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Scandinavian loan-words in Modern English. Celtic elements in the English Vocabulary.

By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles. Scandinavians belonged to the same group of peoples as Englishmen and their languages had much in common. As the result of this conquest there are about 700 borrowings from Scandinavian into English.

Scandinavians and Englishmen had the same way of life, their cultural level was the same, they had much in common in their literature therefore there were many words in these languages which were almost identical, e.g.

ON OE Modern E
syster sweoster sister
fiscr fisc fish
felagi felawe fellow
     
     

However there were also many words in the two languages which were different, and some of them were borrowed into English, such nouns as: bull, cake, egg, kid, knife, skirt, window etc, such adjectives as: flat, ill, happy, low, odd, ugly, wrong, such verbs as : call, die, guess, get, give, scream and many others.

Even some pronouns and connective words were borrowed which happens very seldom, such as: same, both, till, fro, though, and pronominal forms with «th»: they, them, their. Scandinavian influenced the development of phrasal verbs, which did not exist in Old English, at the same time some prefixed verbs came out of usage, e.g. ofniman, beniman. Phrasal verbs are now highly productive in English /take off, give in etc/.

???6.Greek borrowings. Criteria of Greek borrowings.

The Greek language has contributed to the English vocabulary in three ways:

1. directly as an immediate donor,

2. indirectly through other intermediate language(s), as an original donor (mainly through Latin and French), and

3. modern coinages using Greek roots.

 

Greek borrowings appeared in English during the Middle English period due to the Great Revival of Learning

7.Borrowing – 1) (process) resorting to the word-stock of other languages for words to express new concepts, to further differentiate the existing concepts and to name new objects, etc.; 2) (result) a loan word, borrowed word – a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language. – See Assimilation, Source of borrowing, Origin of borrowing. The following types of borrowings can be distinguished:

- loan words proper – words borrowed from another language and assimilated to this or that extent;

- loan translation – 1) (process) borrowing by means of literally translating words (usu. one part after another) or word combinations, by modelling words after foreign patterns; 2) (result) translation loans (calques) – words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation: e.g. chain smoker::Germ Kettenraucher; goes without saying::Fr. va sans dire; summit conference:: Germ. Gipfel Konferenz, Fr. conférence au sommet;



- semantic borrowings/loans – the term is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g. policy).

Doublet (linguistics) In etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins (or possibly triplets, etc.) when they have the same etymological root but have entered the language through different routes. Because the relationship between words that have the same root and the same meaning is fairly obvious, the term is mostly used to characterize pairs of words that have diverged in meaning, at times making their shared root a point of irony

For example English pyre and fire are doublets. Subtle differences in the resulting modern words contribute to the richness of the English language, as indicated by the doublets frail and fragile (which share theLatin root, fragilis): one might refer to a fragile tea cup and a frail old woman, but frail tea cup and fragile old woman are uncommon.

Another example of nearly synonymous doublets is aperture and overture (the commonality behind the meanings is "opening"), but doublets may develop divergent meanings, such as the opposite words, host andguest from the same PIE root, which occur as a doublet in Latin and then Old French hospes, before having been borrowed into English. Doublets also vary with respect to how far their forms have diverged. For example, the resemblance between levy and levee is obvious, whereas the connection between sovereign and soprano is harder to guess synchronically from the forms of the words alone.

Etymological twins are usually a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved separately in French. An example of this is warranty and guarantee. Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language (usually Latin and some other Romance language – see Latin influence in English).

EXAMPLES

shadow, shade and shed (all three from Old English sceadu "shadow, shade")

stand, stay, state, status and static (native, Middle French, Latin (twice) and Ancient Greek via Latin, from the same Indo-European root)

chief and chef (both from French at different times)

secure and sure (from Latin, the latter via French)

plant and clan (from Latin, the latter via Old Irish)

8.The Norman-French element in the English vocabulary system.

Norman French is the 11th century language of France and England. It is an Indo-European language.In 1066, the Norman king, William the Conquerer, invaded England. Many Norman French words entered the language after this. In general, the Normans were the nobility, while the native English were their servants. The names of domestic animals and their meats show this relationship. The animal name is English ("cow", "sheep", "pig") while the names of the meats derived from these animals is French("beef", "mutton", "pork").

Many words have been borrowed from Norman French. These can be grouped into several types:

Legal terms ("adultery", "slander"), military words ("surrender", "occupy"), names of meats ("bacon", "venison") and words from the royal court ("chivalry", "majesty"). The non-metric unit of volume (the "gallon") is Norman French. There are many other words.

The Normans introduced the QU spelling for words containing KW ("question").

archer   One of several military words from Norman French.
bacon   Cured pig's meat. One of many names for meats from Norman French.
bail to take charge Security for a prisoner's appearance.
bailiff carrier Officer who executes writs.
beef   Meat of ox or cow.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 2572


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