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
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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.
We pay special attention to the development of the native
Germanic vocabulary, and 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
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It is estimated that there are about 5000 languages all over the
world, which can be grouped into different language families,
such as Sino-Tibetan Family, Indo-European Family, Altaic
Family, Austronesian Family, and so on.
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Chinese is a member in the Sino-Tibetan Family, while
English is a member in the Indo-European Family.
The Indo-European Family
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Linguists have divided the Indo-European languages into
several groups, or branches. For example, the Italic branch
includes Latin and its descendants the Romance (‘originating
in Rome’) Languages (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)
Family vs. Branch
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These branches are like families: 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.
The only difference between a branch and a family is that a
branch’s proto-language has an identified ancestor: the
ancestor of Proto-Italic was Proto-Indo-European, but we
don’t know what the ancestor of Proto-Indo-European was.
The Germanic Branch
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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.
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
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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
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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.
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)
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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.
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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)
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The period from 450 to 1100 is known as the Old English 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
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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.
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This created an interesting mixture, because Old English was
very similar to this close Germanic relative. For example,
Old English
Norse loan
Many words beginning with scshrub
scrub
/sk- are borrowed from
Scandinavian languages, e. g.
lend
loan
score, scorch, skill, skin, skirt,
sky.
rear
raise
shirt
skirt
craft
skill
Scandinavian Influences
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Several hundred Norse words were borrowed into Old English,
among them till, flat, they, skin, egg, etc.
Nouns
Pronouns
birth, bull, gap, quest, leg, egg, sister, skin
both, some, their, them, they
Prepositions
Adverbs
Adjectives
Conjunctions
fro, till
aloft, seemly
flat
though
Verbs
are, call, die, drown, get, give, lift, raise, take
Middle English (1100-1500)
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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.
After their victory in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings under
William the Conqueror, the Normans quickly assumed
leadership and privilege in England.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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Modern English is usually divided into Early (1500-1800) and
Late (1800-the present) Modern English.
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.
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)
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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.
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.
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Admittedly, English does rank high in its hospitality to
loanwords. But it remains at its core a typical Germanic
language. 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 un- and
be-; suffixes such as -ness, -ly, -some, -ship, and -hood; and
thousands more words and elements are all native to English.
In spite of the extensive borrowing from other languages, the
most common words in the English language are still native
English words.
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.