Other non-substantive words constitute five large semiotic subclasses, each presenting a separate part of speech.

Subclass 3 includes all the pronouns. The main classes of pronouns are universal. In English and other European languages there exist personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, we, they), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, such, those, etc.), possessive pronouns (his, her, our, their, etc.). In English there exist possessive absolute pronouns (mine, hers, ours, yours).

Subclass 4 Represents numerical words that substitute corresponding figures. Numerals are divided into cardinal and ordinal. Ordinal numbers in English are considered as numerical adjectives. Common fractions and decimal fractions are universal for many languages. But in some languages the numerical nomenclature may be quite different.

Subclass 5 presents adverbs, words modifying an action or state. We distinguish several semantic adverbial classes:

1. temporal adverbs now, then, today, etc.

2. a) local adverbs: somewhere, far away;

b) adverbs expressing direction: to London, from Rome.

3. adverbs expressing manner: slowly/quickly, etc.

The Etymological Peculiarities of the English Vocabulary.

During the period of the 14^th-16^th centuries English was consolidated as the national language of the English people. There was a variety of local dialects: the Northern dialect the Central dialect and the Southern dialect.

The English vocabulary falls into elements of different etymology. About 70% of the English word-stock came from nearly all the languages of the world. It is accounted for by the frequent and durable contacts of the English people with other nations. We can divide the foreign element in English into early and late loans as adopted orally and through writing. The earlier the date of borrowing, the more complete is the assimilation.

We shall classify words adopted by English into:

1. Full, complete, direct loans retaining their sound-form, graphical peculiarities and grammatical characteristics, e.g. chemise, phenomenon-phenomena etc.

2. Relative borrowings or words that have somewhat changed their outer aspect and meaning e.g. travel from French “travailler to toil”.

3. Words that were made of borrowed elements and denote concepts never denoted by the borrowed linguistic material in its native sphere (e.g.. telephone, microscope, cybernetics).

4. Translation loans presenting a word-for-word translation of a lexical unit of the source language, e.g. class struggle from German Klassenkampf, Rus. небоскрёб from skyscraper.

5. Semantic borrowings, e.g. change of meaning under the influence of a foreign language.

As to the degree of assimilation we could classify borrowings into:

1. Completely assimilated e.g. line, cheap, take, mule-throw.

2. Partially assimilated, e.g. ballet, sonata, etc.

3. Words of local colouring, etg. steppe, balalaika, gondola, etc.

4. Barbarisms usually having synonyms among native words. They are usually of bookish, official usage, e.g. en regle, apropos, etc.

The Anglo-Saxon Element in the English Vocabulary.

In the 5^th century of our era the Anglo-Saxon tribes came to Britain. The Anglo-Saxon element is still at the core of the language. Anglo-Saxon words denote the most vital concepts, e.g. go, say, see, find, love, hunt, eat, sleep, food, fish, meat, milk, sun, moon, summer, winter, sea, north, east, west, man, woman, father, mother, son, long, short, far. Among them are some modal verbs and auxiliaries: be, shall, will; pronouns: I, he, she, you; prepositions: at, on, of, by; conjunctions: and, which, that, but; articles: a, the, an; most of the numerals: one, ten, fifty, the third.

Many of words denoting things no longer in use dropped out of the vocabulary, for instance, the names for weapons or garmenos no longer used.

Some words were resticted in application by words adopted from other languages, e.g. OE here was replaced by army after the Norman Conquest the OE deor-deer was repeaced by the Latin animal.

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