Productive Types of Compound Adjectives 2 страница
Most of the native words have undergone great changes in their semantic structure, and as a result are nowadays polysemantic, e.g. the word finger does not only denote a part of a hand as in Old English, but also 1) the part of a glove covering one of the fingers, 2) a finger-like part in various machines, 3) a hand of a clock, 4) an index, 5) a unit of measurement. Highly polysemantic are the words man, head, hand, go, etc.
Most native words possess a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency. Many of them enter a number of phraseological units, e.g. the word heel enters the following units: heel over head or head over heels— 'upside down'; cool one's heel—'be kept waiting'; show a clean pair of heels, take to one's heels—'run away', turn on one's heels— 'turn sharply round', etc.
| § 3. Derivational Potential |
The great stability and semantic peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon words account for their great derivational potential. Most words of native origin make up large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language, e.g. the word wood is the basis for the formation of the following words: wooden, woody, wooded, woodcraft, woodcutter, woodwork and many
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others. The formation of new words is greatly facilitated by the fact that most Anglo-Saxon words are root-words,
New words have been coined from Anglo-Saxon simple word-stems mainly by means of affixation, word-composition and conversion.
Some linguists contend that due to the large additions to its vocabulary from different languages, English lost much of its old faculty to form new words. The great number of compound and derived words in modern English, the diversity of their patterns, the stability and productivity of the patterns and the appearance of new ones testify to the contrary. Such affixes of native origin as -ness, -ish, -ed, un-, mis- make part of the patterns widely used to build numerous new words throughout the whole history of English, though some of them have changed their collocability or have become polysemantic, e.g. the agent-forming suffix -er, which was in Old English mostly added to noun-stems, is now most often combined with verb-stems, besides it has come to form also names of instruments, persons in a certain state or doing something at the moment.
Some native words were used as components of compounds so often that they have acquired the status of derivational affixes (e. g. -dom, -hood, -ly, over-, out-, under-), others are now semi-affixational morphemes.1.
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It is noteworthy that to the native element in English we must also refer some new simple words based on words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Words with a new non-derived stem branch off from primary simple words as a result of simplification of some derivatives in a cluster of words and their semantic isolation, as in king, kind n, kind a and kin n, from which all of them were derived (ср. OE. c у nin з, cynd, cynde, су n ), or bless and bleed derived from blood (ср. OE. bledsian, bl ē dan, bl ō d). Sometimes a word split into two or more words with different forms and meanings (i.e. etymological doublets) due to the difference in function and stress, as is the case with off and of (from OE. of which was stressed as an adverb and unstressed as a preposition). Dialectal forms of a word may develop into independent words, as in one and an (< OE. an), whole and hale (< OE. h ā l). New root-words based on Anglo-Saxon words also came into being with the rise of homonyms owing to the split of polysemy.2
The semantic characteristics, stability and wide collocability of native words account for their frequency in speech. However there are some words among them which are now archaic or poetic (e.g. lore, methinks, quoth, whilom, ere, welkin, etc.), or used only as historical terms (e.g. thane, yeoman denoting ranks, stocks — ‘an instrument of torture’, etc.).
What has been said above shows that the native element, has been playing a significant role in the English language. To fully estimate the importance of the native element in English, it is essential to study the role of English derivational means and semantic development in the life of borrowings, which will be dwelt upon in the sections below.
1 See ‘Word-Formation’, §§ 13, 14, pp. 123-125. 2 See ‘Semasiology’, § 40, p. 47.
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| § 4. Summary and Conclusions
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1. The native element comprises not only the ancient Anglo-Saxon core but also words which appeared later as a result of word-formation, split of polysemy and other processes operative in English.
2. Though not numerous in Modern English, words of Anglo-Saxon origin must be considered very important due to their marked stability, specific semantic characteristics, wide collocability, great derivational potential, wide spheres of application and high frequency value.
BORROWINGS
| § 5. Causes and Ways of Borrowing |
In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilisation Latin was for a long Уте used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system — developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.
In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a rule placed on the Middle English period. Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in recent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number has come from French. They refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of borrowings (41%) is scientific and technical terms.
The number and character of borrowed words tell us of the relations between the peoples, the level of their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of history. Thus if we go through the lists of borrowings in English and arrange them in groups according to their meaning, we shall be able to obtain much valuable information with regard to England’s contacts with many nations. Some borrowings, however, cannot be explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions, they do not come along with any new objects or ideas. Such were for instance the words air, place, brave, gay borrowed from French.
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It must be pointed out that while the general historical causes of borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of thoroughness the purely linguistic reasons for borrowing are still open to investigation.
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The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages, the deeper and more versatile is the influence. This largely accounts for the well-marked contrast between the French and the Scandinavian influence on the English language. Thus under the influence of the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related to Old English, some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages (the pronouns they, their, them, for instance); a number of Scandinavian borrowings were felt as derived from native words (they were of the same root and the connection between them was easily seen), e.g. drop(AS.) — drip (Scand.), true (AS.)-tryst (Scand.); the Scandinavian influence even accelerated to a certain degree the development of the grammatical structure of English.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples) and through written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.).
Oral borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowing gained importance. Words borrowed orally (e.g. L. inch, mill, street) are usually short and they undergo considerable changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. Fr. communiqu é , belles-lettres, na ï vet é ) preserve their spelling and some peculiarities of their sound-form, their assimilation is a long and laborious process.
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| § 6. Criteria of Borrowings |
Though borrowed words undergo changes in the adopting language they preserve some of their former peculiarities for a comparatively long period. This makes it possible to work out some criteria for determining whether the word belongs to the borrowed element.
In some cases the pronunciation of the word (strange sounds, sound combinations, position of stress, etc.), its spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters are an indication of the foreign origin of the word. This is the case with waltz (G.),. psychology (Gr.), souffl é (Fr.), etc. The initial position of the sounds [v], [dз], [з] or of the letters x, j, z is a sure sign that the word has been borrowed, e.g. volcano (It.), vase (Fr.),vaccine (L.), jungle (Hindi), gesture (L.),giant (OFr.), zeal (L.), zero (Fr.), zinc (G.), etc.
The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another language. Thus the suffixes in the words neurosis (Gr.) and violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words. The same is true of the irregular plural forms papyra(from papyrus, Gr.), pastorali(from pastorale, It.), beaux (from beau, Fr.), bacteria, (from bacterium, L.) and the like.
Last but not least is the lexical meaning of the word. Thus the concept denoted by the words ricksha(w), pagoda (Chin.) make us suppose that we deal with borrowings.
These criteria are not always helpful. Some early borrowings have become so thoroughly assimilated that they are unrecognisable without
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a historical analysis, e.g. chalk, mile (L.), ill, ugly (Scand.), enemy, car ( Fr .), etc. It must also be taken into consideration that the closer the relation between the languages, the more difficult it is to distinguish borrowings.
Sometimes the form of the word and its meaning in Modern English enable us to tell the immediate source of borrowing. Thus if the digraph ch is sounded as [∫], the word is a late French borrowing (as in echelon, chauffeur, chef); if it stands for [k], it came through Greek (archaic, architect, chronology); if it is pronounced as [t∫], it is either an early-borrowing (chase, OFr.; cherry, L., OFr.; chime, L.), or a word of Anglo-Saxon origin (choose, child, chin).
| § 7. Assimilation of Borrowings |
It is now essential to analyse the changes that borrowings have undergone in the English language and how they have adapted themselves to its peculiarities.
All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two large groups.
On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adapting words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e.g. the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology, Ptolemy of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [ps], [pt], [pn], very frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were never used in the initial position. For the same reason the initial [ks] was changed into [z] (as in Gr. xylophone).
The suffixes -ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced by the highly productive Old English suffix -ere, as in L. Caesar>OE. Casere, L. sutor>OE. sūtere.
By analogy with the great majority of nouns that form their plural in -s, borrowings, even very recent ones, have assumed this inflection instead of their original plural endings. The forms Soviets, bolsheviks, kolkhozes, sputniks illustrate the process.
On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words. These changes are due to the development of the word according to the laws of the given language. When the highly inflected Old English system of declension changed into the simpler system of Middle English, early borrowings conformed with the general rule. Under the influence of the so-called inflexional levelling borrowings like l аз u, (MnE. law), fēōlaza (MnE. fellow), stræt (MnE. street), disc (MnE. dish) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English acquired only three forms in Middle English: common case and possessive case singular and plural (fellow, fellowes, fellowes).
It is very important to discriminate between the two processes — the adaptation of borrowed material to the norms of the language and the development of these words according to the laws of the language.
This differentiation is not always easily discernible. In most cases we must resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words procession and,
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progression to show that the former was already used in England in the 11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The history of these words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of changes alongside with other English words (change in declension, accentuation, structure, sounds), whereas the word progression underwent some changes by analogy with the word procession and other similar words already at the time of its appearance in the language.
| § 8. Phonetic, Grammatical and Lexical Assimilation of Borrowings |
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage Soviet linguists distinguish phonetic, grammatical and lexical assimilation of borrowings.
Phonetic assimilation comprising changes in sound-form and stress is perhaps the most conspicuous.
Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For instance, the long [e] and [ε] in recent French borrowings, alien to English speech, are rendered with the help of [ei] (as in the words communiqu é , chauss é e, caf é ).
Familiar sounds or sound combinations the position of which was strange to the English language, were replaced by other sounds or sound combinations to make the words conform to the norms of the language, e.g. German spitz [∫pits] was turned into English [spits]. Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in the very act of borrowing. But some words retain their foreign pronunciation for a long time before the unfamiliar sounds are replaced by similar native sounds.
Even when a borrowed word seems at first sight to be identical in form with its immediate etymon as OE. skill < Scand. skil; OE. scinn < < Scand. skinn; OE. ran < Scand. ran the phonetic structure of the word undergoes some changes, since every language as well as every period in the history of a language is characterised by its own peculiarities in the articulation of sounds.
In words that were added to English from foreign sources, especially from French or Latin, the accent was gradually transferred to the first syllable. Thus words like honour, reason were accented on the same principle as the native father, mother.
Grammatical Assimilation. Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired hew grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words, as in
им. спутник Com. sing. Sputnik
род. спутника Poss. sing. Sputnik’s
дат. спутнику Com. pl. Sputniks
вин. спутник Poss. pl. Sputniks’
вин . спутником
предл. о спутнике
However, there are some words in Modern English that have for centuries retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a considerable group of
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borrowed nouns, all of them terms or literary words adopted in the 16th century or later, have preserved their original plural inflexion to this day, e.g. phenomenon (L.) — phenomena; addendum (L.) — addenda; parenthesis (Gr.) — parentheses. Other borrowings of the same period have two plural forms — the native and the foreign, e.g. vacuum (L.) — vacua, vacuums, virtuoso (It.) — virtuosi, virtuosos.
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