25.The Norman conquest and its impact on English

The largest group of borrowings are French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman conquest. French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by French scribes. As it was difficult for French scribes to copy English texts they substituted the letter «u» before «v», «m», «n» and the digraph «th» by the letter «o» to escape the combination of many vertical lines. The were also some phonetical changes/

Borrowing of French words.

There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings:

a) words relating to government : administer, empire, state, government;

b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;

c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence, barrister;

d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery;

e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl ;

f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew.

Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:

a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville;

b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre;

c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;

d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

26. Word mng. Approaches to defining it

The lexical meaning of a word is the realization of a notion by means of a definite language system. A word is a language unit, while a notion is a unit of thinking. A notion cannot exict without a word expressing it in the language, but there are words which do not express any notion but have a lexical meaning.

The term «notion» was introduced into lexicology from logics. A notion denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their relations. Notions, as a rule, are international, especially with the nations of the same cultural level. While meanings can be nationally limited. Grouping of meanings in the semantic structure of a word is determined by the whole system of every language.

The number of meanings does not correspond to the number of words, neither does the number of notions. Their distribution in relation to words is peculiar in every language. Development of lexical meanings in any language is influenced by the whole network of ties and relations between words and other aspects of the language.

Approaches to defining Lex. Mng:

Referential approach:

Mng – is the info conveyed from the speaker to the listener. Mng remains stable if we have adequate translation from one L. to another.

There’s no direct connection between the sign & the mng. of the W. Real objects don’t belong to linguistic studies. Content is a unit of lexicology, mng. belongs to the language.The concepts are more or less the same for the humanity for a certain period of time. But they also change in time. The mngs. Are different in languages, but the concepts are more or less the same.

Criticism: it’s not easy to correctly guess the direct referent; some Ws have no referent at all; some objects have several different names. Functional approach:

Mng = W’s use

Wittgenstein: the number of usages = the number of mngs

EG: deep: see wound, sleep, purple

Operational approach:

Tries to define mng through its role in communication. Info conveyed from the speaker to the listener =>deals with sentenses => mng => info

This approach fails to draw a line between direst sense & implication of W.