Transcript English Lexicology The History of English Vocabulary

English Lexicology
The History of English and Sources of
English Vocabulary
Week 2: Mar. 3, 2009
Instructor: LIU Hongyong
Introduction
In the study of English vocabulary, it is
important to know about the history of
English.
 We will look at the major historical
events that have shaped the English
language.

Introduction
We pay special attention to the development
of the native Germanic vocabulary, and also
to the forces that introduced a large number
of foreign words, especially from Latin,
Greek, and French.
 This combination makes English vocabulary
extremely rich and heterogeneous among the
world languages.

The World Languages
It is estimated that there are about 5000
languages all over the world, which can be
grouped into about 300 language families,
such as Sino-Tibetan Family, IndoEuropean Family, Austronesian Family,
Altaic Family, and so on.
 Chinese is a member in the Sino-Tibetan
Family, while English is a member in the
Indo-European Family.

The Sino-Tibetan Family (汉藏语系）

The Sino-Tibetan Family includes two branches:
The Tibeto-Burman branch （藏缅语族）
The Sinitic branch （汉语族）

These branches are similar to families: groups of
related languages have a common ancestor. We
refer to their common ancestor languages by
using the Proto- prefix: Proto-Tibeto-Burman,
Proto-Sinitic.
Family vs. Branch

The only difference between a branch and a
family is that a branch’s proto-language has an
identified ancestor: the ancestor of Proto-Sinitic
was Proto-Sino-Tibetan, but we don’t know what
the ancestor of Proto-Sino-Tibetan is.
The Tibeto-Burman Branch
There are 300 or more Tibeto-Burman languages.
Most of them are found in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan,
northern and northeastern India, and Pakistan.
There are about seventy-five Tibeto-Burman
languages in Myanmar (Burma), including
Burmese, Lahu, and the Karen languages.
A sizeable number are spoken in southern China,
including Lolo (Yi), Bai, Jingpo, and Qiang.
The Sinitic Branch
Seven dialects
 Yue (Cantonese)
 Kejia (also called Hakka)
 Min
 Xiang (Hsiang)
 Wu
 Gan (Kan)
 Mandarin (官话）
Some of these groups are
often referred to, more or
less loosely, by reference to
the best-known language in
the group, e.g. Cantonese
for Yue, Hokkien for Min
(or more precisely,
Southern Min).
Geographical terms are also
sometimes used, e.g.
Taiwanese, Hainanese,
Shanghainese.
Mandarin （普通话）

The standard language of China is Mandarin
(based on the dialect of Beijing), also known as
Modern Standard Chinese or as Putonghua
‘common language’, or as Guoyu in Taiwan.

Many Chinese from southern China have
migrated and settled in Southeast Asia and in
Australia. Among them the most widely spoken
language is probably Cantonese.
Mandarin
The word “mandarin” has at least three meanings:



It can refer to the Beijing dialect （北京话）; on
this occasion, it is also called Beijing Mandarin.
It can also refer to a large number of dialects of a
sub-branch （官话方言） of the Sinitic branch of
Sino-Tibetan family.
It can also refer to Putonghua（普通话）.
Mandarin
The Austronesian Family (南岛）


The Austronesian language family is the largest
and most widespread in the world, with around
700 (maybe as many as 1,200) languages
altogether and 300 million native speakers.
Aside from Southeast Asia, Austronesian
languages are found on numerous islands in the
eastern and central Pacific Ocean all the way to
Easter Island. There is also a western outpost
language (Malagasy), spoken on the island of
Madagascar.
The Indo-European Family
The Indo-European Family hosts most
languages of Europe, the Near East, and
India.
 Linguists have divided the Indo-European
languages into several groups, or branches.

The Indo-European Family


For example, the Italic branch includes Latin
and its descendants the Romance Languages
(‘originating in Rome’) (Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), as well
as other extinct languages.
Other groups important in the history of
English include Celtic (e.g., Welsh, Irish, and
Scots Gaelic), Hellenic (Greek), etc.
(Denning, K. et. al, 2007: 23)

Groups of related languages have a common
ancestor. We refer to their common ancestor
languages by using the Proto- prefix:
Proto-Italic
Proto-Celtic
Proto-Hellenic

Proto-Indo-European
A branch’s proto-language has an identified
ancestor: the ancestor of Proto-Italic was ProtoIndo-European, but we don’t know what the
ancestor of Proto-Indo-European was.
The Germanic Branch
The branch of Indo-European that
includes English is called the Germanic
group. Proto-Germanic was probably
spoken in northern Germany and southern
Scandinavia.
 Proto-Germanic developed into not only
English, but also several other languages
we are familiar with.

The Germanic Branch
Some Germanic tribes moved eastward, into
what is now Romania and Ukraine, and
developed the language branch known as
East Germanic.
 The most important language in this group
was Gothic. All speakers of East Germanic
languages eventually abandoned them in
favor of other languages, so the East
Germanic branch is now extinct.

The Germanic Branch
The Germanic language that remained after
the East Germanic split off developed into
two new groups, North Germanic and
West Germanic.
 The West Germanic group includes English.
The North Germanic branch includes Viking
Norse, which developed into Old Norse and
eventually into modern Scandinavian
languages such as Icelandic, Norwegian,
Swedish, and Danish.

The Origins of a Nation
Until the fifth century, England was inhabited
by Celts (凯尔特人). The Roman army came
to govern and to trade, but not to settle.
 Many of their army camps are now important
cities, such as Gloucester, Winchester,
Chester, Manchester, and so on.
 All these names are formed from the Roman
word castra, which means an armed camp.
They brought Christianity to the Celts.

The Origins of a Nation
In 410A.D. all the Roman troops withdrew.
When the Romans left, the Germanic tribes
poured into the island.
 By the end of the fifth century, West
Germanic speakers had taken control of
England. The Christian Celts were wholly
defeated. They were pushed back into
mountains of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, where
their separate languages—Welsh, Gaelic and
Erse may still be heard.

Old English (450-1100)

In the fifth century, the Germanic
invaders conquered and occupied the
eastern part of the British island. The
Celtic language originally spoken in that
area was replaced by the West Germanic
dialects spoken by the invaders, as the
original inhabitants (the Celts) were
killed, were relocated, or adopted the
language of the now dominant society.
Old English (450-1100)

Roughly speaking, the tribes that settled
in Britain comprise three groups: the
Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The
Angles and the Saxons occupied the
greatest part of the country, so that the
Germanic civilization that emerged in
Britain is often called Anglo-Saxon. The
Angles lent their name to the language—
English, and to the land —England (the
land of Angles).
Old English (450-1100)

The period from 450 to 1100 is
known as the Old English period or
the Anglo-Saxon period.

In the sixth century, the Roman missionaries
headed by St. Augustine brought
Christianity to the Germanic tribes (mainly
the Saxons). The English language adopted
many words from Latin, the official
language of the church. Latin provided not
only religious vocabulary (e.g., abbot, altar,
disciple, hymn, nun, mass, pope, and priest)
but also a surprising number of what are
now everyday words (e.g., candle, cap,
school, and spend).
Scandinavian Influences

Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries
and into the eleventh, Norwegian and
Danish Vikings invaded large parts of
England. As a consequence, English
borrowed words from the North
Germanic tongue of the invaders, Viking
Norse.
Many words beginning with sc-/skare borrowed from Scandinavian
languages, e. g. score, scorch, skill,
skin, skirt, sky.
Scandinavian Influences

This created an interesting mixture, because Old
English was very similar to this close Germanic
relative. For example,
Old English
Norse loan
shrub
scrub
lend
loan
rear
raise
shirt
skirt
craft
skill
Scandinavian Influences

Several hundred Norse words were borrowed
into Old English, among them till, flat, they,
skin, egg, etc.
Nouns
Pronouns
Prepositions
birth, bull, gap, quest, leg, egg, sister, skin
both, some, their, them, they
fro, till
Adverbs
Adjectives
Conjunctions
Verbs
aloft, seemly
flat
though
are, call, die, drown, get, give, lift, raise, take
Middle English (1100-1500)

The Middle English period is from 1100 to
1500. The most important event to affect
the history of English, the Norman
Conquest (1066), took place at the end of
the Old English period. The big changes
that this invasion produced in the English
society were accompanied by equal effects
in the vocabulary of Middle English.
Middle English (1100-1500)

After their victory in 1066 at the Battle of
Hastings under William the Conqueror,
the Normans quickly assumed leadership
and privilege in England.

The Normans were originally Vikings—their
name comes from North man (i.e., ‘Norse’).
In a sense, the Norman conquest can be seen
as yet another Germanic invasion. But there
was a difference this time. The Normans had
earlier been given the control of a large piece
of land along the northern coast of France—
Normandy. As French subjects, they had
adopted French culture. So the language they
brought with them was not a Germanic
language, but French.

The Norman dialect of French became
the language of the upper class, while
English completely lost its scholarly and
literary importance, and was used only by
the peasants and people of the working
class. This resulted in a massive
borrowing of French words into English
vocabulary.

During this period, English assimilated a large
number of Old French words. Crystal (1988:
174) gives the following list of French
borrowing during the Middle English period.
Government: court, duke, baron, county, crown,
government, liberty, majesty, minister, peasant,
parliament, prince, realm, sir, tax, tyrant, trial
Religion: abbey, baptism, cathedral, charity,
confess, mercy, religion, prayer, pity, saint,
salvation, sermon, immortality, miracle, solemn,
trinity, virgin
Military: peace, enemy, arms, battle, moat,
army, battle, navy, soldier, spy, retreat,
guard, defend, captain, ambush
General: gown, robe, emerald, diamond,
feast, savory, cream, sugar, age, paper,
music, romance, city, easy, foreign, hour,
people, real, reason, river, special, use,
wait, joy
Geoffrey Chaucer
Canterbury Tales
English poet, who is regarded as the
greatest and most renowned of Middle
English writers. His masterwork is The
Canterbury Tales (1387-1400).
乔叟，杰弗里：(1340-1400) 英国诗人，被认
为是中世纪英国最伟大的文学家。他的代表
作是坎特伯雷故事集 (1387-1400年）
A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and courteisye.
English: knight, man, worthy, tyme, first, bigan, ryden,
loved, trouthe (truth), Fredom (freedom)
French: chivalrye (chivalry), honour, courteisye
Danish: fro
Modern English (1500-the present)

Modern English is usually divided into
Early (1500-1800) and Late (1800-the
present) Modern English.
Modern English (1500-the present)
Thanks to the Renaissance (early 14th C-1650),
great numbers of Latin and Greek words
were added to English. Scholars translated
literature from Latin and Greek into English,
so over 10,000 Latin and Greek words
entered the English language.
Modern English (1500-the present)
Among the borrowed words from Latin
were exterior, appendix, contradict,
exterminate, temperature, and so on.
 At about the same time, Greek provided
catastrophe, anonymous, lexicon,
skeleton, and so on.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
我想将你比作迷人的夏日，
但汝却更显可爱和温存：
狂野之风摧残着五月蓓蕾的柔媚，
也一天天消逝着夏日的归期：
苍天的明眸偶然泻出璀璨，
却难以辉映他暗淡的容颜；
一切明媚的色彩渐已消褪，
过程是如此苍白；
然而你却如永恒之夏，
所有的美好永远也不会改变；
就连死神也不敢对你嚣张，
因你将永生于不朽的诗篇：
只要世人一息尚存，
你将和这诗篇永驻人间。
Late Modern English (1800-the present)

The late modern English runs from the
beginning of the 19th century to the
present. After the Industrial Revolution,
England became a great economic power.
English began to absorb words from all
major languages of the world.
Late Modern English (1800-the present)

Among these words are names for animals and
places (moose, skunk, Michigan, Chicago,
Manhattan) from American Indian languages;
food terms (yam, gumbo, banana) from African
languages; new species and technologies
(kangaroo, koala, boomerang) from Australian
languages; unusual weather phenomena and
customs (typhoon, kowtow) from Chinese; and
many others.
After World War II, thousands of new
words have been created to express new
ideas, inventions, and scientific
achievements.
 Admittedly, English does rank high in its
hospitality to loanwords. But it remains at
its core a typical Germanic language.
 In spite of the extensive borrowing from
other languages, the most common words
in the English language are still native
English words.


In general, the most basic, most frequently used,
and simplest words of Modern English are
inherited from its Germanic ancestor languages.

Words such as sun, moon, lamb, life, death,
mother, health, and god; prefixes such as unand be-; suffixes such as -ness, -ly, -some, -ship,
and -hood; and thousands more words and
elements are all native to English.
English borrowings
• Old English (450–1100): Beginning of an influx of
religious terms from Latin and borrowings of everyday
words from Viking Norse.
• Middle English (1100–1500): Extensive borrowing from
French, especially terms from law, government, the
military, and higher culture.
• Modern English (1500–present): Heavy influx of
scientific vocabulary, including many neologisms based
on elements from Latin and Greek. Borrowings from
many other languages with which English has had
contact in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the
Americas.