詞匯學Lecture 2 (Chpater 21)

1、Chapter 2 The Sources of the English Vocabulary Section 11. Introduction 1) What is etymology Etymology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the origin and history of words. 2. The Indo-European Family of Languages A Genealogy of the Indo-European Languages Glossary:family of langu

2、ages 語系group of languages 語族branch of languages 語支genealogy （語言）系統(tǒng)1) the Germanic Group of Languages the East Germanic Branch / the North Germanic Branch / the West Germanic Branch Gothic (dead language) Swedish High German: German Danish Icelandic Low German: English Norwegian Dutch2) Celtic Group

3、of Languages Irish3) Greek Group of Languages Greek * 4) Latin Group of Languages Latin, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French5) Baltic-Slavic Group of Languages Russian, Bulgarian, Polish and Serbian6) Indic-Iranian Group of Languages Hindi, Persian and Afghan7) Albanian Group of Langua

4、ges Albanian8) Armenian Group of Languages Armenian 3. The Characteristic Features of the Indo-European Family of Languages Indo-European languages generally lend themselves in structure, at least if one knows something of their historical development, to that description of forms invented by the an

5、cient Greeks and named by them “Parts of Speech”. 1) Grammatical Structure: A language may have inflections fully retained relatively from the original Indo-European, like Russian, or it may have lost most of its distinctive word-endings like modern English: it may, as grammarians say, be “synthetic

6、” with full inflections or “analytic” with few inflections or even without inflections. But if we can think of its forms fairly readily as nouns, verbs, etc., that is to say, under the traditional classical terms of “Parts of Speech”, it will probably be found to be Indo-European. There are 2 classe

7、s of languages in the world: they are “synthetic” and “analytic”. A synthetic language is one which shows the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections. An analytic language is one which indicates the relation of words in a sentence by means of word order, prepositions or auxil

8、iary verbs, rather than by inflections. Chinese, with its forms consisting not of parts of speech, but of what seem now to be merely monosyllabic roots, is therefore not Indo-European. 2) Vocabulary: In matter of vocabulary, Indo-European languages have so much in common, namely, a shared nucleus (a

9、 common core) of fundamental roots, that this common basis of vocabulary may serve to distinguish them from all other languages. 4. The three periods of the English language 1. The Old English Period (the Anglo-Saxon Period) from 450-1150Some characteristic features of Old English: 1) It is characte

10、rized by a homogenous Anglo-Saxon language, with only a small amount of Latin influence. 2) It is characterized by having its inflectional system relatively full, and it is described as the period of full inflections. 3) In pronunciation it had no “silent syllables” and its letters represented its s

11、ounds fairly closely. 4) Its word-order was relatively free, since its inflections prevented ambiguity.2. The Middle English Period from 1150-1500; it begins with the Norman Conquest and ends with a transitional period leading to the close of the Middle Ages. 1) A great amount of French and Scandina

12、vian words were introduced caused first by the Scandinavian invasions and then by the Norman Conquest.2) Inflections became definitely reduced, and it is known as the period of leveled inflections.3) Because of the weakening of inflections, inflections were replaced by the use of prepositions, e.g.

13、Janes book the book of Jane / I gave the book to Jane.Some characteristic features of Middle English: 4) Pronunciation and spelling became disconnected, that is, spelling could no longer stood for the pronunciation, e.g. night. 5) The English language was reduced to be the dialect because of the Nor

14、man Conquest, and a large amount of French words were widely spread in the upper society, e.g. the names of meats in English are different from the names of animals that supply the meat: bull beef, calf veal, pig pork, sheep mutton, and so on. The live animals were looked after by poor English peasa

15、nts and have kept English names; but the meat went to the table of the French-speaking lords and it has always a French name. 3. The Modern English Period from 1500 to the present day; Modern English covers the period conveniently, historically from the close of the Middle Ages and the completion of

16、 the Renaissance to the present age. The Modern English Period can be subdivided into 2 periods: (1) Early Modern English from 15001700; (2) Later Modern English from 1700 to the present day.Some characteristic features of Modern English: 1) It is distinguished by a vast and varied increase in the L

17、atin elements through the Renaissance influence. 2) Many of those inflections which had been “l(fā)eveled” in Middle English has been lost. That is why we call this period “the period of lost inflections.” 3) Further fixation of word order follows inflectional loss, so the change of word order causes the change of meaning. 4) Prepositions are widely used instead of inflections, which enriches the expression of the English language, e.g., take part in instead of join participant; come by instead of attend. 5) The same