ETYMOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ENGLISH WORDSTOCK. Etymology, a native word, a loan word, semantic borrowings, etymological doublets, translation loans
I. Define these terms.
Etymology, a native word, a loan word, semantic borrowings, etymological doublets, translation loans, assimilation of borrowings, international borrowings, barbarism.
II. Would you agree or disagree with these statements?
1) English is a Germanic language with a Roman vocabulary.
2) The English wordstock is heterogeneous.
III. Answer the following questions:
1) What is meant by the native element of English vocabulary?
2) What are the characteristics of the native English wordstock?
3) What are the causes of borrowing? Give examples.
4) What is the structure of the borrowed element of English vocabulary?
5) How can we identify a word as a borrowing?
6) What types of assimilation of borrowings do you know?
7) What stages of assimilation do borrowed words go through?
IV. 1. Classify the following words into
(a) Indo-European,
(b) Germanic,
(c) English proper:
Daughter, woman, room, land, cow, moon, sea, red, spring, three, I, lady, always, goose, bear, fox, lord, tree, nose, birch, grey, old, glad, sad, daisy, heart, hand, night, eat, see, make.
2. Can you identify all the Germanic words in this quotation?
Bot O, as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. (Milton)
3. In the following sentence, all the words but one are Germanic. Which one is not? State its etymology.
Weapons grated against the ship.
V. Analyse the following lexical groups. Which of the words belong to the native word-stock and which are borrowed? State the origin of the borrowed words.
1. breakfast, dinner, supper, lunch;
2. alarm, fright, fear, terror;
3. fruit, apple, orange, plum, banana, grapes, cherry, pear, lemon, mango, mandarine, apricot;
4. animal, crocodile, wolf, fox, bear, zebra, kangaroo, monkey, lion, giraffe, camel, beaver, gorilla;
5. cattle, sheep, lamb, boar, bull, ox, donkey, ass, mule, mare, goat, horse, cow, rabbit, deer, cat, pig, dog.
VI. State the source language.
Kindergarten, tête-à- tête, Blitzkrieg, bon mot, prima donna, Hun, nazi, soprano, violin, waltz, law, caravan, taboo, mazurka, tobacco, umbrella, school, anchor, nun, jungle, caftan, babushka, wigwam.
VII. State the origin of the words and say whether they are completely assimilated, partially assimilated or non-assimilated:
Represent, pearl, juvenile, orthography, cactus, album, shawl, monsieur, tranquil, quit, skirt, check, situation, coup d’etat, choir, kitchen, patriarch.
VIII. Give the missing etymological doublet. State the origin of these etymological doublets:
1. cavalry - ... 7. major - ...
2. cart - ... 8. pauper - ...
3. liquor - ... 9. dike - ...
4. salon - ... 10. shrew - ...
5. shade - ... 11. legal - ...
6. of - ... 12. ward - ...
IX. What type of borrowing are these words? Classify them according to the spheres of human activity. What is their etymology?
Progress, democracy, drama, philosophy, rugby, football, basketball, tragedy, comedy, biology, medicine, atom, cricket, hockey, chocolate, grapefruit, ballet, coca-cola, telegraph, telephone, bank.
X. State the origin of the following translation loans:
Wonder child, masterpiece, first dancer, concentration camp, collective farm.
XI. Compare the following words. What are they called? Why?
intelligent – интеллигентный actual - актуальный
cabinet – кабинет principal - принципиальный
realize – реализовывать object - объект
Give three more similar pairs; explain the difference in the meaning of the English and Russian words.
LEXICOGRAPHY
I.Would you agree or disagree with these statesments?
Explain your answers.
- Lexicography is a systemic description of the lexis of a given language.
- Lexicography is the art and science of dictionary making.
- Lexicography is applied Lexicology.
- Lexicology is necessary in so far as there is lexicography.
- Language is embodied and codified first and foremost in the dictionary.
- Lexicography is a component of culture.
II.Complete the definition.
A dictionary is …
III.Answer the following questions.
1. What are the main tasks and aims of lexicography?
2. What are the basic problems of lexicography?
3. What is the difference between dictionaries and encyclopedias?
4. What information do dictionaries usually provide?
5. What are the essential features of a new generation of “computer-corpus-based” dictionaries?
What are the advantages of using so-called corpora (e.g. The British National Corpus; the Bank of English, containing 200,000,000 words including 15 million words of Spoken English; the Longman Corpus Network) ?
6. What is the role of “frequency of occurrence” in compiling modern dictionaries? Give examples from a number of dictionaries.
7. What makes learner’s dictionaries different from all others?
What innovations have been introduced in the latest editions of learner’s dictionaries (e.g. Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners, 2002)?
IV.Can you explain the meaning of these terms?
The defining vocabulary, the headword, a dictionary entry, an electronic dictionary, an online dictionary/web dictionary, a prescriptive/descriptive dictionary, a thesaurus, a glossary, an interactive dictionary, a multimedia dictionary, a bilingual dictionary.
V.What criteria are used to classify dictionaries into the following types?
1. diachronic-synchronic
2. monolingual/unilingual-interlingual
3. general-restricted
4. general-special-purpose/specialized
5. general-scholarly-learner’s
6. explanatory-translation
7. traditional-computer-corpus-based
8. extensive/comprehensive/unabridged - selective/abridged
VI.These are the descriptions of some reference books for learners of English. Below are the entries taken from them. Match each entry (1-6) with the reference book (A-F) it is taken from.
A. English Pronouncing Dictionary-a major new edition of Daniel Jones’ classic pronunciation guide.
· Over 80,000 entries
· Full coverage of North American pronunciation
· Stress patterns of compounds and idioms
· All pronunciations use the International Phonetic Alphabet