Characteristic Features of the Native Vocabulary
1. The words are monosyllabic: sun, wood, break.
2. They are polysemantic: hand – 1. Part of the human body. 2. Power, possession, by a responsibility.3. Influence. 4. Person from whom news comes. 5. Skill in using one’s hands. 6. Person who does what is indicated by the context, performer. 7. Workman. 8. Share in activity. 9. Pointer, indicator. 10. Position or direction. 11. Handwriting. 12. Signature. 13. Number of cards held by a player. 14. Unit of measurement. 15. Applause by clapping.
3. They are characterised by high frequency.
4. Native words are usually found in set-expressions.
5. Verbs with post-positions are usually native: to look for, to look after.
6. They are characterised by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency.
7. If words begin with wh, wr, tw, dw, sw, sh. th; if at the end they have dge, tch,nd, ld; if the roots have ng, aw, ew, ee, oo they are native.
Causes and Ways of Borrowing into English
In its fifteen 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, Old Norse. 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 time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the 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 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 the later periods became the object of investigation only in recent years. These investigations show that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number of them has come from French. A large portion of them (41) is scientific and technical terms.
The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of contacts but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of the languages concerned. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence. 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.
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Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral and written speech. Oral borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowing gained importance. Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings preserve their spelling.
Borrowings can be borrowed through transcription (football, trailer, jeans), transliteration (cruise, motel, club). Besides there can be loan words (blue stocking, collective farm).
Criteria of Borrowings in English
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, its spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters are an indication of the foreign origin of the word: waltz (German), psychology (Greek). The initial position of the sounds [v], [dz], [z] or of the letters x, j, z is a sure sign that the word has been borrowed : vase (French), jungle (Hindi), gesture (Latin).
The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also show that the word has been borrowed. The suffixes in the words neurosis (Greek), violoncello (Italian) betray the foreign origin of the words. The same is true of the irregular plural forms bacteria, media, phenomena.
The lexical meaning of the word can show the origin of the word. Thus the concept denoted by the words pagoda (Chinese), kangaroo (Australian) 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 as adoptions without a historical analysis: chalk (Latin), ill (Scandinavian), car (French).
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 (echelon) ; if it is sounded as [k] the word came from the Greek language (archaic); if it is pronounced as [t ] it is either an early borrowing or a word of the Anglo-Saxon origin.
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