Words of native origin. Etymology of the English words

ETYMOLOGY of the ENGLISH WORDS

According to their origin English words may be subdivided into two main sets. The elements of one are native words, the elements of the other are borrowed words.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English word stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A borrowed word or a borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

Words of Native Origin

D iachronically native words are subdivided into three main groups.

1. Words of the Indo-European origin. Indo-European elements are meant words of roots common to all or most languages of the Indo-European group. English words of this group denote elemantary concepts without which no human communication would be possible and express the most vital, important and frequently used concepts. The following semantic groups can be identified:

- family relations (kinship terms), e.g. father, mother, son, daughter, brother;

—words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature, e.g. sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood, hill, stone;

—names of animals and plants, e.g. goose, wolf, cow, swine, corn, tree, birch;

—words denoting parts of the human body, e.g. ear, tooth, eye, foot, heart, lip; nose, lip;

—words naming concrete physical properties and qualities (including some adjectives denoting colour), e.g. hard, quick, slow, red, white, new;

— numerals from one to a hundred, e.g. one, two, twenty, eighty;

—- pronouns' (personal, demonstrative, interrogative), e.g. /, you, he, my, that, who;(except the personal pronoun they which is a Scandinavian borrowing)

—some of the most frequent verbs, e.g. hear, do, be, sit, eat, know, stand and others.

2. Words of Common Germanic origin.

The Common Germanic stock includes words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch,
Icelandic.

It contains a great number of semantic groups some of which are the same as in the Indo-European group of native words:

—nouns denoting parts of the human body, e.g. head, hand, arm, bone, finger;

—nouns denoting periods of time (seasons of the year), e.g. summer, winter, spring, time, week; (autumn is a French borrowing).

—words naming natural phenomena, e.g. storm, rain, flood, ice, ground, sea, frost, earth;

—words denoting artefacts and materials, (human dwellings and furniture) e.g. bridge, house, shop, room, coal, iron, lead, cloth;

—words naming different kinds of garment, e.g. hat, shirt, shoe;

—words denoting abstract notions, e.g. care, evil, hope, life, need;

—names of animals, birds and plants, e.g. sheep, horse, fox, crow, bear, fox, calf, oak, grass;

— landscape features, e.g. sea, land;

—various notional verbs, e.g. bake, burn, buy, drive, hear, keep, learn, make. meet, rise, see, send, speak, tell, say, answer, give, drink, shoot;

—adjectives, denoting colours, size and other properties, e.g. broad, dead, deaf, deep. grey, green, white, blue, small, thick, high, old, good;

—adverbs, e.g. down, out, before.

3. English words proper

Engluish words proper do not have cognates in other languages. These words are few and stand quite alone in the vocabulary system of Indo-European languages, e.g. bird, boy,
girl, lord, lady.

Native words for the most part are characterized by:

1) a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency and high frequency value (e.g. the verb watch (from OE wseccan) can be used in different sentence patterns, with or without object and adverbial modifiers and can be combined with different classes of words:

Do you mind if I watch?

Harriet watched him with interest.

She's a student and has to watch her budget closely. American companies are watching Japanese developments closely.

I feel like I’т being watched;

2) a developed polysemy (e.g. the noun watch has the following meanings: 'a small clock to be worn, especially, on the wrist, or carried'; 'the act of watching'; 'a person or people ordered to watch a place or a person'; 'a fixed period of duty on a ship, usually lasting four hours'; 'a film or programme considered in terms of its appeal to the public'; etc.);

3) a great word-building power (e.g. watch is the center of a numerous word-family: watch-dog, watcher, watchful, watchfulness, watchword, watchable, watchfire, etc.);

4) the capacity of forming phraseological units (e.g. watch enters the structure and forms the semantics of the following phraseological units: to be on the watch, to keep watch, to watch one's back, to watch one's step).

Дата добавления: 2015-10-24