Lecture III

Definition

Etymology is the science that
deals with the origin and
history of words.
 The English vocabulary may be
divided into three large groups:

The Old English vocabulary
Borrowed words
Words created in England
 The Indo-European group of
words

 consists of words which were not borrowed from any
foreign language and which are common to all the Indo-
European languages;
 is he oldest stratum of words in the English vocabulary;
 includes the words denoting names of natural
phenomena, members of the family, parts of the body,
many trees, animals, different materials, some numerals,
adjectives, verbs, the pronoun “I”, and the most common
adverbs and prepositions;
 examples: sunne (sun); mona (moon); wind; snow; modor
(mother); etc.
The Germanic or Teutonic group of words

 consists of words which are found in all or almost
all Teutonic languages (Gothic, German, English,
Dutch etc);
 forms the largest part of the basic word stock of
Modern English;
 includes names of animals, birds, plants, things
produced by man, food products and most
irregular verbs;
 examples: wif (wife); hand; cu (cow); god (good);
drincan (drink) seon (see); etc.
 Words created in England

 are not found in any other languages;
 consist of morphemes existing in
other Indo-European languages;
 examples: boy, girl, bird, black,
spring, always, almost, lord, to build,
to understand, etc.
 Borrowings

 the term ‘borrowing’ is used in linguistics to denote
the process of adopting words from other languages
and also the result of this process – the language
material itself;
 more than a half of Modern English vocabulary
consists of words borrowed from different foreign
languages (Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian);
 the greatest number of borrowings has come from
French;
 a large portion of borrowings (41%) is scientific and
technical terms;
 Borrowings

 enter the language in two ways: through oral
speech and through written speech;
 all borrowed words adjust themselves to the
phonetic and lexico-grammatical norms of the
language (phonetic assimilation, grammatical
assimilation and lexical assimilation).
 The native element of the English
vocabulary

 brought to Britain in the fifth century by the German
tribes;
 comprises the small Anglo-Saxon stock of words (25-
30% of the English vocabulary);
 most of the native words have undergone great
changes in their semantic structure, and are
nowadays polysemantic;
 the native element in Modern English is mostly
monosyllabic.
The foreign element in Modern English

Foreign words generally come into a language in
two principal ways:
a) as a result of the so-called language cross;
b) as a result of economic, political and cultural
relations between nations.
 foreign borrowings may be subdivided into 4
groups:
1. aliens; 2. denizens; 3. translations-loans;
4. semantic borrowings
