The original stock of English words
By the native (origin) wordswe mean words which were not borrowed from other languages but represent the original stock of thisparticular language. Thenative words are further subdivided diachronically into : Indo-European element, Germanic element and English proper element.
By the Indo-European elementare meant words of roots common to all or most languages of theIndo-European group. This layer is the oldest one. English words of (his group fall into definite semantic groups. Among them:
1) family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter;
2) parts of the human body: arm, ear, foot, heart, nose, lip;
3) names of animals and birds: bull, cat, crow, goose, wolf, cow, swine;
4) plants: tree, birch, corn;
5) time of day: day, night;
6) heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star;
7) numerous adjectives: red, new, glad, sad, hard, quick, slow, white;
8) phenomena of nature: wind, water, wood, hill, stone, tree;
9) the numerals from 1 to 100;
10) pronouns: personal (except they which is a Scandinavian borrowing) and demonstrative;
11) numerous verbs: be (cf. R. быть), stand (cf. R.стоять ), sit (cf. R. сидеть), eat (cf. R. есть), know (cf. R. знать).
A much bigger part of this native vocabulary layer isformed by words of the Germanic elementwhich represent^ words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in Indo-European element:
1) parts of the human body: head, hand, finger, bone;
2) animals: bear, fox, calf;
3) plants: oak, fir, grass;
4) phenomena of nature: rain, frost, storm, ice;
5) seasons of the year: summer, winter, spring (autumn is aFrench borrowing);
6) landscape features: see, land, ground;
7) human dwelling and furniture: house, room, bench;
8) sea-going vessels: boat, ship;
9) adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good;
10) verbs:see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.
The English proper elementis dated by the 5th century A.D. These words have another distinctive feature, they have no cognates in other languages: e.g. boy, bird, girl, lord, lady, woman, daisy, always.
The English proper element also contains all the later formations, that is words which were made after the 5' centuryaccording to English word-building patterns both from native and borrowed morphemes. For example, the adjective beautiful built from the French borrowed root and the native suffix belongs to the English proper clement.
3. The distinction of the terms "source of borrowing", "origin of borrowing", "translation loans", "semantic loans".
Bythe tern: "source of borrowing" we mean the language from which the loan word was taken into English,By the term "origin of borrowing"we mean the language to which the word may be traced. e.g. paper< Fr. papier, Lat. papyrus< Gr. papyros
In this example we can see that the source of borrowing is French but the origin of borrowing is Greek.
Alongside we distinguish translation and semantic loans. Translation loansare words and expressions formed from the material already existing in British language but according to patterns taken from another language, by way of literal morpheme -for - morpheme translation. It is quite obvious that is only compound words: e.g. wall newspaper :: Russ. стенная газета first dancer:: Ital. prima-ballerina
Theterm "semantic loan" is used to denote the development in an English word of anew meaning due to the
influence of a related word in another language. For example, the English word pioneer is meant "one who is among the first". But under the influence of the Russian word it has come to mean "a member of the Young Pioneer's Organization".
Another example, the word gift in Old English meant "a ransom for woman" and in Scandinavian it meant "married couple".
4. Assimilation of borrowings.
The term "assimilation of loan words"is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetical,graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and itssemantic system. There are the following types of assimilation:
a) phonetic (the phonetic system of the language sometimes changes the loan word so that it may become unrecognizable to native speakers ;
b) grammatical (borrowings acquire English grammatical categories and paradigms by the analogy to other English words;
c) semantic (envoives the changes in the semantic structure of the word. Foreign polysemantic word may become monosemantic).
The degree of assimilation depends upon the length of period during which the word has been used inthe receiving language, upon its importance for communication purpose and its frequency. According to the degree of assimilationwe classify loan words into completely assimilated loan words, partially assimilated loan words and unassimilated loan words (or barbarisms).
Completely assimilated loan words follow all morphological, phonetical and orthographic standards. They take an active part in word-formation. Their morphological structure remain transparent. For example, the word sport is a shortening of disport<OF. desporter means "to amuse oneself, "to carry oneself away from one's work". Partially assimilated loan words can be subdevided into:
a) loan words not assimilated semantically because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothes (sari, sombrero), foreign titles and proffessions (shah, sheik, bei, toreador), food and drinks (pilav (Persian), sherbet (Arabian), sushi (Chinese), etc.);
b) loan words not assimilated grammaticaly, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek which keep their original plural forms (e.g. bacillus ::pi. bacilli, crisis v.pl. crises, formula ::pi. formulae);
c) loan words not completely assimilated phonetically, for example, some loan words borrowed from French after 1650. Some of them keep an accent on the final syllable (e.g. machine, cartoon, police). Others, contaimoundsor combination of sounds that are standard for the English language (e.g. the sound [dz] - bourgeois, camouflage, prestige, sabotage); ^
d) loan words not completely assimilated graphically, these words, for instance, borrowed from French in which the final consonant is not pronounced (e.g. ballet, buffet). Some may keep diacritic mark (cafe, cliche).
Some loan words often show incomplete assimilation in several aspects simultaneously.
Barbarisms are words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents, e.g. the Italian addio, ciao — English equivalent good-bye the French afiche - English equivalent placard the Latin ad libitum - English equivalent at pleasure.
5. Etymological hybrids and doublets.
Words whose elements are derived from different languages are called etymological hybrids. Hybrid is the process of adding borrowed affix to a native stem.
e.g. drinkable - drink (native stem) +-able (Romanic suffix)
distrust - trust (native stem) + dis- (Romanic prefix) Native affixes can also be added to foreign stems. e.g. beautiful - Romanic stem + native suffix -ful
useful - Latin stem + native suffix -ful
Etymological doublets are two or more words different in form and meaning but originated from the same source at different times.
e.g. senior (Lat.) — sir (Fr.) canal (Lat.) - chanal(Fr.)
hospital (Lat.) - hostel (Norm.Fr.) - hohel (Par.Fr.)
A doublet may also consist of a shortened word and the one from which it was derived, e.g. history — story, fantasy -fancy, fanatic - fan, shadow - shade.