Germanic settler tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians)
entered
Many of the words are still used today. Some are grammatical words (such as be, in, that) while others are lexical words (sing, live, go). Anglo-Saxon words are usually short and concrete. Although Anglo-Saxon lexemes form only a relatively small proportion of the modern lexicon, in any passage of English, there is a relatively high density of Anglo-Saxon-derived lexemes, and indeed the 100 most frequently used items are almost all Anglo-Saxon (Crystal 1995: 125).
There are number of items that pertain to down-to-earth, everyday matters. Many of the words that we described as ‘core’ earlier seem to be from Anglo-Saxon. These words are of parts of the body (arm, bone, chest, ear, eye, foot, hand, heart), the natural environment (field, hedge, hill, land, meadow, wood), the domestic life (door, floor, home, house), the calendar (day, month, moon, sun, year), animals (cow, dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, swine), common adjectives (black, dark, good, long, white, wide) and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go, help, kiss, live, love, say, see, sell, send, think) (Jackson & Amvela 2000: 31). This is not to say that the Germanic settlers were without poetry, music and culture; there were also some heroic components to Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
Celtic borrowings
More recently, though, Celtic words were also introduced
into English from Irish Gaelic – bog, brogue, blarney,
clan, slogan, whisky.
The view that there
have been only a handful of Celtic borrowings is beginning to be challenged by
linguists who hold that there has been Celtic influence that has been ignored (‘Celtic
hypothesis’)
Scandinavian
borrowings
The Scandinavian influence on Britain can be thought of in terms of three episodes.
Firstly, we can think of the period 750–1016 when the Vikings (Scandinavians) began attacking the northern and eastern shores of Britain and settling in those parts of Britain. There was a state of enmity between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, so unsurprisingly, not many Scandinavian borrowings took place; these include husbonda (husband) and lagu (law).
Secondly, we can consider the period 1016–1050, where the conditions were more or less similar to the earlier period, only that King Alfred the Great had succeeded in uniting the Anglo-Saxons through actively promoting the English language (among other things). There were more borrowings, including cnif (knife) and diegan (die).
Finally, we have the period 1050–1480. The French-speaking Normans took over Britain in 1066, and both the English and Scandinavians were given the same fate and were subdued by the Normans. Naturally, the English and the Scandinavians come together and interact with each other more closely. Therefore, a massive influence of the Scandinavian languages on English, in both grammar and vocabulary.
Unless you are a specialist, it is very difficult to pick
out Scandinavian loan-words in English.
Under these conditions,
(a) the English word sometimes displaced the cognate Scandinavian word: fish instead of fisk; goat instead of gayte;
(b) the Scandinavian word sometimes displaces the
cognate English word
(c) both might remain, but with somewhat different
meanings
(d) the English word might remain, but takes on the
Scandinavian meaning dream (originally ‘joy’, ‘mirth’, ‘music’, ‘revelry’)
(e) the English words that were becoming obsolete
might be given a new lease of life, eg dale and barn
French
borrowings
The Norman Conquest of 1066 left England as a
trilingual country, although most people would only speak one or two of the
dominant languages. Latin was the language for record keeping, learning
and the church. French was the language of the Norman aristocracy and
therefore also the language of prestige, government and polite social
intercourse. English was the language of the common folk and menials.
When the Normans took over England, they changed the
language of government and the court almost overnight and disregarded existing
institutions. Instead, they took on almost wholesale institutions derived from
France, including the feudal system which guaranteed strong control by the
king.
There were three periods of French borrowings
There were not many French borrowings, since English continues be used, largely in its own, low-level arenas and French and English speakers were kept separate.
The second period, roughly from 1250 to 1400 represents the
period of English-French bilingualism
Very briefly, this is what happened. In 1204, Normandy (in northern France, where the Normans came from) was acquired by the French king. Among other things, it meant that the Norman aristocracy in England couldn’t travel back and forth between their lands in England and France anymore. They had to choose whether they wanted to remain in England or in France. Those who remained in England began to see England as their home. This led to the reassertion of English as the language of the realm. Other reasons for the reassertion of English are:
Even as English was on its way in, the gaps in English
vocabulary had to be filled by loanwords from French. These include items
pertaining to new experiences and ways of doing things introduced by the
Normans. So whilst the English already had kings, queens and earls,
terms taken from French include count, countess, sire,
madam, duke, marquis,
The third period of French borrowings is from around 1400 onwards. The borrowings of the
first two periods tend to be more elegant and sophisticated but yet not too far
away from the core and several became quite nativised
(dance, April, native, fine, line, punish, finish). These later
borrowings were more, distant from the core, with attention being explicitly
called to their sophisticated, well-bred, cultivated, even arty ‘French’ texture
Latin, being the language of the Roman Empire, had already
influenced the language of the Germanic tribes even before they set foot in
Britain. Latin loanwords reflected the superior material culture of the Roman
Empire, which had spread across Europe:
The native Celts had also learnt some Latin, and some of
these were borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain: sign,
pearl, anchor, oil , chest, pear, lettuce
Latin was also the language of Christianity, and St
Augustine arrived in Britain in AD 597 to christianise
the nation. Terms in religion were borrowed: pope, bishop, monk,
nun, cleric, demon, disciple, mass, priest,
shrine. Christianity also brought with it learning: circul,
not (note), paper, scol (school), epistol
Many Latin borrowings came in in the early MnE period. Sometimes, it is difficult to say whether the loan-words were direct borrowings from Latin or had come in through French (because, after all, Latin was also the language of learning among the French). One great motivation for the borrowings was the change in social order, where scientific and philosophical empiricism was beginning to be valued. Many of the new words are academic in nature therefore: affidavit, apparatus, caveat, corpuscle, compendium, equilibrium, equinox, formula, inertia, incubate, momentum, molecule, pendulum, premium, stimulus, subtract, vaccinate, vacuum. This resulted in the distinction between learned and popular vocabulary in English.
Greek
borrowings
Greek was also a language of learning, and Latin itself
borrowed words from Greek. Indeed the Latin alphabet is an adaptation of the
Greek alphabet.
Many of the
Greek loan-words were through other languages: through French – agony, aristocracy,
enthusiasm, metaphor; through Latin – ambrosia, nectar,
phenomenon, rhapsody
During the Renaissance and after, there were modern coinages from Greek elements (rather than borrowings). For example, photo- yielded photograph, photogenic, photolysis and photokinesis; bio- yielded biology, biogenesis, biometry, bioscope; tele- yielded telephone, telepathy, telegraphic, telescopic. Other Greek elements used to coin new words include crypto-, hydro-, hyper-, hypo-, neo- and stereo-.
As a result of empire and trade contacts, the lexicon of
English continued to acquire terms from other languages including the
following:
For users of English in England, America, the rest of Europe,
etc., these settle around periphery, not as learned words but as exotica.
1. The vocabulary of English has vastly increased in size
during the last 1,500 years as language reflected historical events, social and
cultural factors
2. Language contact and cultural domination has greatly
influenced the word stock of English. Social and cultural changes are
accordingly clearly reflected in changes in vocabulary.
3. From the social point of view, more interesting than the
mere addition of new words is the change in the character of English word
stock, from one which can be called Germanic to one that is also partly Romance
– French and Latin, which have been associated with domains of power and
prestige.
4. There have also been fundamental developments in the principles of word-formation (borrowing of prefixes and suffixes as well as words from French, Latin and Greek) and its social consequences.
B. How can lexis be organised?
E.
Vocabulary across text types