1、Lecture FourNative English VocabularyNative English vocabulary is made up of Anglo-Saxon words.This category consists of words that were used by the Germanic invaders and are still used in Modern English.Most of them are the common words of the language.Anglo-Saxon words are generally short and conc
2、rete;e.g.parts of the body(arm.bone,chest,ear.eye,foot,hand,heart),the natural landscape(field,hedge,hill,land,meadow,wood),domestic life(door,floor,home,house),the calendar(day,month,moon,sun.year),animals(cow,dog,fish,goat.hen.sheep,swine),common adjectives(black,dark,good,long,white,wide),and com
3、mon verbs(become,do,eat,fly,go,help,kiss.live.love,say,see,sell,send,think).The Celtic language did not have any serious impact on English.Firstly,in the Old English period,only a handful of Celtic words were borrowed,and just a few have survived into modern English,sometimes in regional dialect use
4、,e.g.cumb(deep valley),binn(bin),carr(rock).A few Celtic words of this period derive ultimately from Latin,brought in by the Irish missionaries,e.g.assen(ass),ancor(hermit).Some placenames are Celtic-based.For example,there are river names such as Avon(river),Don.Exe,Ouse,Severn,Thames,Trent,Usk and
5、 Wye.Town names include Bray(hill),Dover(water),Eccles(church),Kent,Leeds,London,York,and the use of caer(fortified place as in Carlisle)and of pen(head,top,hill as in Pendle).Secondly,in the seventeenth century,a few more Celtic words were introduced into English from Irish Gaelic-brogue,galore,sha
6、mrock,tory-and later on:banshee,blarney,colleen.There are no more than two dozen Celtic loanwords in all.Words from Anglo-Saxon are the most frequently used in the English language.The most frequent two hundred words in both British(BrE)and American English(AmE)consist mostly of one syllable.There a
7、re a few two-syllable words(40 in AmE.and 24 in BrE)and a handful of trisyllabic forms(3 in AmE,and 2 in BrE).Only AmE has a single four-syllable item,the word American itself.For the 10,000 most frequent words in English,nearly 32 per cent have their origin in Old English.The hundred most frequentl
8、y used items are almost all from Anglo-Saxon.However,the relative frequency of words varies not only according to text types but also according to the stylistic level.Generally speaking,formal style and specialized language use a greater proportion of foreign loans than does everyday conversation.In
9、 English,many foreign words have been assimilated to the pronunciation and spelling of English.Major Influences on Englishthe Scandinavian influencethe Norman Conquestthe Latin influence.The Scandinavian InfluenceAbout three hundred years after the West Germanic tribes had settled in England,there w
10、as another wave of invasions,this time by Scandinavians.These people included not only Danes,but also Swedes and Norwegians.According to Myers(1992),the dialects they spoke belonged to the Northern division of Germanic.They differed greatly from the dialects of the Angles,Saxons,and Jutes.In spite o
11、f differences in pronunciation,most of the root words were enough alike to be recognizable.The difficulty caused by differences in inflection was partly solved by dropping some of the inflections altogether and being broad-minded about the others.Spelling was not much of a problem,because most peopl
12、e could not read or write,and those who could spelled as they pleased.There were no dictionaries to prove them wrong.Although these Danes moved in on the English and dominated them politically for a time,the two peoples settled down together without much attention to their separate origins,and the l
13、anguages mingled.On the whole,English rather than Danish characteristics won out,but many of the words were so much alike that it is impossible to say whether we owe our present forms to English or Danish origins.Sometimes both forms remained,usually with a somewhat different meaning.Thus we have sh
14、irt and skirt,both of which originally meant a long,smock-like garment,although the English form has come to mean the upper part,and the Danish form the lower.Old English rear and Danish raise are another pair-sometimes interchangeable,sometimes not.The effect on English of the Danish conquest was n
15、ot great.However,hundreds of Danish words came into English,but the structure of English was not fundamentally disturbed.The following are some examples of English words that have come in through Danish.Ale,anger,call,cast,cow,dwell,egg(verb),fellow,flat,gain,gust,hansel,hap,hit,husband,hustings,ill
16、,irk,kid,law,meek,odd,plough,quandary,ransack,score,scrap,scrape,shallow,skill,skin,sky,slouch,swain,take,thrall,thrift,tiding,ugly,want,windlass,window.The Norman ConquestIn 1066,the Normans conquered England.They,like the Danes,had originally come from Scandinavia.They had settled in northern Fran
17、ce,and had given up their own language and learned to speak a dialect of French.For several centuries Normans,and other Frenchmen that they invited in later,held most of the important positions in England,but the bulk of the population were still English.Most of them never learned French,and eventua
18、lly-though only after several centuries all the nobles and officials were using English.Norman French was a class language,never the speech of England.Three main dialects of England at that time were Northern,Southern and Midland.Each writer chose the dialect of his section.A good many French words
19、had entered the English language;and most of the inflections that had survived the Danish pressure had dropped out,with a standard word order making up for their loss.The two changes took place together,and by the time of Chaucer the language had become enough like Modern English to be recognizable.
20、The pronunciation was quite different and the spelling was not standardized.now a student can get at least a general idea of Chaucers meaning without special training,while he can no more read Old English than he can German or Latin,unless he has made a special study of it.Since Chaucers time,more e
21、ndings have disappeared,and there have been other changes.The greatest development has been in the vocabulary.A considerable number of Chaucers words have dropped out of use,and a much greater number of new words have been added.Some of these new words have been made by compounding or otherwise modi
22、fying old ones,but most of them have been borrowed from other languages,particularly Latin.The Latin InfluenceThe Britons had been under Roman domination for about four centuries,and Celtic was intimately tinctured with Latin.Even before they came to England,the settlers had picked up a few Latin wo
23、rds,and they learned others from the Christian missionaries who began to convert them in the sixth century.These early borrowings were taken directly into the spoken language,and most of them have now changed so that their Latin origins are not easy to recognize.Examples include street,wine,bishop,p
24、riest,and church(the last three originally borrowed from Greek by the Romans).After the Norman Conquest,borrowings from Latin were enormously increased.French itself is directly descended from Latin,and we cannot always tell whether an English word came directly from Latin or through French.Suspicio
25、n,for instance,could have come into English by either route.English has also borrowed words from many other languages,particularly Greek.We still do not know exactly how extensive the Anglo-Saxon borrowings are from Latin through Celtic.The following is probably an authentic list of their borrowings
26、 from Latin through Celtic:Caester,Chester:Lat.caestrum(camp or fortified place);seen in such place-names as Chester,Gloucester,Exeter(for Excester),Doncaster.Coln:Lat.colonia(military settlement);seen in such place-names as Lincoln,Colne,Colchester.Port:Lat.portus(harbor);seen in such place-names a
27、s Porchester,Portsmouth,Davenport.Wick,wich:Latin vicus(a town or village);seen in such place-names as Wickham,Wigton.From 597 A.D to 1066 A.D.,a variety of additional Latin words were introduced.Most of the following terms probably came into English between the 7th and 11th centuries.(1)Church term
28、s of Latin origin:altar,candle,chalice,cowl,creed,cup,disciple,font,mass,nun,shrine,shrive,etc.(2)Church terms of Greek or Hebrew origin borrowed through Latin:alms,angel,anthem,amen,apostle,bishop,canon,Christ,church,clerk,deacon,devil,martyr,minister,monk,pope,priest,psalm,school,stole,etc.(3)Trad
29、e words and words for articles of commerce and agriculture:beet,box,cheese,fan,fork,kettle,linen,mat,mulberry,pease,pear,penny,poppy,pound,sock,spend,ton,etc.(4)Miscellaneous:ass,belt,castle,chalk,coulter,fever,fiddle,fennel,hemp,kitchen,lake,mill,noon,pillow,shambles,sickle,sole,tile,tunic,verse,di
30、sh,etc.Borrowings in EnglishBorrowing is the process of imitating a word from a foreign language and,at least partly,adapting it in sound or grammar to the native language.The word thus borrowed is called a loanword or borrowing.English seems to have welcomed foreign words,especially from the Middle
31、 English period onwards.Contemporary English borrows from over 120 languages all over the world.English has borrowed more from French during this century than from any other language.Most of borrowings into English have been nouns,but there are some adjectives,verbs and interjections.Among the borro
32、wed nouns having to do with food and drink are hummus(from Arabic),frijoles refritos(from Spanish for beans refried),nosh(from Yiddish),ciao(from Italian),macho(from Spanish),wok(from Chinese),and glitch(from German).Despite their unusual spellings,these words come sooner or later to conform to the
33、rules of English phonology,morphology,and syntax.In time,loanwords undergo the same morphological processes that affect other words.Nosh,for example,was borrowed as an intransitive verb(as in I feel like noshing)but has since taken on new use as a transitive verb(as in Lets nosh some hot dogs).It ha
34、s also added the agentive suffix-er,as in nosher.By a functional shift,the verb nosh has come to be used as a noun meaning a snack.In British usage,nosh has been compounded into the noun nosh-up a large or elaborate meal.Borrowing may be a very complex process,because loanwords may have come to English not directly,but via another language or two.For example,chess was borrowed into English from Middle French in the fourteenth century.The French word(plural esches,singular eschec)came from Arabic,which had earlier borrowed it from Persian shah(king).
