Chapter 2
The sources
of the English Vocabulary
The English people are of a mixed
blood,At the beginning of the fifth
century Britain was invaded by three
tribes from the Northern Europe,the
Angles,Saxons and Jutes.
These three tribes landed on
the British coast,drove the
Britons west and north and
settled down on the island.
These three three tribes
merged into one people,the
English people and the three
dialects they spoke naturally
grew into a single language:
t he E n g l is h la n g u a g e,
The world has nearly 3,000 languages,
which can be grouped into roughly
300 language families on the basis of
similarities in their basic word stock
and grammar,The Indo-European is
made up of most of the languages of
Europe,the near East,and India.
Indo-European Language
Eastern Set Western Set
Armenian Albanian
Eastern Set
Balto-Slavic Indo-Irannian
Balto-Slavic
Czech Russian Prussian Polish
Slovenian Lithuanian Bulgarian
Indo-Iranian
Persian Bengali Hindi Romany
Derived from Sanskrit
Armenian Albanian
Armenian Albanian
Western Set
Celtic Italic Germanic Hellenic
Celtic
Scottish Irish Welsh Breton
Italic
Italian Portuguese Spanish
French Romanian
Norwegian Icelandic Danish Swedish
Germanic
German Dutch Flemish English
Hellenic
Greek
A Historical Overview of the
English Vocabulary
English can be roughly divided into,
Old English,
Middle English
Modern English.
Old English (450---1150)
Middle English ( 1150---1500)
Modern English (1500---Now)
Early,1500---1700
Late,1700---
present
After the Romans,the Germanic
tribes called angles,Saxons,and
J utes c ame, S oon t he y t ook
permanent control of the land,which
was to be called England,Their
language,historically known as
Anglo-Saxon,dominated and almost
totally blotted out the Celtic.
Celtic made only a small contribution
to the English vocabulary with such
words as crag and bin and some place
names like Avon,Kent,London,
Themes,Now people generally refer
to Anglo-Saxon as old English.
Two events in the Old English Period:
in the 6th century:Latin speaking Roman
missionaries came to spread Christianity in
Britain,The introduction of Christianity
had a great impact on the English
vocabulary,It brought many new ideas and
customs and also many religious terms:
abbot,candle,altar,amen,apostle.
In the 9th century,the land was
invaded again by Norwegian and
Danish Vikings,They came first to
plunder,then to conquer,Finally
they succeeded in placing a Danish
king on the throne of England,With
the invaders,many scandinavian
w o r d s c a m e i n t o E n g l i s h,
These new words did not identify new
ideas and objects,They were everyday
words for which the English had terms
and expressions,Many words were
exactly alike,such as father,husband,
house,life,man,mother,summer and
winter.Other words were so much alike
that they were used interchangeably.
It is estimated that at least 900 words
of Scandinavian origin have survived
in modern English,such as skirt,skill,
window,leg,grasp,birth,they,their,
them and egg.
Old English has a vocabulary of
about 50,000 to 60,000 words,It was
a highly inflected language just like
modern German,Therefore,nouns,
pronouns,adjectives,verbs and
adverbs ahs complex endings or
v o w e l c h a n g e s,or b o t h,
Middle English
Old English began to undergo much
change when the Normans invaded
England from France in 1066.The
Norman conquest started a continual
flow of French words into English.
The English were defeated,but not killed
off,nor were they driven from their
country,They were reduced to the status
of an inferior people,Norman French
b e c a m e t h e p o l i t e s p e e c h,
By the end of the 11th century,
almost all of the people who
held political or social power
and many of those in powerful
church pos itions were of
N o r m a n F r e n c h o r i g i n,
By the end of the 13th century,
English gradually came back into the
s c hools,t he law c ou rts,a nd
government and regained social status
thanks to Wycliff translation of the
Bible and the writings of Chaucer.
Between 1250 and 1500 about 9,000
words of French origin poured into
English,We can find words relating
to every aspect of human society,e.g.
Government,social scales,law,
religion,moral matters,military
a ff a i r s,f o o d,f a s h i o n,e t c,
For example,state,power,
prince,duke,judge,court,crime,
angel,mercy,peace,battle,pork,
bacon,fry,roast,dress,coat.
Middle English retained much fewer
inflections,Endings of nouns and
adjectives marking distinction of number,
came and often of gender lost their
distinctive forms,If we say old English
was a language of full endings,Middle
English was one of levelled endings.
Modern English began with the
establishment of printing in England.
In the early period of Modern
English,Europe saw a new upsurge
of learning ancient Greek and
Roman classics,This is known in
history as the Renaissance,
Latin and Greek were recognized as the
languages of the Western world’s great
literary heritage and of great scholarship,
but translators were rapidly making
great literary works available in English.
Translators and scholars borrowed
heavily from the Latin vocabulary of
their source materials during this
period and many Latin words became
p a r t of E ng l is h v oc a b u la r y.
In the mid-seventeenth century,
England experienced Bourgeois
Revolution follow ed by the
Industrial Revolution and rose to be
a great economic power,With the
growth of colonization,British
tentacles began stretching out to
ever y c or ner of t he g lob e.
Since the beginning of the last
century,esp,after World War II,the
world has seen breathtaking
advances in science and technology.
Many new words have been created
to express new ideas,etc.,yet more
words are created by means of
w o r d - f o r m a t i o n,
In modern English,word endings
were mostly lost with just a few
exceptions,English has evolved
from a synthetic language to the
p r e s e n t a n a l yt i c l a n g u a g e,
Classification of words:
English words may fall into the
basic word stock and non-basic
vocabulary by use frequency,into
content words and functional words
by notion and into native words and
b or r ow e d w or ds by or ig i n,
Basic Word Stock:
All national character,Words of
the basic word stock denote the
m os t c o m m o n t h i n g s a n d
phenomena of the world around us,
which are indispensable to all the
people who speak the language.
Stability:
As they denote the commonest
things necessary to life,they are
likely to remain unchanged.
Stability,however,is only relative.
Productivity:
Words of the basic word stock are
most root words or monosyllabic
words; They can form new words
with other roots and affixes
Waterline waterhead waterfall
waterfront waterlocks waterman
waterside waterskin waterway
waterproof water-sic water-ski
watermanship watered-down
watercart water-rate water-police
water-fast
见,23页
Footage,football,footpath,footer,
footfall,footed,footloose,footling,
footman,footing,footprint
doglike,doghood,dogcart,dog-
cheap,dog-ear,dog-fall,dogfight,
doghole,dog-paddle,dogsleep
Polysemy:
Words belonging to the basic word
stock often possess more than one
meaning because most of them
have undergone semantic changes
in the course of use and become
polysemous.见 21页
Collocability:
Many words of the basic word stock
have strong collocability:
见 22页
A change of heart,
after one’s heart,
cry one’s heart out,
eat one’s heart out,
a heart of gold,
at heart,
break one’s heart,
cross one’s heart,
have one’s heart in one’s mouth,
heart and hand,
heart and soul,
take sth to heart,
wear one’s heart upon one’s sleeve,
with all one’s heart.
Non-basic word stock:
1) usu,Words technical in sense:
arthritis
cerebritis
algebra
calculus
2,Slang
It belongs to the sub-standard language:
cancer stick,cigarette
dish the dirt,gossip or spread rumours
about others
feel no pain,be drunk
in the soup,in serious trouble
bring down,disappoint
Native words and Borrowed
words
Native words are words brought
to Britain in the 5th century by
the German tribes,the Angles,
the saxons,and the Jutes.
Native words denote the commonest
things in human society,they are
used by all people,in all places on all
occasions,and at all times.They are
n o t s t y l i s t i c a l l y s p e c i f i c,
They are neutral in style:
Begin (E)--- commence (French)
brotherly(E)--- fraternal (F)
answer (E) --- replay (F)
fall (E) --- autumn (F)
Borrowed words ( loan words or
borrowings)
It is estimated that English borrowings
constitute 80 percent of the modern
English vocabulary.
见 25页
Borrowed words are divided into four
kinds:
denizens,they are words borrowed
early in the past and now are well
assimilated into the English language.
Change,changier(F)
pork,porc(F) 见 25页
Aliens,they are words which have
retained their original pronounciation and
spelling,These words are immediately
recognisable as foreign in origin.
Decor,装饰
blitzkrieg闪电战
kowtow磕头
bazaar集市
status quo现状
intermezzo幕间剧
Translation-loans,translation loans
are words and expressions formed
from the existing material in the
English language but modelled on
the patterns taken from another
language.
mother tongue,lingua materna (L)
long time no see(CH)
surplus value:mehrwert(G)
masterpiece,meisterstuck (G)
black humour:humour noir
Semantic loans:
Words of this category are not
borrowed with reference to the
f or m,but t he i r m e a n i n g s,
Semantic borrowings also refer to
words which have acquired a new
meaning under the influence of
o t h e r l a n g u a g e s,
“Pioneer” once signifying” explorer”
only or, person doing pioneering
work” has now taken on the new
meaning of, a member of the Young
P i o n e e r, f r o m R u s s i a n
“Fresh” has adopted the meaning of
,impertinent,sassy,cheeky” under the
influence of the German word, frech”.
The Foreign Elements
in the English vocabulary
见 27页
The Scandinavian element in English
An interesting feature of the language
is a number of Danish forms existing
side by side with the English forms in
the English vocabulary
见 28页
The Scandinavian words into English
were not only nouns,adjectives,but
also pronouns,prepositions,adverbs,
and verbs.
见 29页
Words from French can be divided
into two groups:
1,French loan words in the middle
English period
2,French loan words after the
middle English period
见 32 页
1,French loan words in the middle
English period
connected with government:
government,administration,state,
crown,authority,court
connected with religion:
religion,theology,prayer,dean,
lesson,clerk,devotion
Words connected with Law
Justice,judgment,crime,evidence,
proof,blame,arrest,
Words connected with army:
Army,peace,enemy,arms,
captain,defence,soldier,guard,
Words connected with fashion and
food
Dress,cloak,collar,button,boots,
diamond,beef,pork,mutton,bacon,
biscuit,cream,sugar,orange,lemon.
Words connected with arts,literature
Art,painting,learning,beauty,
colour,figure,image,tragedy,title,
story,pen
2,French loan words after the
Middle English period:
The words are connected chiefly
with arts,with food and drink,with
fashion and with diplomacy.
见 33页
The Latin Element in the English
Vocabulary
1) The First period of Latin influence:
There was no opportunity for direct
contact between Latin and Old English
in England,so many words came in
through Celtic transmission.
见 35页
The sources
of the English Vocabulary
The English people are of a mixed
blood,At the beginning of the fifth
century Britain was invaded by three
tribes from the Northern Europe,the
Angles,Saxons and Jutes.
These three tribes landed on
the British coast,drove the
Britons west and north and
settled down on the island.
These three three tribes
merged into one people,the
English people and the three
dialects they spoke naturally
grew into a single language:
t he E n g l is h la n g u a g e,
The world has nearly 3,000 languages,
which can be grouped into roughly
300 language families on the basis of
similarities in their basic word stock
and grammar,The Indo-European is
made up of most of the languages of
Europe,the near East,and India.
Indo-European Language
Eastern Set Western Set
Armenian Albanian
Eastern Set
Balto-Slavic Indo-Irannian
Balto-Slavic
Czech Russian Prussian Polish
Slovenian Lithuanian Bulgarian
Indo-Iranian
Persian Bengali Hindi Romany
Derived from Sanskrit
Armenian Albanian
Armenian Albanian
Western Set
Celtic Italic Germanic Hellenic
Celtic
Scottish Irish Welsh Breton
Italic
Italian Portuguese Spanish
French Romanian
Norwegian Icelandic Danish Swedish
Germanic
German Dutch Flemish English
Hellenic
Greek
A Historical Overview of the
English Vocabulary
English can be roughly divided into,
Old English,
Middle English
Modern English.
Old English (450---1150)
Middle English ( 1150---1500)
Modern English (1500---Now)
Early,1500---1700
Late,1700---
present
After the Romans,the Germanic
tribes called angles,Saxons,and
J utes c ame, S oon t he y t ook
permanent control of the land,which
was to be called England,Their
language,historically known as
Anglo-Saxon,dominated and almost
totally blotted out the Celtic.
Celtic made only a small contribution
to the English vocabulary with such
words as crag and bin and some place
names like Avon,Kent,London,
Themes,Now people generally refer
to Anglo-Saxon as old English.
Two events in the Old English Period:
in the 6th century:Latin speaking Roman
missionaries came to spread Christianity in
Britain,The introduction of Christianity
had a great impact on the English
vocabulary,It brought many new ideas and
customs and also many religious terms:
abbot,candle,altar,amen,apostle.
In the 9th century,the land was
invaded again by Norwegian and
Danish Vikings,They came first to
plunder,then to conquer,Finally
they succeeded in placing a Danish
king on the throne of England,With
the invaders,many scandinavian
w o r d s c a m e i n t o E n g l i s h,
These new words did not identify new
ideas and objects,They were everyday
words for which the English had terms
and expressions,Many words were
exactly alike,such as father,husband,
house,life,man,mother,summer and
winter.Other words were so much alike
that they were used interchangeably.
It is estimated that at least 900 words
of Scandinavian origin have survived
in modern English,such as skirt,skill,
window,leg,grasp,birth,they,their,
them and egg.
Old English has a vocabulary of
about 50,000 to 60,000 words,It was
a highly inflected language just like
modern German,Therefore,nouns,
pronouns,adjectives,verbs and
adverbs ahs complex endings or
v o w e l c h a n g e s,or b o t h,
Middle English
Old English began to undergo much
change when the Normans invaded
England from France in 1066.The
Norman conquest started a continual
flow of French words into English.
The English were defeated,but not killed
off,nor were they driven from their
country,They were reduced to the status
of an inferior people,Norman French
b e c a m e t h e p o l i t e s p e e c h,
By the end of the 11th century,
almost all of the people who
held political or social power
and many of those in powerful
church pos itions were of
N o r m a n F r e n c h o r i g i n,
By the end of the 13th century,
English gradually came back into the
s c hools,t he law c ou rts,a nd
government and regained social status
thanks to Wycliff translation of the
Bible and the writings of Chaucer.
Between 1250 and 1500 about 9,000
words of French origin poured into
English,We can find words relating
to every aspect of human society,e.g.
Government,social scales,law,
religion,moral matters,military
a ff a i r s,f o o d,f a s h i o n,e t c,
For example,state,power,
prince,duke,judge,court,crime,
angel,mercy,peace,battle,pork,
bacon,fry,roast,dress,coat.
Middle English retained much fewer
inflections,Endings of nouns and
adjectives marking distinction of number,
came and often of gender lost their
distinctive forms,If we say old English
was a language of full endings,Middle
English was one of levelled endings.
Modern English began with the
establishment of printing in England.
In the early period of Modern
English,Europe saw a new upsurge
of learning ancient Greek and
Roman classics,This is known in
history as the Renaissance,
Latin and Greek were recognized as the
languages of the Western world’s great
literary heritage and of great scholarship,
but translators were rapidly making
great literary works available in English.
Translators and scholars borrowed
heavily from the Latin vocabulary of
their source materials during this
period and many Latin words became
p a r t of E ng l is h v oc a b u la r y.
In the mid-seventeenth century,
England experienced Bourgeois
Revolution follow ed by the
Industrial Revolution and rose to be
a great economic power,With the
growth of colonization,British
tentacles began stretching out to
ever y c or ner of t he g lob e.
Since the beginning of the last
century,esp,after World War II,the
world has seen breathtaking
advances in science and technology.
Many new words have been created
to express new ideas,etc.,yet more
words are created by means of
w o r d - f o r m a t i o n,
In modern English,word endings
were mostly lost with just a few
exceptions,English has evolved
from a synthetic language to the
p r e s e n t a n a l yt i c l a n g u a g e,
Classification of words:
English words may fall into the
basic word stock and non-basic
vocabulary by use frequency,into
content words and functional words
by notion and into native words and
b or r ow e d w or ds by or ig i n,
Basic Word Stock:
All national character,Words of
the basic word stock denote the
m os t c o m m o n t h i n g s a n d
phenomena of the world around us,
which are indispensable to all the
people who speak the language.
Stability:
As they denote the commonest
things necessary to life,they are
likely to remain unchanged.
Stability,however,is only relative.
Productivity:
Words of the basic word stock are
most root words or monosyllabic
words; They can form new words
with other roots and affixes
Waterline waterhead waterfall
waterfront waterlocks waterman
waterside waterskin waterway
waterproof water-sic water-ski
watermanship watered-down
watercart water-rate water-police
water-fast
见,23页
Footage,football,footpath,footer,
footfall,footed,footloose,footling,
footman,footing,footprint
doglike,doghood,dogcart,dog-
cheap,dog-ear,dog-fall,dogfight,
doghole,dog-paddle,dogsleep
Polysemy:
Words belonging to the basic word
stock often possess more than one
meaning because most of them
have undergone semantic changes
in the course of use and become
polysemous.见 21页
Collocability:
Many words of the basic word stock
have strong collocability:
见 22页
A change of heart,
after one’s heart,
cry one’s heart out,
eat one’s heart out,
a heart of gold,
at heart,
break one’s heart,
cross one’s heart,
have one’s heart in one’s mouth,
heart and hand,
heart and soul,
take sth to heart,
wear one’s heart upon one’s sleeve,
with all one’s heart.
Non-basic word stock:
1) usu,Words technical in sense:
arthritis
cerebritis
algebra
calculus
2,Slang
It belongs to the sub-standard language:
cancer stick,cigarette
dish the dirt,gossip or spread rumours
about others
feel no pain,be drunk
in the soup,in serious trouble
bring down,disappoint
Native words and Borrowed
words
Native words are words brought
to Britain in the 5th century by
the German tribes,the Angles,
the saxons,and the Jutes.
Native words denote the commonest
things in human society,they are
used by all people,in all places on all
occasions,and at all times.They are
n o t s t y l i s t i c a l l y s p e c i f i c,
They are neutral in style:
Begin (E)--- commence (French)
brotherly(E)--- fraternal (F)
answer (E) --- replay (F)
fall (E) --- autumn (F)
Borrowed words ( loan words or
borrowings)
It is estimated that English borrowings
constitute 80 percent of the modern
English vocabulary.
见 25页
Borrowed words are divided into four
kinds:
denizens,they are words borrowed
early in the past and now are well
assimilated into the English language.
Change,changier(F)
pork,porc(F) 见 25页
Aliens,they are words which have
retained their original pronounciation and
spelling,These words are immediately
recognisable as foreign in origin.
Decor,装饰
blitzkrieg闪电战
kowtow磕头
bazaar集市
status quo现状
intermezzo幕间剧
Translation-loans,translation loans
are words and expressions formed
from the existing material in the
English language but modelled on
the patterns taken from another
language.
mother tongue,lingua materna (L)
long time no see(CH)
surplus value:mehrwert(G)
masterpiece,meisterstuck (G)
black humour:humour noir
Semantic loans:
Words of this category are not
borrowed with reference to the
f or m,but t he i r m e a n i n g s,
Semantic borrowings also refer to
words which have acquired a new
meaning under the influence of
o t h e r l a n g u a g e s,
“Pioneer” once signifying” explorer”
only or, person doing pioneering
work” has now taken on the new
meaning of, a member of the Young
P i o n e e r, f r o m R u s s i a n
“Fresh” has adopted the meaning of
,impertinent,sassy,cheeky” under the
influence of the German word, frech”.
The Foreign Elements
in the English vocabulary
见 27页
The Scandinavian element in English
An interesting feature of the language
is a number of Danish forms existing
side by side with the English forms in
the English vocabulary
见 28页
The Scandinavian words into English
were not only nouns,adjectives,but
also pronouns,prepositions,adverbs,
and verbs.
见 29页
Words from French can be divided
into two groups:
1,French loan words in the middle
English period
2,French loan words after the
middle English period
见 32 页
1,French loan words in the middle
English period
connected with government:
government,administration,state,
crown,authority,court
connected with religion:
religion,theology,prayer,dean,
lesson,clerk,devotion
Words connected with Law
Justice,judgment,crime,evidence,
proof,blame,arrest,
Words connected with army:
Army,peace,enemy,arms,
captain,defence,soldier,guard,
Words connected with fashion and
food
Dress,cloak,collar,button,boots,
diamond,beef,pork,mutton,bacon,
biscuit,cream,sugar,orange,lemon.
Words connected with arts,literature
Art,painting,learning,beauty,
colour,figure,image,tragedy,title,
story,pen
2,French loan words after the
Middle English period:
The words are connected chiefly
with arts,with food and drink,with
fashion and with diplomacy.
见 33页
The Latin Element in the English
Vocabulary
1) The First period of Latin influence:
There was no opportunity for direct
contact between Latin and Old English
in England,so many words came in
through Celtic transmission.
见 35页
