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19. The object of Lexicology. Etymological structure of the English vocabulary (the Native elements and the Borrowed elements).

Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words (ex. their meaning, the rules of their composition, relations between words, derivation). The object of lexicology is lexicon, or vocabulary of the particularly language. Sharing its object with other linguistic disciplines lexicology nevertheless concentrates on its own aspects of analysis: the structure, semantics and function of the lexicon.

Etymology is the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. According to the origin, the word-stock (vocabulary) may be subdivided into two main groups: one comprises the native elements; the other consists of the borrowed words.

Native Words belong to the original English stock (from the Old English period). They are mostly words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles in the 5th century by Germanic tribes. They form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech.

Characteristics: –most of them are polysemantic (man, head, go); –most of them are stylistically neutral; –many of them enter a number of phraseological units; –great word-building power.

The native word-stock includes the words of Indio-European origin and the words of Common Germanic origin.

I-E form the oldest layer. They fall into definite semantic groups:

- terms of kinship: father, mother, son, daughter, brother;

- words denoting the most important objects and phenomena of nature: sun, moon, star, water, wood, hill, stone, tree;

- names of animals and birds: bull, cat, crow, goose, wolf;

- parts of human body: arm, eye, foot, heart;

- the verbs: bear, come, sit, stand, etc;

- the adjectives: hard, quick, slow, red, white.

- most of the auxiliary and modal verbs: shall, will, should, would, must, can, may;

- pronouns: I, he, you, his, who, whose;

- prepositions: in. out, on, under;

- numerals: one, two;

- conjunctions: and, but.

CG words contain a great number of semantic groups. Examples:

- the nouns: summer, winter, storm, group, house, room, hope, life;

- the verbs: bake, burn, keep, make, meet, rise, see, send;

- the adjectives: broad, dead, deaf, deep.

Many adverbs and pronouns belong to this layer, though small in number.

Borrowings (Loan Words)

A borrowed (loan) word is a word adopted from another language and modified in sound form, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English. Through its history the English language came in contact with many languages and borrowed freely from them. The greatest influx of borrowings mainly came from Latin (language of learning and religion), French and Scandinavian (the languages of the conquerors). The greatest number of borrowings has come from French.

Scandinavian languages (the personal pronouns: they, their, them; also same, till, though, fro (adv)). Sometimes words were borrowed to fill in gaps in the vocabulary. Thus, the English borrowed Latin, Greek, Spanish words (paper, tomato, potato) when these vegetables were first brought to England.

Oral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history (mill, inch) -are usually short and undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. French communique, belles-letres, naivete) preserve their spelling, they are often rather long and their assimilation is a long process.

Though the borrowed words always undergo changes in the process of borrowing, some of them preserve their former characteristics for a long period. This enables us to recognize them as the borrowed element. Examples are:

–the initial position of the sounds [v], [d], [z] is a sign that the word is not native: vacuum (Lat), valley (FR.), volcano (Ital.), vanilla (Sp.);

–may be rendered by «g» and «j» gem (Lat), jungle (Hindi), gesture (Lat), giant (O.Fr.), genre, gendarme (Fr.);

–the initial position of the letters «x», «j» «z» is a sign that the word is a borrowed one: zeal (Lat), zero (Fr.), zinc (Gr.), xylophone (Gr.);

–the combinations ph, kh, eau in the root: philology (Gr.), khaki (Indian), beau (Fr.); –«ch» is pronounced [k] in words of Greek origin: echo, school, [S] in late French borrowings: machine, parachute; and [tS] in native words and early borrowings.

The native element1

The borrowed element

1.Indo-European element

2.Germanic element

3.English Proper element (no earlier than 5th c. A. D.)

I.Celtic (5th — 6th c. A. D.)

II.Latin 1st group: 1st c. B. C. 2nd group: 7th c. A. D. 3rd group: the Renaissance period

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)

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