Etymological analysis.

The OE vocabulary.

Etymological analysis.

The OE vocabualry was mostly Germanic except for a small group of borrowings. The OE native words were inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes.

The native OE words were:

1) common IE;

2) common Germanic;

3) specifically OE.

The oldest layer of the OE language – IE words – included names of some natural phenomenon, plants, animals, agricultural terms, names of the human body parts; verbs denoting basic activities; adjectives indicating the most essential qualities; personal and demonstrative pronouns & most numerals.

● mere (sea), mona (moon), treow (tree), broðor (brother), moðor (mother), sunu (son), don (do), beon (be), niwe (new), ic (I), min (my), twa (two), etc.

In this group there were many borrowings from the Baltic & Slawonic tribes as well as the Italic & Celtic groups due to the history of the Germanic tribes.

The layer of the Common Germanic word was much smaller. Semantically these words were connected with nature, with sea & everyday life. They reflected the contacts between the Teutonic tribes at the beginning of their migration, i.e. West & North Germanic tribes having many words in common.

● hand (OHG hant), sand (OHG sant), eorðe (OMG erda) “earth”, zrene (OHG gruoni) “green”, screap (OHG scaf), sheep, fox (OHG fuhs), macian (mahhon) “make”.

Specifically OE native words included the words whose roots have not been found outside English.

● clipian (call), brid (bird)

They also included OE compounds and derived words formed from Germanic roots.

● OE wifman (wimman) (O.I. cel. γif) (OMG wib)

wif = OE compound

man Gt (manna)

● OE hlāford < hlāf (“lard”) + weard (“keeper”) G: wards

“lord” R: хлеб

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