LEXICOLOGY
UNIT 2: Where do English words come from?
2.1 The origin of English
How many language families are there in the world?
 5000 languages => 300 language families
How are language families grouped?
 word stock and grammar
Which language family includes most of languages of Europe, the Near East and
North India?
 Indo-European
From which branch of languages are Latin and Roman languages developed?
 Italic
Which language branch developed into modern German, Dutch, Frisian and
English?
 West Germanic
The Frisian (/ˈfriːʒən/,/ˈfrɪziən/) languages are a closely related group of West
Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 Frisian people, who live on the
southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
2.1.1 How English came to England
1. Who were the first people inhabited England? And when did they come to
England?

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 The first people known to have inhabited the land that was later to become
England were Celts. 5th millennium B.C
2. When was most of the island of Britain occupied by the Roman?
 Most of the island of Britain was occupied by the Roman from about AD.43
until 410.

2.1.2 The name of the language
6th century: - ‘Angli’ (Angles)
7th century: -Angli or Anglia
=> Engle in Old English => Englisc (the name of language)
Englaland=> England (the beginning of the 10th century)
2.2 Historical development of English vocabulary
How many periods of English were added to the development of the language?
 The Old English period (450-1066)
 The Middle English period (1066-1500)
 Early Modern English (1500-1800)
 The modern English period (1800-present)
2.2.1 The Old English period (450-1066)
1. When were the first Old English (OE) manuscripts were found?
 Around the 5th and 6th centuries
2. From around 700, what was found in OE?
 Glossaries of Latin words translated into OE
3. What is the difference between OE alphabet and modern English alphabet?
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 Absence of capital letters; different shapes of a few letters; absence of some
modern letters.
4. What are some other differences found in OE?
 Numbers only in Roman symbols; variation in spelling
5. By which is OE characterized?
 The frequent use of coinages known as ‘kennings’
6. What are the differences between the way vocabulary used in OE and the way
used today?
 Synonymous expressions were preferred by the Anglo-Saxon

 More word formation processes
 Loan translations (calques) (Calques are lexical items are translated part by
part into another language)
 Grammatical relationships were expressed by the use of inflectional endings
( but in modern by word order)
 OE corpus contains about 24,000 lexical items but about 85 % of OE are no
longer in use. 3% of loanwords were found in OE compared with 70 % in
Modern English.
About 85 per cent of OE words are no longer in use. Furthermore, only about 3 per
cent of wotds in OE are loanwords, compared with over 70 per cent in Modern
English. OE vocabulary was predominantly Germanic, which is no longer the case
for Modern English.
2.2.2. The Middle English period (1066-1500)
1. Why is the early material in Middle English period of limited value?
 Because it is written mostly in Latin or French
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2. Which literary influenced Middle English poetry? And how?
 French literary. In content and style
3. What are some characteristics of Middle English?
 Intensive and extensive borrowing from other languages (French); word
formation such as compounding and affixation.
2.2.3. Early Modern English (1500-1800)
1) Which product marks the beginning point for the period of English?
 The printing work of William Caxton in Westminster
2) When did scholars started to do research on English? Which areas did they
observe?
 In 16th century. Grammar, vocabulary, the writing system and style

3) How long did the ‘Renaissance’ last?
 From the middle of the 15th century until around 1650
4) How was English influenced during this period?
 New concepts, techniques and inventions were borrowed from European
languages, thousands of Latin and Greek words were introduced in fields such as
medicine and theology.
5) Who criticized the influx of foreign vocabulary?
 purists (are people who opposed the new terms on the grounds that they were
obscured and were interfering with the development of native English vocabulary
6) What were the two works which influenced the development of the English
language during the last decades of the Renaissance?
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 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the King James Bible (1611)
Between 1530 and 1660, the fastest lexical growth happened. Many semantics
changes were found (old words acquired new meanings)
17th century, there was a need for preserving the consistency and stability of the
English language with the publication of some dictionaries
2.2.4 The Modern English (1800-present)
1. How many features is Modern English characterized?
 Modern English may be characterized by 3 main features:
 The unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary
 The assertion of American English
 The emergence of other varieties (New Englishes)
2. Why was there an unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary by the nineteen
century?
 Industrial revolution and the subsequent period of scientific exploration and
discovery

3. Which language areas can be seen due to the emergence of American English?
 Pronunciation and grammar but at the lexical level
4. Why are American and British English becoming more alike?
 Communication systems have improved greatly; The USA has become more
involved in world affairs; The development of the mass media
The USA contains nearly four times as many speakers as a first language as the
UK. (The USA and the UK comprise 70nper cent of all speakers of English as a
first language in the world (Crystal, 1995).
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5. What are the New Englishes? How these new varieties influence the English
language?
 New varieties of the language that have become localized not only through the
influence of the other languages of the regions where they are used but also
through being adapted to the life and culture of speakers. (Indian English, Philipine
English, Singapore English, etc)
Kachru (1983-cf Fennel (2004:255-256) places
English –speaking languages in 3 concentric circles:
(1) Inner circle
(2) Outer or extended circle
(3) Expanding circle
2.3 Native English vocabulary:
A word which belongs to the original English stock is native word.
1) Anglo-Saxon words (native English vocabulary)
 Words that arrived with the Germanic invaders which are still used in modern
English.
Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon words:
+ short and concrete such as parts of the body (arm, bone, chest, ear)

+ the natural landscape (field, hill, meadow)
+ domestic life (door, floor, home)
+ the calendar (day, month, year)
+ animals (cow, dog, fish)
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+ common adjectives (black, white, wide, good)
+ common verbs (become, do, eat, fly)
2) The influence Celtic on English
 Only a handful of Celtic words were borrowed during the OE period and just a
few have survived into modern English or in regional dialect use (crag, cumb,
‘deep valley)
A few Celtic words derive from Latin (assen ‘ass’, ancor ‘hermit’)
2.4 The process of borrowing
Borrowing is a process when speakers imitate a word from a foreign language and
at least partly, adapt it in sound or grammar to their native language. (Jackson &
Amvela, 2007)
Violin – Italian
The largest group of borrowings in English is French
- Over 120 languages have been sources of present-day English vocabulary
- The history of a loanword may be quite complex.
1. Latin words
2. Scandinavian loanwords
3. Greek loanwords
4. French loanwords
5. German and Dutch loans
6. Romance loans other than from French
7. Loans from the East

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8. Loanwords from other sources
9. Sources of most recent loans
2.4.1 Latin words in English
A major influence on English from the Germanic period up to modern times
+ The Anglo-Saxons must have encountered Latin as used by the continental
Roman armies; but only a few words have come into English
+ Early borrowings: military domain, commerce and agriculture; refinement of
living such as words relating to clothing, buildings and settlements, military and
legal institutions, etc.
+ ‘popular’ or learned  the main categories of words borrowed during early
period.
+ Some words borrowed from the British Celts, e.g. candel ‘candle’, cest ‘chest’,
etc
500 words were borrowed from Latin during the OE period
+ In the Middle English period: French is dominant influence on the growth of
Middle English vocabulary. Many borrowings also occurred directly from Latin (it
is difficult to specify whether the word borrowed from French or from Latin.
+ profession or technical terms, fields such as religion, law and literature, etc were
borrowed
+ In the Modern English period: borrowing continued bot/h from Latin and from
Greek via Latin
2.4.2 Scandinavian words in English

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+ the 2nd major influence on the English lexis came as a result of the Viking raids
on Britain
+ Scandinavian placenames are common in Yorkshire and Lincohnshire.
+ Most Scandinavian words were so closely that it would impossible to tell
whether a given word as Scandinavian or English.
+ Many words with sc-/sk- such as scathe, scorch, score, skill, skin, etc are of
Scandinavian origin.
2.4.3 Greek loanwords
+ technical terms
+ Some Greek words were borrowed via Latin and French, some were derived
from Greek and Latin elements, others were taken directly from Greek.
+ ‘church’ came into Germanic directly from Greek
+ the terms ‘lexis’, ‘lexeme’, ‘lexical’, ‘lexicographer’, ‘dictionary’ and
‘vocabulary’ are derived from Greek and Latin elements.
2.4.4 French loanwords
+ borrowing from French has occurred since the Middle Ages. Before 1066, there
were close contacts between English and French cultures.
+ By the end of 13th century, some 10,000 French words had come into English.
Over 70 per cent were nouns, a great proportion of which were abstract terms
constructed using French affixes, such as con-, trans-, pre-, -ance, -tion, -ment.
+ three-quarters of these French loans are still in use in English today.
+ nearly half of the loanwords were adopted during Middle English period.

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+ English has some translations from French, e.g. marriage of convenience
(mariage de convenance)

2.4.5 German and Dutch loanwords
+ From the Middle Ages on, commercial relationships have existed between Dutch
and English speaking peoples.
+ Their language has contributed many nautical (sea) terms to English, e.g.
bowline, buoy, cruise, etc.
+ words related to clothing, e.g. jacket, nap, spool
+ A number of loanwords came into English through contact bw Americans and
Dutch settlers (e.g. cookie, cranberry, waffle)
High German has had little impact on English.
2.4.6 Roman loans other than from French
+ English also borrowed from other Romance languages such as Spanish,
Portuguese and Italian.
+ borrowings from Spanish and Portuguese have occurred from the 16th contury
onwards.
+ In 19th century, it became fashionable for Americans to adopt words from
Spanish
+ Italian has had a particular significance for musical vocabulary and other arts.
2.4.7 Loans from the East
+ some words from Arabic borrowed during the Middle English period. Some
came via French or Latin

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+ Borrowing from Arabic has continued up to modern times, sometimes via Italian
or French
+ A few words have been borrowed from Persian: caravan, bazaar ,shal, shawl.,
some from Tamil (curry, pariah), some from Sanskrit
2.4.8 Loanwords from other sources

+ West African languages
+ Gorilla is African origin
2.5 Creating new English words
There are four main processes used in creating new words in English. (true)
Root creation
Echoic words
Ejaculations
Word formation
2.5.1 Root creation
‘Root creation’ refers to the building of a word that has no relationship whatsoever
with any previously existing word.
2.5.2 Echoic words
Bloomfield (1933: 156) distinguishes two types of echoic words: ‘imitative’ and
‘symbolic’.
2.5.3Ejaculations
‘Ejaculations’ are words that attempt to imitate instinctive vocal responses to
emotional situations (Pyles and Algeo 1993). They are also termed ‘natural
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utterances’, but they have become conventionalized and so become lexical items,
e.g. ha-ha and its variant ho-ho for laughter.
2.5.4 Word formation
Word formation uses existing language material - words and morphemes — to
create new lexical items.

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