lavrova_n_a_a_coursebook_on_english_lexicology_angliiskaya_l

VII

The English Language absorbed a lot of words not only from Romance, Greek and Scandinavian languages. The influence of Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi should not be disregarded.

Study the table below and say in what spheres of life the following borrowed words are used. What notions do they convey? How important are they for everyday communication?

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Below is a list of words borrowed during the Renaissance from Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. Sort them out and allocate each word to one of the languages. Say what the meaning of each word is:

Bully, cookie, kit, ogle, scoop, scuffle, snuffle, track, albino, cocoa, hacienda, jerk, palaver, mantilla, torero.

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IX

Cognates are words that are etymologically related. As was mentioned elsewhere, native speakers, however, may no longer be aware of this connection. Thus, the words “fame”, “infamy” “infant”, “infantry” and “bandit” are etymologically related. Look up their etymology in a dictionary and trace their connection.

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Roots which are usually of Latin or Greek origin and emerge in a number or related words, but are no longer associated with a clear-cut meaning are called “remnant” roots. These are such roots as “-fer”, “-cur-”, “-aster”, “punct-”, “-pyr-”, “cap-

”, “syn-” (“sym-”, “syl-”), “-lev-”, “fa-” (fe-, pha-, phe-). Study their meaning and say how it is reflected in the meaning of the words that they form.

-fer: “to carry, bring, bear” – transfer, refer, prefer, confer, infer, offer

-cur-: “run” – current, concur, incur, occur, recur -aster: “star” – disaster, asteroid, astronaut

punct-: “point” – punctuation, punctual, punctilious, puncture

-pyr-: “fire; fever” – pyrotechnics, antipyretic cap-: “take, seize” – captor, capture, captive syn-: (sym-, syl-): “together, with” – synonym, syn-

thesis, syllogism, syllable, symmetry, sympathy,

-lev-: “lift, rise” – elevate, lever, levy, levity

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XI

Some Indo-European remnant roots are characterized by gradation, a process by which root vowels alternate with each other or occasionally drop out of the root. There are different types of gradation, but the most wide-spread are e-gradation, o-gradation and zero-gradation.

Study the following words with gradations and say how the words are related semantically.

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Doublets are a pair of distinct words that ultimately derive from the same single source, but diverge along the line of their development. Doublets may resemble each other in form and sometimes in meaning. Doublets are a result of the historical process of borrowing, which involved acquiring the same or related vocabulary items from different sources, usually Latin and French.

Study the etymology of the doublets below and say whether the words are at present semantically related.

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XIII

Eponyms (from Greek “eponymous” “named for”) are words that can be traced back to a proper name (whose bearer is noted for something) but function as common nouns and may no longer be capitalized.

Study the following eponyms and say what the sphere of their application and usage is. Divide them into several groups according to their origin.

Atlas: a collection of maps. The mythical Atlas fought an unsuccessful war against Zeus, who condemned him to bear the heavens on his shoulders.

Band-aid ™: is usually generalized to refer to any small bandage for a cut or scratch.

Bikini: the islands where the atom bomb was tested.

Boycott: after Charles Boycott, an English land agent in Ireland. Cardigan: a sweater or jacket that opens down the front. Named after the 7th Earl of Cardigan (J.T. Brundell, 1797–1868), who wore such a jacket when he led the heroic Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.

Casanova: after Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt, who wrote vividly about his amorous adventures throughout Europe.

Cashmere: fine wool; named for Cashmere (now Kashmir), a region in the Himalayas where this wool is obtained.

Chauvinism: militant patriotism. Traced back to Nicholas Chauvin, a wounded French veteran of the Napoleonic Wars famed for his devotion to Napoleon and the Empire. At first he was admired, but after Napoleon’s downfall he was ridiculed for his excessive patriotism.

Cheddar: a village in Somerset whence the cheese first came. Dahlia: after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl.

Denim: cotton cloth, originally serge, made in the town of Nîmes, southern France, hence serge de Nim.

Derby: a stiff felt hat with rounded crown and narrow brim; named for the Derby, the annual horse race in Britain, at which men wore this kind

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of hat. The Derby was founded by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780, after the county of this name in central England.

Derrick: a crane for lifting heavy weights; originally, a structure for hanging someone, a gallows, named after Derrick, surname of a noted hangman of the Tyburn gallows in London during

the 1600s.

Dunce: a stupid person. A clipping from the name of John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), a teacher of the-

ology and philosophy at Oxford who challenged the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Followers of Aquinas attacked the disciples of Scotus, calling then “Dunses”, and finally equating them with fools and blockheads.

Guillotine: a device with a large blade for beheading people, named for Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), a French physician who was a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1789 when he proposed that those condemned to death should be beheaded by a machine, which would be quicker and more humane than the methods used until then by executioners.

Guy: named for the Catholic conspirator, member of the Gunpowder Plot in Great Britain, 1606. Since he was held up for ridicule, and in Britain the word still means “a person of odd or grotesque appearance”, it is apparent that American English has generalized and neutralized the word. Hector: to bully. Named for Hector, the champion of Troy in The Lliad, who fought the Greeks.

Jeans: from the Italian city of Genoa, where the cloth was first made, as in blue jeans.

Jello ™: a particular brand of jellied emulsion, is generalized to refer to any edible substance of the same type.

Nemesis: after the name of a Greek goddess who punished violations of all forms of rightful order and proper behavior.

Malapropism: a ridiculously inappropriate use of words; named after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in R. Sheridan’s comedy “The Rivals” (1775). She regularly misapplied words by replacing the intended word with one that sounded alike.

Maverick: an individualist, a political independent; (earlier) an animal unmarked with a brand. Named after A. Maverick (1803–1870), a Texas rancher who refused to brand his cattle, saying that branding was cruel.

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His neighbours accused him of lying, since

it allowed Maverick to claim nay unbranded cattle on the range as his. By the turn of the century, “maverick” had taken on the meaning of someone independent and unconven-

tional, especially a politician who breaks away from his party.

Mentor: a trusted guide, advisor. Named after “Mentor”, the faithful friend of Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey. The goddess Athene assumes the form of Mentor when she accompanies Telemachus as a guide and advisor in his search for his father.

Morphine: a drug extracted from opium. Named after “Morpheus”, the Roman God of dreams, son of the god of sleep.

Panic: noises which caused fear in the flocks by night were attributed in Ancient Greece to Pan, the God of misdeeds; a panic is irrational behavior in the herd.

Nicotine: after Jacques Nicot, who introduced tobacco into France in 1560.

Pompadour: an upswept style of hair. Named after the Marquise de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV of France, who wore her hair in this style.

Raglan: a loose overcoat with sleeves extending to the collar. Named after Lord Raglan (1788–1855), a British field marshal who wore such a coat during the Crimean War.

Sandwich: after the eighteenth-century British nobleman, the Earl of Sandwich, who brought bread and meat together to provide sustenance for himself.

Sardonic (alteration of “sardinic”): coming from the island of Sardinia. Refers to a type of sarcastic laughter supposed to resemble the grotesque effects of eating a certain Sardinian plant.

Silhouette: a portrait made by tracing the outline of a profile, figure and so on. Named after Etienne de Silhouette (1709–1767), the controller of finances in France in 1759.

Bork: to attack a political candidate, especially in the media. Named after Judge Robert H. Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 was rejected by the Senate after an extensive media attacks by his opponents.

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Quisling: a traitor who cooperates with the enemy; named after major Vidkun Quisling, who headed Norway’s puppet government under the Nazis in World War II and was executed for treason in 1945.

Sherry: white wine, originally from Xerez, now Jerex de la Frontera in Spain. The final “s” was deleted on a mistaken view that it was the plural suffix. Solon: a lawgiver. Named for Solon, an Athenian statesman and lawgiver. Strangelove: a military strategist who plans large-scale nuclear warfare; named after Dr. Strangelove, a mad military planner in the 1964 motion picture “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by St. Kubrick.

Velcro ™: a fastening consisting of two strips of nylon fabric, one having tiny hooked threads and the other a coarse surface, that form a strong bond when pressed together.

Xerox ™: especially as a verb has come to mean “to copy by a dry process”.

Reborrowing (обратное заимствование) is the process when a word is borrowed from one language into another, and then it is borrowed back into the original language in a different form or with a different meaning.

Study the examples below and say how the meaning of the reborrowed word differs from its etymon (etymon – is the original word to which a word’s etymology can be traced).

French: “tenez” (to hold): English “tennis”: French: “tennis” (the name of the sport)

French: “cotte” English: “riding coat”: French: “redingote”: English: “redingote”

Greek: “kínma” (movement): French: “cinéma”: Greek “sinemá” (cinema)

English: “animation”: Japanese: “anime”: English “anime” (Japanese animation)

English: crack (news, gossip): Irish Gaelic: craic (fun): English: craic

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Phono-semantic matching (фоносемантическое соответствие) – is an inconspicuous, disguised borrowing in which a foreign word is rendered by means of the recipient language, the resultant word resembling the original word phonetically and se-

mantically. The rationale behind phono-semantic borrowing is as follows:

Recycling obsolete lexical items; camouflaging foreign influence; facilitating learning; playfulness; iconicity; political correctness; attracting customers (if they are brand-names). Some examples are: the Mandarin form of “World Wide Web” is “wàn wéi wng”, which literally means “myriad dimensional net”; the Icelandic “toekni” (technology, technique) is a phono-semantic matching of the Danish “teknik”, “toekni” derives from “toeki” (tool) and the nominal suffix “-ni”; Turkish “okul” is a phonosemantic variant of the French “école” (school), “okul” is derived from “okumak” (to read, to study).

In what way does phono-semantic matching differ from loantranslation, or calquing?

Recommended reading:

Лексикология английского языка: учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. / Р.3. Гинзбург, С.С. Хидекель, Г.Ю. Князева и А.А. Санкин. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – М.: Высш. школа, 1979.

Маковский М.М. Английская этимология. – М.: Высш. шк., 1986. Metcalf A. Predicting new words: the secrets of their success. – Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (OCDEE). – Oxford, N.Y., 1996.

Steinmetz S., Kipfer B.A. The Life of Language. The fascinating ways the words are born, live and die. – N.Y.; Toronto; L.: Random House Reference, 2006.

Stockwell R., Minkova D. English Words: History and Structure. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. Second edition. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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4. Word-building

Points to ponder

–What is the smallest meaningful indivisible unit in language? In what way can the status of this unit vary? What other types of units do you know?

–Define a productive word-building pattern and name the types of productive patterns in English. Say what accounts for their productivity.

–Does the dichotomy “productive – non-productive” equal the dichotomy “central-marginal”?

–Say what derivation, composition and shortening are and specify their major types.

–What do the terms “aphaeresis”, “syncope” and “apocope” refer to? Give examples.

–Can the meaning of a derivative or a compound be deduced from the meaning of their constituents?

–Why does one and the same suffix or prefix can lend different meanings to the stem? What does it depend on?

–Why is conversion so typical of English? What types of semantic shift regularly occur in converted words? What part of speech seems to be most prone to conversion?

–What is the difference between semi-affixes and combining forms? Which type of morpheme is more productive in modern English and why?

–What other terms for “shortening” do you know?

–In what situations do people tend to reduplicate words or to apply reduplicated words?

–What is “blending”? Specify the structural and semantic types of blends. Say in what types of discourse they are most commonly used. Name all the possible reasons for their usage. Enumerate all the synonymic terms for “blending”. What term do Russian scholars seem to give preference to and Western ones? How can you explain this diversity of terms for “blending”. Do you know the name of the writer who popularized this word-building pattern?

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