Bachelor's Thesis Historical Linguistics: Loan Words and Lexical Influences on the North American English Lexicon (original) (raw)
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HISTORY OF LOAN WORDS IN ENGLISH. SOURCES OF LOANS. CALQUES. PERIODICAL STATES OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY
The long documented history of English includes contact with languages in a variety of contexts, including: the dissemination of Christian culture in Latin in Anglo-Saxon England, and the interactions of French, Latin, Scandinavian, Celtic, and English during the Middle Ages; exposure to languages throughout the world during the colonial era; and the effects of using English as an international language of science. The causal rich variety of the English vocabulary appertains the vast number of words it has taken from other languages. The purpose of the current article is to analyze the ways and the reasons of loan words and borrowings being adopted from other languages. It is ubiquitous fact that when two languages congregate together, words are borrowed from one language to another. Lexical borrowings, or loanwords, are by far the most commonly attested language contact phenomenon. Invariably, in a borrowing situation the first foreign elements to enter the borrowing language are words,” and, based on a cross-linguistic survey of lexical borrowings. Loanwords are studied from many different standpoints, touching upon different subfields of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, and semantics, as well as sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. Loanwords are not only recognized as the most common of language contact phenomena but also occupy an important position in general linguistics due to the evidence they bring to our understanding of the grammatical structure of language and to the theory of language change and historical linguistics. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another, and no "returning" words to the source language. They simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one they originated in. Borrowings are the consequences of cultural interaction between two language communities. The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usage events.
This paper deals with Modern English loan words, i.e. the loan words that entered English in the period from approximately 1500 to the present-day. Among them the most numerous are definitely Latin and French. The Latin language has been an inexhaustible source of borrowings since the early beginnings of English, while French became the most frequent source in the Middle English period. Thus, in the last five centuries both languages simply preserved their importance as greatest donors of loan words. Nevertheless, in its recent history English has borrowed from many other languages as well, such as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, German, Dutch, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Australian, etc.
Lectures in history of the English language and method-guides for seminars 2
Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world. This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published.
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH WORDS: A CRITICAL REVIEW.
A closer and critical look at the vocabulary of English reveals that the language is one of the richest – in terms of vocabulary – in the world. The aims of this research work therefore is to bring out the reasons why English vocabulary is so rich with word which are most of the time not pronounced according to the known English phonological systems. It also attempts to unravel the puzzle where English vocabulary is full of synonyms. Since this is an empirical research, previous works on English words were thoroughly and critically examined. The resultant findings showed that the English words we have today came from several sources and languages. The research reveals that they came into English vocabulary either historically or culturally. Historically – where English territory was colonized at different times by foreign powers with their diverse languages. Culturally – where the Englishmen, through cultural contacts, intermingled with the people from other linguistic groups and therefore borrowed some of their words either consciously or unconsciously, to expand their vocabulary. This resulted in a situation where sometimes words were borrowed from two or three languages to account for one entity or idea. This situation accounts for the reason whereby English vocabulary is rich with synonyms. The situation with English is a good example of how a natural language can be expanded with words from other languages to account for phenomena, ideas and things which are not indigenous to the language. This will help in no small way especially in a changing world like ours where new items are daily being manufactured and distributed to all the nooks and crannies of the world. It will also help in this era where ideas are being discovered across the world. Important as it is to explore all areas through which English language got words to enrich its vocabulary, for lack of space, this paper will not include the influences from the languages of the Low Countries like Flemish, Dutch, and Low German. Also, other cultural influences on the vocabulary of English like Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Indian, Hindustan, Tibetan, Chinese, Malayo-Polynesian, languages from Near Middle and Far East, and others, will not be covered here. This is primarily because their influence on the vocabulary of English was not so great.
A BRIEF INSIGHT INTO OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY
Volum omagial – In memoriam Elena Petre, 2020
It is widely acknowledged that a considerable part of our everyday vocabulary derives from Old English, most of these words having different origins. Although many of them completely changed their spelling and some others developed or even modified their meaning, it is still obvious that they are the precursors of present-day English. Linguists were also able to establish, apart from the etymological stratification, a stylistic stratification of the Old English vocabulary. The purpose of this research is to illustrate these linguistic processes as inherent parts of today English. In order to achieve this goal, we will refer to the etymological layers of native Old English and the categories of Old English words from a stylistic point of view. Afterwards, the study of the multiple influences (Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian) on the Old English vocabulary will reveal the type of words that were borrowed, the reasons behind these semantic loans, the forms of alteration, and their impact as linguistic features of English nowadays.
Lexical Fossils in Present-DayEnglish: Describing and Delimiting the Phenomenon
2012
This paper presents preliminary data emerging from an on-going study of what are sometimes referred to as ‘lexical fossils’. The term ‘fossil’, in a linguistic sense, is defined in the OED (3 edn.) as “A word or other linguistic form which has become obsolete except in isolated regions or in set phrases, idioms, or collocations”. The first citation in the OED is: “We see, then, that this fossil word ‘-hoe’ rather indicates a ‘social’ condition than a natural feature of the locality” (1872). The source of this quotation is an issue of Notes and Queries (see Kerslake 1872 in the References), in which there is a short article discussing the lexical element -hoe found in place names. It is to be noted that in written form, hoe usually occurs today as a part of a word (e.g. Pinhoe), and we could therefore extend the OED definition of ‘fossil’ so as to apply not only to phrases of one sort or another but also to singleword lexical units. The word ‘fossil’ is also used by Greenough and Kit...