5.Etymological composition of the English Word- Stock

Words of native origin and their characteristics.

The English vocabulary has the composite nature. From the point of view its origin the English words may be divided 2 layers:

The ancient Indo- European layer comprises different semantic groups:

-words expressed family relations: father, mother, son, daughter, brother;

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

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

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

-some of the most frequent verbs: bear, come, sit, stand;

-the adjectives denoting concrete physical properties: hard, quick, slow, red, white.

-most numerals.

A much bigger part of the native vocabulary layer is formed by words of the Common Germanic stock:

names of seasons

-phenomena of nature: storm, ice

-the most common actions: to burn, die

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-nouns: ground, bridge, house, shop, room, coal, iron, lead, cloth, hat, hand, life, sea, ship, hope, etc;

-many adverbs and pronouns;

-verbs: bake, buy, drive, hear, keep, learn;

-adjectives: broad, dead, deaf, deep.

The English proper element – specifically English words having no cognates in other languages: bird, boy, girl, lady, lord, woman, daisy, always.

6.Causes and ways of borrowing into English. Etymological doublets.

English History contains a great number of occasions and direct linguistic contents. The voc. Is very responsive to this contacts.

The fact that the major part of the voc. Consist of loan words is due to the specific conditions of the E.lang. development. Such historical facts are the Roman invasion; the introduction of Christianity(bishop, nun, master, chapter)the Danish and Norman conquest(-sk;-sc: skirt husband) the development of British Colonialism.

The number & character of borrowings do not depend only on the historical conditions but also on the degree of the genetic & structural proximity of lang.(the closer the lang. the deeper the proximity).

The source of borrowing is applied to the lang. from which the word was directly taken into E.

The origin of borrowing is applied to the lang. the word may be traced to.

Borrowing enter the lang. in 2 ways: from oral speech(by immediate contacts);O.B. took place in early periods of history , are usually short & they undergo considerable change in the act of adoption

from written speech; W.B. preserve their spelling & some peculiarities of their sound form.

B. considerably enlarge the E. Voc. &brought about some changes in E. synonymic groups .

If B.words were identical in meaning with those already in E. The adopted w. very often displace the native w. in most cases the B.W. & synonymous native w. remained un the lang. becoming more or less differentiated in meaning & use.

The number of synonymic groups in E. increased greatly .As the result of the differentiation in meaning between synonymous w. many native w. narrowed their meaning or sphere of application.

Another phenomenon which is worth mentioning is semantic B.- the B. of meaning from a w. in a foreign lang. this often takes place in E.w. having common roots with some w. in another lang. Etymological doublets are 2 or more words of the same lang-ge, derived originally from the same route, but having entered the vocabulary at different periods of time, or from different sources. They are different in form & often different in meaning, for ex: (Fr) prize ← Pris → price to praise;

Among groups of etymological doublets, the most important are:

doublets from different lang-ges:(English & Scandinavian, respectively: shirt (E), skirt (Sc), shabby (E), skabby(Sc);English & Latin: eatably (E.) – edible (L.), nakid (En.) – nude (L.);English & French: word (En.) – verb (Fr.);Latin & French: senior (L.) – sir (Fr.), canal – channel; captain – chietton.

doublets from different periods of the same lang-ge:Norman French: card, corpse. Perisian French – chart, corps;Earlier Latin (camp) – Later Latin (campus).

doublets from different changes within English itself:Loss of initial syllable: history – story; example –sample; accute – cute; adventure- venture;Vowel interchange: shade – shed, mode – mood, snob – snub.Etymological thriplets occur very rare in the lang-ge: (L.) hospital, (N-Fr) hostel, (Perisian-Fr) hotel, (L) to capture, (N-Fr) to catch, (Per-Fr) to chase.Hybrids or morphological borrowings – these are derivatives or compound words, which consist of morphemes, originating from different lang-ges.(e.g. violinist (Italian+Greek), unmistakable (E.+E.+Sc.+Fr), blameless (Fr.+E.))