English LexicologyThe History of English and Sources of English Vocabulary

Week 2: Mar. 3, 2009

Instructor: LIU Hongyong

Introduction

In the study of English vocabulary, it is important to know about the history of English.

We will look at the major historical events that have shaped the English language.

We pay special attention to the development of the native Germanic vocabulary, and to the forces that introduced a large number of foreign words, especially from Latin, Greek, and French.

This combination makes English vocabulary extremely rich and heterogeneous among the world languages.

The World Languages

It is estimated that there are about 5000 languages all over the world, which can be grouped into different language families, such as Sino-Tibetan Family, Indo-European Family, Altaic Family, Austronesian Family, and so on.

Chinese is a member in the Sino-Tibetan Family, while English is a member in the Indo-European Family.

The Indo-European Family

Linguists have divided the Indo-European languages into several groups, or branches. For example, the Italic branch includes Latin and its descendants the Romance (‘originating in Rome’) Languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), as well as other extinct languages. Other groups important in the history of English include Celtic (e.g., Welsh, Irish, and Scots Gaelic), Hellenic (Greek), etc.

(Denning, K. et. al, 2007: 23)

Family vs. Branch

These branches are like families: groups of related languages have a common ancestor. We refer to their common ancestor languages by using the Proto- prefix: Proto-Italic, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Hellenic.

The only difference between a branch and a family is that a branch’s proto-language has an identified ancestor: the ancestor of Proto-Italic was Proto-Indo-European, but we don’t know what the ancestor of Proto-Indo-European was.

The Germanic Branch

The branch of Indo-European that includes English is called the Germanic group. Proto-Germanic was probably spoken in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.

Proto-Germanic developed into not only English, but also several other languages we are familiar with.

Some Germanic tribes moved eastward, into what is now Romania and Ukraine, and developed the language branch known as East Germanic. The most important language in this group was Gothic. All speakers of East Germanic languages eventually abandoned them in favor of other languages, so the East Germanic branch is now extinct.

The Germanic language that remained after the East Germanic split off developed into two new groups, North Germanic and West Germanic.

The West Germanic group includes English. The North Germanic branch includes Viking Norse, which developed into Old Norse and eventually into modern Scandinavian languages such as Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.

The Germanic Branch

The Origins of a Nation

Until the fifth century, England was inhabited by Celts ( 凯尔特人 ). The Roman army came to govern and to trade, but not to settle. Many of their army camps are now important cities, such as Gloucester, Winchester, Chester, Manchester, and so on. All these names are formed from the Roman word castra, which means an armed camp. They brought Christianity to the Celts.

In 410A.D. all the Roman troops withdrew. When the Romans left, the Germanic tribes poured into the island. By the end of the fifth century, West Germanic speakers had taken control of England. The Christian Celts were wholly defeated. They were pushed back into mountains of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, where their separate languages—Welsh, Gaelic and Erse may still be heard.

Old English (450-1100)

In the fifth century, the Germanic invaders conquered and occupied the eastern part of the British island. The Celtic language originally spoken in that area was replaced by the West Germanic dialects spoken by the invaders, as the original inhabitants (the Celts) were killed, were relocated, or adopted the language of the now dominant society.

Roughly speaking, the tribes that settled in Britain comprise three groups: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The Angles and the Saxons occupied the greatest part of the country, so that the Germanic civilization that emerged in Britain is often called Anglo-Saxon. The Angles lent their name to the language—English, and to the land —England (the land of Angles).

Old English (450-1100)

The period from 450 to 1100 is known as the Old English or the Anglo-Saxon period.

In the sixth century, the Roman missionaries headed by St. Augustine brought Christianity to the Germanic tribes (mainly the Saxons). The English language adopted many words from Latin, the official language of the church. Latin provided not only religious vocabulary (e.g., abbot, altar, disciple, hymn, nun, mass, pope, and priest) but also a surprising number of what are now everyday words (e.g., candle, cap, school, and spend).

Scandinavian Influences Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries and into the eleventh,

Norwegian and Danish Vikings invaded large parts of England. As a consequence, English borrowed words from the North Germanic tongue of the invaders, Viking Norse.

This created an interesting mixture, because Old English was very similar to this close Germanic relative. For example,

Old English Norse loan

shrub scrub

lend loan

rear raise

shirt skirt

craft skill

Many words beginning with sc-/sk- are borrowed from Scandinavian languages, e. g. score, scorch, skill, skin, skirt, sky.

Scandinavian Influences Several hundred Norse words were borrowed into Old English,

among them till, flat, they, skin, egg, etc.

Nouns birth, bull, gap, quest, leg, egg, sister, skin

Pronouns both, some, their, them, they

Prepositions fro, till

Adverbs aloft, seemly

Adjectives flat

Conjunctions though

Verbs are, call, die, drown, get, give, lift, raise, take

Middle English (1100-1500)

The Middle English period is from 1100 to 1500. The most important event to affect the history of English, the Norman Conquest (1066), took place at the end of the Old English period. The big changes that this invasion produced in the English society were accompanied by equal effects in the vocabulary of Middle English.

After their victory in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings under William the Conqueror, the Normans quickly assumed leadership and privilege in England.

The Normans were originally Vikings—their name comes from North man (i.e., ‘Norse’). In a sense, the Norman conquest can be seen as yet another Germanic invasion. But there was a difference this time. The Normans had earlier been given the control of a large piece of land along the northern coast of France—Normandy. As French subjects, they had adopted French culture. So the language they brought with them was not a Germanic language, but French.

The Norman dialect of French became the language of the upper class, while English completely lost its scholarly and literary importance, and was used only by the peasants and people of the working class. This resulted in a massive borrowing of French words into English vocabulary.

During this period, English assimilated a large number of Old French words. Crystal (1988: 174) gives the following list of French borrowing during the Middle English period.

Government: court, duke, baron, county, crown, government, liberty, majesty, minister, peasant, parliament, prince, realm, sir, tax, tyrant, trial

Religion: abbey, baptism, cathedral, charity, confess, mercy, religion, prayer, pity, saint, salvation, sermon, immortality, miracle, solemn, trinity, virgin

Military: peace, enemy, arms, battle, moat, army, battle, navy, soldier, spy, retreat, guard, defend, captain, ambush

General: gown, robe, emerald, diamond, feast, savory, cream, sugar, age, paper, music, romance, city, easy, foreign, hour, people, real, reason, river, special, use, wait, joy

Geoffrey ChaucerCanterbury Tales

A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,That fro the tyme that he first biganTo ryden out, he loved chivalrye, Trouthe and honour, fredom and courteisye.

English: knight, man, worthy, tyme, first, bigan, ryden, loved, trouthe (truth), Fredom (freedom)

French: chivalrye (chivalry), honour, courteisyeDanish: fro

English poet, who is regarded as the greatest and most renowned of Middle English writers. His masterwork is The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400).

乔叟，杰弗里： (1340-1400) 英国诗人，被认为是中世纪英国最伟大的文学家。他的代表作是坎特伯雷故事集 (1387-1400 年）

Modern English (1500-the present)

Modern English is usually divided into Early (1500-1800) and Late (1800-the present) Modern English.

Thanks to the Renaissance (early 14th C-1650), great numbers of Latin and Greek words were added to English. Scholars translated literature from Latin and Greek into English, so over 10,000 Latin and Greek words entered the English language.

Among the borrowed words from Latin were exterior, appendix, contradict, exterminate, temperature, and so on. At about the same time, Greek provided catastrophe, anonymous, lexicon, skeleton, and so on.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

我想将你比作迷人的夏日， 但汝却更显可爱和温存： 狂野之风摧残着五月蓓蕾的柔媚， 也一天天消逝着夏日的归期： 苍天的明眸偶然泻出璀璨， 却难以辉映他暗淡的容颜； 一切明媚的色彩渐已消褪， 过程是如此苍白； 然而你却如永恒之夏， 所有的美好永远也不会改变； 就连死神也不敢对你嚣张， 因你将永生于不朽的诗篇： 只要世人一息尚存， 你将和这诗篇永驻人间。

Late Modern English (1800-the present)

The late modern English runs from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. After the Industrial Revolution, England became a great economic power. English began to absorb words from all major languages of the world.

Among these words are names for animals and places (moose, skunk, Michigan, Chicago, Manhattan) from American Indian languages; food terms (yam, gumbo, banana) from African languages; new species and technologies (kangaroo, koala, boomerang) from Australian languages; unusual weather phenomena and customs (typhoon, kowtow) from Chinese; and many others.

After World War II, thousands of new words have been created to express new ideas, inventions, and scientific achievements.

Admittedly, English does rank high in its hospitality to loanwords. But it remains at its core a typical Germanic language. In general, the most basic, most frequently used, and simplest words of Modern English are inherited from its Germanic ancestor languages. Words such as sun, moon, lamb, life, death, mother, health, and god; prefixes such as un- and be-; suffixes such as -ness, -ly, -some, -ship, and -hood; and thousands more words and elements are all native to English.

In spite of the extensive borrowing from other languages, the most common words in the English language are still native English words.

• Old English (450–1100): Beginning of an influx of religious terms from Latin and borrowings of everyday words from Viking Norse.

• Middle English (1100–1500): Extensive borrowing from French, especially terms from law, government, the military, and higher culture.

• Modern English (1500–present): Heavy influx of scientific vocabulary, including many neologisms based on elements from Latin and Greek. Borrowings from many other languages with which English has had contact in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Americas.

English borrowings