The Etymology of the English words. Words of native origin. Borrowings in the English language
Etymology (Gr. etymon “truth” + Gr. logos “learning”) is a branch of linguistics that studies the origin and history of words tracing them to their earliest determinable source. 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 (a borrowing, or a loan word) 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
• Words of the Indo-European origin (IE)
• Words of common Germanic origin
• English words proper
Native are words of anglo-saxon origin brought to the English islands from the continent in the 5-th cent by the Germ. tribes (angles, saxons).
Borrowings-the term is used to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process- the lang. material itself.
It has been studied that not only words, but word-building affixes were borrowed into English (able, ment)
Some word-groups were borrowed of their foreign form (tet-a-tet)
Translation loans - are words and expressions, formed from the material, available in the language after the patterns characteristics of the given language , but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions.
Semantic borrowing is the appearance of new meaning due to the influence related words in other lan/
Source of b. - is appliede to the lang from which particular words were taken into Engl.
Original b. - the term is applied to the language the word may be traced to.
Latin b. are classified into 4 subgroups: Early Latin loans, Later b. (7th cent AD), The 3d period (Norman-French b.) Latest stratum of Latin words - international words.
Norman-French subdiv: Early loans 12-15 cent, later loans 16 cent.
Russian b: before the October revolution,after.
Assimilation - the process of the changing of the adopted words. A. of thr borrowings includes changes in: sound form, morphological strct, grammar charact-s, usage.
Completely assimilated b. - are the words which have undergone all types of A. Such words are frequent and stylistically neutral. They may occur as dominant words in synonymic groups. They are active in word formation.
Partially assim-d b. - the words which lack one of the types of A. They are subdivided into:
· b. not ass-d grammatically (nouns borrowed from Latin or Greek)
· b. not ass-d phonetically (contain peculiarities in stress, not standard for English)
· barbarisms - words from other lang. , used by English people in conversations or writing, but not assimilated in any way, for which there are corresponding English equivalents.
61. The subject of theoretical grammar and its difference from practical grammar.The following course of theoretical grammar serves to describe the grammatical structure of the English language as a system where all parts are interconnected. The difference between theoretical and practical grammar lies in the fact that practical grammar prescribes certain rules of usage and teaches to speak (or write) correctly whereas theoretical grammar presents facts of language, while analyzing them, and gives no prescriptions.
Unlike school grammar, theoretical grammar does not always produce a ready-made decision. In language there are a number of phenomena interpreted differently by different linguists. To a great extent, these differences are due to the fact that there exist various directions in linguistics, each having its own method of analysis and, therefore, its own approach to the matter. But sometimes these differences arise because some facts of language are difficult to analyze, and in this case the only thing to offer is a possible way to solve the problem, instead of giving a final solution. It is due to this circumstance that there are different theories of the same language phenomenon, which is not the case with practical grammar.