond to out experience of the world. Similarly some sentences are clearly ungrammatical, while others are well-formed syntactically. In other cases some sentences are deviant on both syntactic and lexical grounds. 1.3 The structure of English vocabulary There is an internal organization of vocabulary. “How is the stock of English words structured and organized?”. Many attempts to discover how vocabulary is organized, focused on three areas:
- Individual words and their associations
- Semantic/lexical fields
- Word families
- (word class) = a way of accounting for the structure of the English vocabulary 1.3.1 The word and its associative fields Every word is involved in a network of associations which connect it with other terms → association can be based on similarity of meaning, or only can be purely formal, others involve both form and meaning. Lecturer an four lines of association that radiate from it:
- Connected with lectured and lecturing → by formal and semantic similarity based on the common stem lecture.
- Connected with teacher and tutor → by semantic similarity
- Connected with gardener and labourer → because they all have the suffix - er forming agent nouns from verbs
- Connected with clever and the inflected adverb quicker → by accidental similarity in the endings There are two notions related with this relations: a) Paradigmatic relations = because any words chosen form a given context will suggest other words to us, because they resemble or differ form others in form and meaning.
So we can assume that language cannot be analysed into well-defined categories. However large numbers of lexemes can be grouped together into fields and sub-fields in a fairly clear-cut manner. 1.3.3 Word families It’s a common approach in French lexicology. Words are grouped into families on the basis of their morphology (both inflections and derivations). Family= consists of a base form, its possible inflectional forms and words derived from it by prefixation and suffixation. Ex: state (verb) states, stated, stating (inflections) stateable, statement, misstate, restate, understate (derivations) Bauer and Nation developed the notion of word families by proposing a set of levels (criteria) into which families are divided :
- Frequency The number of words in which an affix occurs (ex: - er occurs more frequently than - ist to form ‘agent’ nouns form verbs – speaker , violinist )
- Productivity The extent to which an affix continues to be used to form new words (ex: - ly is still highly productive in deriving adverbs form adjectives – stubbornly )
- Predictability of the meaning of the affixes (ex: - ness is only used to form nouns from adjectives, with the meaning ‘quality of’ – craziness /whereas - ist has a number of possible meanings)
- Regularity of spelling and pronunciation (of base and affix) Using these criteria Bauer and Nation establish several levels of family relationships:
- Each word form is regarded as a different word, so there is no family
- Words that have a common base but variant inflectional suffixes (plural, possessives, present and past…). Ex: fly, flies, flew, flying, flown
- Words formed by the addition of the most frequent ad regular derivational affixes (computer analysis) → - able, -er, -ish, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, un - 4) Forms with frequent orthographically regular affixes → - al, -ation, -ess, -ful, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ize, -ment, -ous, in-
- Forms derived with some fifty regular but infrequent affixes → -ary, -let … 6) Forms derived by frequent but irregular affixes → - able, -ee, -ic, -ify, -ition
- Words formed using classical roots and affixes (ex: bibliography, astronaut and prefixes → ad-, ad-, com-, de-, dis-, ex-, sub -) 1.3.4 Word classes Approach that can be traced back to Latin and Greek. This approach distinguish eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Modern grammarians created further classes:
a) Closed classes: preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, auxiliary verb b) Open classes: noun, adjective, verb, adverb c) Lesser categories: numeral, interjection d) Words of unique function: particle not and infinitive maker to The closed classes contain the so-called ‘grammatical’ or ‘function’ words, which serve the grammatical construction of sentences. The small classes have a restricted membership. The open classes, by contrast, are large and they are constantly being added to. They include ‘content’ words, carrying the main meaning of a sentence (words that have to be retained). All English words most belong to one or more word classes. But to be sure we have to study a wold’s behaviour in sentences →all words that functions in the same way are deemed to belong to the same word class. Ex: the word on , in and under have the same function and express some kind of locational relationship. Since they behave the same way in the sentence, they belong to the same word class, which we call ‘preposition’. The boundary between classes are fuzzy, moreover a word may belong to more than one word class. CH. 2: Where do English words come from? 2.1 The origin of English Languages of the world can be grouped into about 300 families. One of these families is the Indo- European, includes most of the language of Europe: Italic, form Latin and later the Romance languages. Another families is called Germanic, which is divided in three branches. One of these branches is the West Germanic Branch that developed into German, Dutch, Frisian and English. Frisian is the closest relative of English. 2.1.1 How English came to England First people to have inhabited England → Celts. They come to the island around the middle of the fifth millennium B.C. Their languages were another branch of the Indo-European family. Celts wants to add their land to the Roman Empire but later they were overwhelmed by a big Roman army → most of the island of Britain was occupied by Roman legions. When the Empire began to crumble, the army left many settlements, called: Doncaster, Gloucester, Lancaster and Worcester → all derived from Latin, castra (camp). With the withdrawal of the Roman troops the Pics and Scots are invited to invade the rich lowlands. Pics and Scots are two tribes in the Nord of Britain. The Celt in order to defend their lands, appealed to bands of Germanic warriors, for an aid. But the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes) from being allies become their conquerors. Celts were: Pushed to the fringes of the country, to Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and the Scottish highlands. Crossed the English Channel to join their relatives in French Brittany.
Some preposition/pronouns are identical in form: for, from, in, he, him, his. Some words can easily being recognise: singan is ‘sing’, onslepte is ‘asleep’. Some words were very strange in fact they disappeared from the language ( swefn for ‘dream’) The OE lexicon is characterized by its readiness to build up words from a number of parts, a feature that has stayed. Some words may look familiar but have a different meaning in ME → they are false friends when translating form OE to ME ( wif refers to any woman, married or not / faest meant ‘fixed’ rather than ‘rapidily’). OE is characterized by the use of coinages or ‘kennings’ = figurative descriptions involving compounds. Ex: whaleroad for the sea, banhus for ‘bone-house’ (body). So sometimes phrases and compounds words are used, ex: God was ‘guardian of heaven’s kingdom’. Kennings are a problem to interpret because the frequency of synonymy in OE makes difficult to distinguish shades of meaning →ex: in the Beowulf there are 20 terms for ‘man’ (what is the difference among them?). By the compound forms OE used a considerable compression of meanings. Vocabulary → differences between the way it was used in OE and today:
- Anglo-Saxon prefers expressions that are synonymous and the use of compounds. ME not.
- The absence of a wide-ranging vocabulary of loanwords obliged OE to rely more on word- formation processes based on native elements.
- Latter period of OE → a lot of ‘loan translations’ (calques) → calques are lexical items that are translated part-by-part into another language.
- Grammatical relationships in OE were expressed mainly by the use of inflectional endings. (≠ in Middle English they came to be expressed, as today, by word order).
- OE corpus contains about 24.000 lexical items → but 85% of OE words are no longer in use. OE vocabulary was predominantly Germanic. Viking invasions important= significant impact on the development of English vocabulary. 2.2.2 The Middle English period (1066-1500) This period has a much richer documentation → because the newly centralized monarchy commissioned national and local surveys which resulted in an increase in the number of documents. However the early material is of limited value → because written in Latin or French and data only relates to places and personal names. Material in English began to appear in 1300 and in 1400 (fourteenth century) there was a marked increase in the number of translated writings from Latin and French, and of texts for teaching these languages. Middle English poetry = influenced by French literary tradition → content/style. Much of the earlier Middle English literature is of unknown authorship → this changes after and the prominent names, by the end of the period, were: Gower, Langland, Wycliff, Chaucer and the Scottish Chaucerians (group of poets). This body of literature provides the final part of the bridge between Middle English and early Modern English.
The diversity in spelling was still great and because of spelling several words look stranger than they really are → as the period progressed, so the spelling changed to approximate those of Modern E. Middle English characterized by intensive and extensive borrowing from other languages → Norma conquest of 1066 → introduce French-English bilingualism into England → massive borrowing of French words into the English vocabulary. So loanwords were the only way in which vocabulary in Middle English increased. Processes of word formation, compounding and affixation continued to be used. 2.2.3 Early Modern English (1500-1800) Necessary for the transition to Modern English. No consensus about the beginning → someone say 1400, others 1450, others 1500. Many consider the advent of the printing revolution as a determining factor → 1476 William Caxton set up his press in Westminster. Printing: Major role in fostering norms of spelling and pronunciation. Provided more opportunities for people to write. Give to published works much wider circulation. → so more books were published → this provide the development of the language. In the sixteenth century scholars began to talk seriously about language → they make observations on grammar, vocabulary, writing system and style. Form 1550 to 1650 = Renaissance → period characterized by: Interest in the classical languages and literatures Major developments in the sciences and arts Protestant Reformation Scientific discoveries Exploration of Africa, Asia, the Americas All these factors had a major impact on the English language, especially on vocabulary. Writers began to borrow from other European languages to express the new concepts, techniques and inventions that first came from Europe. Words came into English also from North America, Africa and Asia, due to the exploration. Some words came directly others indirectly, via other European languages. A lot of Latin and Greek words were introduced (ad translators can’t find an equivalent in English). But → the influx of foreign vocabulary attracted criticism from purists → because new terms according to them interfered with the development of native English vocabulary. So some attempted to revive little known words from English dialects, others to find new words in order to enrich and credit the language. → their objective= make the English language fit not only for the street but also for the library. But despite their efforts borrowing remain the most distinctive feature of the Renaissance for English. Two most important influences:
- William Shakespeare works (1564-1616)
a) The growth of scientific and technical vocabulary (being growing since the Renaissance) → unprecedent growth in this domain = ad a consequence of the industrial revolution and the period of scientific exploration and discovery. Also the increase in the level of education made the public more curious about and interested in science/technology. Darwin’s theory for ex. By the end of the nineteenth century the ‘scientific English’ became a variety of the language → there are grammar books and style guides. b) Strong linguistic influence of American English → it becomes a dominant variety of the language → by the emergence of the USA as a leading economic power. Influence in the areas of pronunciation and grammar, but more especially in the lexis. There are differences between American and British English but the two varieties are becoming more and more alike, for several reasons: communication systems, USA are more involved in world affairs, UK is open to American culture, development of mass media. Assertion of American English → ha a great number of speakers (numerical strength). UK + USA = 70% of all speakers of English. c) Emergence of other varieties called ‘New Englishes’. The concept of ‘New Englishes’ includes new varieties of the language that have become localized not only through the influence of the other languages of the regions where they are used, but also trough being adapted to the life and culture of their speakers. They are varieties of English and have their origin in the colonial era. Ex: Indian English, Philippine English, Singapore English, African Englishes (Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria). In addition to ‘New Englishes’ that are associated with a geographical area, there are also varieties of the language based on subject matter → religious, legal English, telecommunications… According to Kachru, English speaking countries may be placed in 3 concentric circles, depending on the status of the language:
- The inner circle = whose countries have English as the primary language. Ex: Great Britain, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
- The outer or extended circle = includes countries affected by colonization, where English is used in the leading institutions and plays a second language role in a multilingual setting. Ex: India, Malawi, Nigeria, Singapore and fifty other territories.
- The expanding circle = includes countries which have no history of colonization and where English has no special administrative status → but it is recognize as an important international language. Ex: China, Japan, Poland… in total there are 75 territories which give a special place to English. 2.3 Native English vocabulary Native English vocabulary is made up of Anglo- Saxon words but there is also an influence of Celtic on English. 2.3.1 Anglo-Saxon words
This category contains words that arrived with the Germany invaders and are still used in modern English. Grammatical words such as: be, in, that. Lexical words: father, love, name. They constitute a nucleus or central mass of many words. The great majority is both literary and colloquial. Anglo-Saxon words are generally short and concrete: parts of body (arm, bone, chest, ear, eye…), natural landscape (field, hedge, hill, land..), domestic life (door, floor, home, house), the calendar (day, month, moon, sun, year), common adjective (black, dark, good, long, white, wide), animals (cow, dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, swine) and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go, kiss, live, love, say, help, sell, send, think). 2.3.2 The influence of Celtic on English Only a few Celtic words were borrowed at the time, and just a few have survived into modern English, sometimes in regional dialect use (ex: luh → lake). A few Celtic words of this period derive ultimately form Latin, brought by the Irish missionaries. There are a few Caltic-based placenames: river names ( Thames, Severn …), Town names ( York, Dover, Kent, London …). In recent times a few more Celtic words were introduced into English form Irish Gaelic in the seventeenth century. From Scots-Gaelic come: clan , slogan , whisky. Celtic so has had a rather negligible influence on English → English is basically a Germanic language. 2.4 The process of borrowing = when speakers imitate a word form a foreign language, and at least adapt it in sound or grammar to their native language → process of borrowing. The word borrowed is called → loanword /borrowing. English is an insatiable borrower, while other languages takes special measures to include foreign words form their lexicon, English seems to have welcomed such words in its history, especially form the Middle English period onwards (in poi). 120 languages of all over the world have been sources of present-day English vocabulary. History of loanwords is complex, because such words may have come to English not directly, but via another language or two. Ex: chess , borrowed into English from the Middle French in 1400 → the French word ( eschec ) came from Arabic, which had earlier borrowed it from Persian. So the etymology is traced from Persian, through Arabic in Middle French, to English. 2.4.1 Latin words in English Latin → a major influence on English, from the Germanic period up to modern times. Anglo-Saxon considered Latin as used by the Roman armies. In fact early borrowing were concerned with the military domain, commerce and agriculture, refinements of living → Germanic acquired them from their continental contacts with the Romans.
The Danes in 1950 invade England and control most of eastern England, which became know as Danelaw. English King forced into exile and the Danes seize the throne → England was under Danish rule and the linguistic effect of this contact between Anglo-Saxon and Danish settlers has 3 consequences:
- A large number of settlements with Danish names in England. Scandinavian placenames are common in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Some end in - by that in Scandinavian signifies ‘farm’ or ‘town’. So the - by ending is of Scandinavian origin, and the placenames with this ending are confined to the area of Danelaw. Others end in - thrope that signifies ‘village’.
- A marked increase in personal names of Scandinavian origin. For personal names, the early Middle English reveals a strong Scandinavian influence in the north and east → 60 % of personal names. Ex: ending in - son , as Davidson, Jackson
- Many general words entered the language and became part of the English vocabulary. With two cultures in such close contact for so long there are a lot of borrowings. Because of the close relationship between Old Norse and Old English, many Scandinavian words resemble their English cognates so closely that it would be impossible to tell whether a given word was Scandinavian or English. Sometimes there is a semantic contamination → ex: Old English dream , ‘joy’ acquired meaning of the related Scandinavian draum , ‘vision in sleep’. Some of the commonest words in modern English came into the language at this time. Ex: a) The personal pronoun system was affected with they , them and their , replacing earlier form of the third person plural. b) The verb to be→ there was a replacement of sidon by are with this Scandinavian influence. c) Many words with sc - / sk - are of Scandinavian origin → score, scrub, skill, skin, skirt, sky. d) Some borrowing expressed new concepts or new things → ex: certain Scandinavian legal terms. e) There is also a large number of duplicate words → in Old Norse (ON) in Old English (OE) → they provided ways of denoting the same object or situation. In some cases the ON word was retained, ex: egg vs ey (OE), sister vs sweoster (OE). In other cases the OE word survived, as in path vs ON reike. In a number of cases both words survived, but developed a useful difference in meaning: ON sick / OE ill. Sometimes where two forms have survived, one is considered standard and the other dialectal, ex: church/kirk. 2.4.3 Greek loanwords Greek is a classical language and so it provides a considerable number of technical terms in all branches of human knowledge. → need felt by the English humanists who wanted their language to be capable of expressing the most refined thoughts, just like Latin and Greek. Some Greeks words were borrowed via Latin and French. Some derived from Greek and Latin elements.
Others were taken directly form Greek. Even before the Norman conquest in 1066, a number of Greek words has entered English via Latin, in addition to some early loans such as church (into the Germanic, directly form Greek). It’s in the Early Modern English period (1500) that the Greek influence became most noticeable. Greek words that came into English via Latin: allegory, anaesthesia, chaos, dilemma, drama, enthusiasm, phenomenon, rhythm, theory. Greek words coming via French: centre, character, chronicle, democracy, ecstasy, harmony, machine. Coming directly from Greek: acronym, autocracy, pathos. Lexis, lexeme, lexical, dictionary and vocabulary all derived from Greek and Latin elements. Many of the Greek loanwords are considered learned, others have passed into the stock of more or less everyday vocabulary. Although Greek has a considerable prestige as a classical language, it did not have the same influence as Latin, which was the language of the literature, science, religion, instruction… 2.4.4 French loanwords Borrowing from French occurred since the Middle Ages → contact between English and French cultures. Edward exiled in Normandy and bring many French nobles and courtiers. Moreover the monastic revival started in France, and many English monks have studied there. →linguistic consequences = borrowing of some French words into Old English ( servian – ‘serve’, castel – ‘castle’, prison – ‘prison’). With the Duke of Normandy’s accession to the English throne in 1066, Norman French became the language of government, the courts, and the new upper social classes. And almost all the religious houses were under French speaking superiors. Context = favourable for the development of French-English bilingualism. Many English people learned French to gain advantage from the aristocracy, while many Norman French learned English in daily contact with local communities. As the period progressed the influence of French vocabulary on English became noticeable → 10,000 French words come into English (three-quarters of them are still in use in English today). Words of spiritual administration from FR: government, administration, court, crime, judge, jury. Words in the religious sphere: abbot, clergy, sacrament. Military usage: army, captain, soldier. Names of precious stones: amethyst, diamond, emerald, pearl, ruby, sapphire. Names of animals served up as food: beef, mutton, pork Names of culinary processes: boil, fry, roast. During the Middle English period, come words were borrowed from Norman French spoken in England (Anglo-Norman), others form central French, which became the standard French in France. Ex: Old French w was retained in Norman French, but changed to gw and then g in standard French.
In nineteenth century fashionable for Americans to adopt words from Spanish: canyon, mustang, sierra, siesta. c) Italian has a significance for musical vocabulary and other arts. Started in the sixteenth century with: duo, madrigal, violin. Seventeenth century: allegro, largo, opera, piano, solo, sonata. Eighteenth century (peak): adagio, aria, cantata, concerto, crescendo, duet, forte, soprano, trio. Nineetenth century: alto, cadenza, piccolo. Other loanwords → balcony, balloon, carnival, incognito, inferno, lagoon, malaria, studio, umbrella, volcano. Loanwords via French → cartoon, citron, corridor, gazette, porcelain. Italian food names → lasagne, macaroni, pizza, scampi... 1.4.7 Loans form the East During the Middle English period → word of Arabic origins were borrowed, linked to science and commerce. Some came via French or Latin. Ex: cotton, orange, saffron, syrup, admiral, camphor. The article - al is a characteristic, ex: alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, almanac. Borrowing from Arabic has continued up to modern times → assassin, calibre, giraffe, hashish, lemon, magazine. Semitic languages borrowing → Hebrew words come to English, directly of by way of French (amen, hallelujah) or Yiddish. Borrowings from Persian: caravan, bazaar. Other Persian loanwords via Latin or French: paradise, scarlet, tiger. Indian loanwords → from Sanskrit (karma, mahatma, yoga), form Tamil (curry), from Hindi/Urdu (jungle, pajamas, shampoo). Word borrowed form the Far East and Australia: kangaroo, boomerang. Loanwords from Chinese: Silk, kamikaze. Loanword from Japanese: samurai, soy(a), kimono. 1.4.8 Loanwords from other sources A few loanwords from West African languages, mostly via Portuguese and Spanish, ex: banana, gorilla, chimpanzee, gnu, safari, zebra. Loanwords from Slavic languages (via French): polka. Loanwords from Russian: Mammoth, Bolshevik, tundra, vodka (not naturalized). Loanwords from Hungarian Loanwords from Turkish: shish kebab. Loanwords form Native American language: moccasin, toboggan. And American place names: Chicago, Michigan, Saratoga. 2.4.9 Source of most recent loans English is still borrowing and is likely to continue borrowing. Borrowing in recent times is characterized by two main factors:
- Frequency of borrowing is reduced.
- English seems to spread its tentacles to reach and borrow from less known languages. French is still the largest supplier of words to English, which may be because of the geographical proximity. Japanese → source of loans in modern time, because of his increasing commercial importance. Decline of Latin→ English has already borrowed a lot of Latin vocabulary that there is no more left to be borrowed / English, rather than borrowing directly from Latin, makes now new Latinate words from English morphemes originally from Latin. 2.5 Creating new English words Processes used in creating new words in English. 2.5.1 Root creation It’s the building of a word that has no relationship with any previous existing word. But many words that look like root creation, are usually suggested by already existing words → so very few words have been coined by root creation. Ex: Kodak , it’s a pure arbitrary combination of letters, not derived form an existing word. 2.5.2 Echoic words Echoic or onomatopoeic words= find their origin in the specific sound that they are meant to represent (ex. Splash). There are two types of echoic words: Imitative = intends to imitate the sound that it represents: meow, moo, vroom. Symbolic= have less direct association with the sound, it comes in sets with rhyme or alliterate: bump, lump, flip, flop. 2.5.3 Ejaculations Words that attempt to imitate instinctive vocal responsive to emotional situations → also called ‘natural utterances’. Ex: ah ah. 2.5.4 Word formation Word formation uses existing language material words and morphemes, to create new lexical items. → major processes are compounding and affixation. Compounding is the combination of two words (free morphemes), ex: birthday, craftsman, grandfather. Compounds are also found among adjectives: red-hot, banana-flavoured. Also among verbs: download, safeguard. Also prepositions/adverbs: inside, inspite of. Affixation involves the use of prefixes and suffixes to form new words. Ex: celebrat-ion, forget- ful, nap-kin, pre-figure. 2.6 Characteristics of modern English vocabulary Discussion of the size of the vocabulary and the frequency of occurrence of Anglo-Saxon words.
