Words_about_words_An_introduction_to_Eng

Lexicology – The Science of Words

(5b) Unfortunately, the Roman army started the war.

(5c) Unfortunately, the war was started by the Roman army. (5d) The war, unfortunately, was started by the Roman army.

However, if the position of words in a sentence may be changed to suit the speaker’s or the writer’s communicative intentions, the elements inside a word itself occur in a rigidly fixed order – e.g. in a word such as impossibility, the order of the component elements im-, possible, -ity cannot be reversed to one’s liking. *Possibleimity, *ityimpossible, *ityposisbleim are not acceptable words in English. This is what Katamba (2002) means by stability or internal cohesion of grammatical words.

Thus, a generally acceptable definition of the word, based on the four approaches mentioned above, may be that suggested by Bejan and Asandei (1981: 8): “The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds [and letters] capable of a particular grammatical employment”.

1.3. Branches of lexicology

Lexicology has two main divisions, established according to the degree of generality in tackling phenomena specific of words. The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology. Special lexicology concentrates on the description of the characteristic peculiarities of the vocabulary and its specific phenomena in a given language. This book is an introduction to such a study.

Both these major branches of lexicology may be further divided into at least two other sub-branches. On the one hand, the approach of the vocabulary of a language from a diachronic point of view forms the domain of investigation of historical lexicology, which counts at length on etymology, the study of meaning, origin and development of individual words. Descriptive lexicology, on the other hand, operates synchronically, i.e. it deals with the characteristics of vocabulary at a given stage in its evolution. A third sub-branch of lexicology is lexicography, the compilation and writing of dictionaries.

1.4. The relationship between lexicology and other branches of linguistics

As Tătaru (2002) points out, it is clear, from the manner in which the word has been defined, that lexicology relies heavily on other mainstream branches of linguistics: phonology, morphology and syntax,

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Words about Words

semantics. In addition to these, etymology, lexicography, pragmatics, dialectology, socio-linguistics and psycholinguistics may also relate to lexicology.

Phonology accounts for the ways in which words are spelt and pronounced. Morphology dictates the acceptable combinations of particles that generate words. Functionally, it accounts for the different morphosyntactic values of words and, consequently, for their status as parts of speech. The relationships between words, both along the syntagmatic and along the paradigmatic axis (to be enlarged upon later in the book) can best be defined in context. Therefore, syntax also plays an important role in a lexicological study. Semantics deals with the meaning of words, a kind of study without which the compilation of dictionaries would be impossible. Etymology studies the history of words, with an emphasis on their origin, while lexicography, which Jackson (1988) considers “applied lexicology”, plays an undeniably important role in the writing and compilation of dictionaries. Pragmatics goes beyond the surface level of words and teaches us, for example, how to infer the right meaning of a word in a particular context. Dialectology studies the peculiarities of words from a given region or from a given historical period, for example. Socio-linguistics shows, for instance, how the use of words is determined by the characteristics of the participants in a linguistic exchange, while psycholinguistics deals with matters such as how words are stored in our brains and how it is possible for language users to retrieve the right word at the right time from this warehouse.

These are only some of the possible ways in which lexicology interacts with other branches of linguistics. They are by no means exhaustive, but they suffice to demonstrate that an introduction to lexicology carries the advantage of offering insights into other areas of knowledge and investigation of words as well.

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II.SOURCES OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY

2.1.Historical development of the English vocabulary

The most important intervals in the development of the English vocabulary are the Old, the Middle, the Early Modern and the Modern periods. Each of these will be briefly described below, following Jackson and Amvela’s (2007) description.

2.1.1. The Old English period (450-1066)

The first Old English (OE) manuscripts were nothing more than a few inscriptions, unable to offer much information about the characteristics of the language, brought by the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and the sixth centuries. Only after the arrival of the Christian missionaries from Rome (587), did the literary age modestly begin, with a number of glossaries of words from Latin and their translation in OE, and a few inscriptions and poems. The most important literary work that survived from this period is the heroic poem Beowulf, written around the year 1000. Together with it, a number of shorter poems, some with Christian topics, others reflecting Germanic traditions, have been preserved.

Although a greater number of OE texts were written after 900, when many Latin texts were translated, including Bede’s (731) Ecclesiastical History, the corpus of such texts remains reduced. As Crystal (1995: 10) points out, “the number of words in the corpus of OE compiled at the University of Toronto, which contains all the texts, is only 3.5 million – the equivalent of about 30 medium-sized novels”.

The alphabet used in these writings resembles the one still in use today quite closely. Major dissimilarities are the absence of capital letters in OE, the different shapes of a few letters and the inexistence of the letters j, v, f, q, x and z in the older times. The spelling of OE was rather inconsistent, with variations within the same text and even on the same page of a manuscript.

OE is characterized by the frequent use of coinages, known as “kennings”, a terms from Old Norse used to describe colourful figurative descriptions often involving compounds. Sometimes, the meaning of kennings is transparent, but there are cases when it is rather obscure and its interpretation is not a straightforward endeavour. Famous kennings include hronrad, “whale-road” for the sea, banhus, “bone-house” for the body. Often, phrases and compound words are used as kennings. “God” is, for example, described as heonfonrinces weard, i.e. “guardian of heaven’s kingdom” or as moncynnes weard, i.e. “guardian of mankind”.

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Words about Words

Besides spelling and the extended number of kennings, OE exhibits a number of other characteristics that make it differ from the present day situation in the language.

On the one hand, the Anglo-Saxon preference for synonyms and the ingenuity of forming compounds exceeds by far that found in Modern English.

On the other hand, the absence of an extensive number of loanwords, forced OE to rely on word-formation processes based on native elements to build the lexical items needed. The consequence of this is the fact that OE had much larger families of morphologically related words than Modern English does.

Thirdly, late OE was characterized by the introduction of numerous calques or loan translations. These are lexical items obtained by word-for- word translation of words belonging to another language (eg. superman is a calque of the German “Ubermensch”). Examples of calques from Latin in OE include (as quoted by Jackson and Amvela 2007: 29):

Fourthly, grammatical relationships used to be expressed mainly with the help of inflections in OE (unlike they are today, mainly by word order). The explanation Jackson and Amvela (2007) offer for the disappearance of OE inflections is that it became increasingly difficult to hear them because of the way words came to be stressed with the evolution of Germanic languages. By placing the stress at the beginning of words, their different endings, especially the ones that were phonetically similar, became more and more inaudible until they disappeared completely (e.g.

en, on, an in faren, faron, faran).

Finally, the OE corpus is believed to have numbered about 24,000 words which were, however, different from the words English speakers use today. About 85% of the OE lexical items have fallen out of use. Furthermore, only about 3% of the words in OE were borrowed from other languages, compared with over 70% in Modern English. While the OE vocabulary was predominantly Germanic, this is no longer the case in present day English.

2.1.2. The Middle English period (1066-1500)

As compared to OE, Middle English (MidE) has a much richer documentation. At the beginning of the period, the number of public and private documents increased due to the national and local surveys made by

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Sources of the English Vocabulary

the newly centralized monarchy. Having been written in Latin and French, these are of a lesser documentary value for the evolution of English (the only English data that can be selected refer to personal and place names). Materials in English started to appear beginning with the thirteenth century and increased in number in the next one hundred years, under the form of translations of Latin and French texts and textbooks for teaching these languages. Beginning with the fourteenth century, ME enriched under the influence of the literary works written by authors such as John Gower, John Wycliff, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland. It is this body of literature, in the modern sense of the word, that bridged the transition from MidE to Modern English.

Like in OE, spelling in MidE was quite diverse. Variation even within the same text continued to be a feature of the language for some time: variants of neuer, “never”, such as naure, noeure, ner, neure could be found within the same text. However, the more the period progressed, the more spelling changed to approximate that of Modern English.

Unlike OE, MidE is characterized by intensive and extensive borrowing from other languages (in particular, the Norman Conquest, in 1066, paved the way for massive borrowing from French into the English vocabulary). Loan words that entered English affected the balance of the vocabulary in such a way that, while in early MidE, 90% of the words were of Anglo-Saxon origin, at the end of the period, the native stock decreased to 75%. However, loan words were by no means the only source that led to the enrichment of the English vocabulary. Word formation processes, such as affixation and compounding, already established in OE, continued to be active and were extended in various ways.

2.1.3. The Early Modern English period (1500–1800)

Early Modern English (EME) represents a period of transition from MidE to Modern English. However, while the existence of this period is generally acknowledged, there seems to be disagreement as to when its beginning should be set. Some consider an earlier date, around 1400 or 1450, others speak about a later date, around 1500, to mark its beginning. But many consider the printing revolution, initiated in 1476, when Caxton set up his printing press in Westminster, the safest starting point of Early Modern English.

The introduction of printing by Caxton lead, on the one hand, to more and more books being published and spread over wider areas and, on the other hand, to spelling and punctuation starting to become standardized. Furthermore, in the sixteenth century, scholars began to discuss language problems more seriously, making observations on grammar, vocabulary, the writing system and style.

EME encompasses the Renaissance (which runs from the middle of the fifteenth century to around 1650), a period of revived interest in the

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Words about Words

classical languages, rapid development of sciences and the arts and exploratory voyages to Asia, Africa and the Americas. All these factors had a major impact on the vocabulary of English, especially under the form of new loan words having been introduced from languages the Brits entered in contact with. Writers began to borrow from other European languages to refer to the new concepts, techniques and inventions originating in Europe. As explorations developed worldwide, words came into English from languages spoken on the other continents as well, some directly, some indirectly, via other European languages. Moreover, thousands of Latin and Greek words were introduced as a result of the English translators’ inability to find precise equivalents for these terms, especially in fields such as medicine and theology. The massive influx of foreign words was, in fact, considered the most prominent feature of English in the Renaissance, despite the opposition it was faced with on the part of purists supportive of the native stock of English.

The last decades of the Renaissance witnesses the two most important influences on the development of the English language in the EME period: the works of William Shakespeare and King James Bible of 1611. The former offers valuable information on areas such as pronunciation, word formation, syntax and language use and plays an important role in the development of the English lexicon, by having introduced and promoted thousands of new words in the language. The latter, however, had an opposite impact. It contributed to the preservation of the native stock by opting for a more conservative style than Shakespeare’s and for older forms of the language, even when modern alternatives were available. Many phrases in King James Bible entered both literary and everyday English and have been preserved and extensively used ever since (at places, with minor changes): can the leopard change his

spots, an eye for an eye, fight the good fight, if the blind lead the blind, a

wolf in sheep’s clothing, money is the root of all evil, the skin of one’s teeth, new wine in old bottles, a thorn in the flesh, etc.

Between 1530 and 1660, the lexicon of English grew very fast. Borrowings continued to enter the language at an accelerated pace, new words were formed by various internal means and many of the existing ones underwent semantic changes. With such a rapid and extensive development, the need was felt to “stabilize” the language. Unlike in France and Italy, where linguistic norms were imposed by the Academy, neither Britain nor the United States resorted to such a body to preserve the stability and consistency of the English language. Instead, grammars, spelling and pronunciation guides and dictionaries were produced by various scholars.

In 1604, Robert Cawdrey published the first “dictionary of hard words”, which comprised about 3000 entries of difficult words in English, mostly borrowings. His work was followed by Nathaniel Bailey’s A Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721). This represented an

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Sources of the English Vocabulary

improvement as compared to its predecessor work, with more numerous and extensive entries. However, the definitions were still not relevantly enough illustrated and the author offered little guidance on usage.

The first really remarkable dictionary of English is Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. As Crystal (1995) points out, although this was a smaller book than Bailey’s, it is considered more wide-ranging. The preface to the alphabetical entries contains an outlining of the author’s aims and procedures, a short history of the language and a grammar, with sections on orthography and prosody. Johnson changed the earlier prescriptive approach into a descriptive one, since, as he himself pointed out in the preface to his dictionary, his aim was “not to form, but to register the language”, a principle which marked the beginning of a new era in lexicography. The 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, “the first attempt at a truly principled lexicography” (Crystal 1995: 75), remained an authoritative work for almost a century, until it began to be criticized.

2.1.4. The Modern English period (from 1800 onwards)

The Modern English (ME) period is characterized by three main features: an unprecedented growth of the scientific vocabulary, the establishment of American English as a dominant geographic variety and the emergence of other varieties known collectively as the “New Englishes”.

On the one hand, English scientific and technical vocabulary has been developing steadily since the Renaissance, but, in the nineteenth century, the rhythm of growth accelerated, as an outcome of the industrial revolution and the period of scientific exploration and discovery following it. With a higher and higher level of education, people became more and more interested in science and technology and, consequently, more knowledgeable of their specific terminology. By the end of the nineteenth century, one could speak of “the English of science” as a well-defined variety of the language, whose characteristics were highlighted quite often in grammar books and in the style sheets of scientific journals.

On the other hand, the strength American English gained may be explained, at least partly, by the fact that the United States became the leading economic power of the twentieth century. The assertion of American English is made even stronger by the fact that the Americans are the most numerous speakers of English as a mother tongue. In fact, as Jackson and Amvela (2007) point out, the USA has nearly four times as many speakers of English as a first language than the UK and, according to Crystal (1995), these two countries comprise about 70% of all the native English speakers in the world.

The impact of American English on British English as well as on other (European) languages is felt especially in the lexical area, under the

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Words about Words

form of borrowings from the former into the latter. It is true though, that British English and these other languages have also input words to American English. This two-way transfer of words is due to the improvement of the communication systems and the development of the mass media beginning with the twentieth century, to the USA’s enhanced involvement into the world affairs and to the opening of various countries to the American culture.

Thirdly, a number of “new Englishes” have developed during the modern period in the colonial area, as a result of the adaptation of British English to the regional linguistic and cultural needs of the speakers in countries such as India, the Philippines, Singapore, Cameroon, Ghana or Nigeria. The part of the language in which the peculiarities of these new varieties of English are best identifiable is vocabulary.

In addition to the geographical varieties of English, those based on subject matter have also known an accelerated development in the ME period. Of these, some, such as the language of computers or that of telecommunication and business are relatively new, other such as the legal and religious varieties originate in earlier periods.

2.2. Sources of the English vocabulary

English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family, which includes the following: Hellenic, the mother of ancient Greek, Germanic languages (e.g. German, English, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic), Romance languages (e.g. French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian - all descendants of Latin), Celtic languages (e.g. Breton, Welsh, Welsh, Irish), Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Czech) and Indo-Iranian languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Kurdish, Persian).

Languages of the same family inherit from the parent language phonological, morphological and syntactic features as well as core lexical items (the more closely related two languages are the greater their resemblance).

Being a Germanic language, English has preserved its Germanic inheritance, which, together with the Old English and Anglo-Saxon elements, lie at the core of its present day vocabulary.

2.2.1. Native words in English

The native words are estimated to represent only 25-35% of the English vocabulary, but they form the bulk of the most frequently used lexical items. They include most of the form words such as auxiliary and modal verbs, some of the pronouns, numerals, prepositions and conjunctions and the majority of content words - nouns, adjectives, verbs

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Sources of the English Vocabulary

and adverbs. Native words denote, according to Crystal (1995: 124) parts of the body (arm, bone, chest, ear, eye, foot, hand, heart), the natural landscape (field, hedge, hill, land, meadow, wood), objects connected to domestic life (door, floor, house), members of the family (mother, father) divisions of the calendar (day, month, moon, sun, year), animals (cow, dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, swine), natural phenomena (rain), common properties (black, dark, good, long, white, wide) and actions (do, eat, fly,

go, help, kiss, live, life, love, say, see, sell, send, think).

The words that arrived with the Germanic invaders and are still used in modern English are usually short. According to Crystal (1995: 18), the most frequent two hundred words, both in British (BrE) and in American English (AmE), are monosyllabic. There are a few two-syllable words (40 in AmE and 24 in BrE) and a handful of trisyllabic forms (3 in AmE and 2 in BrE) which have a concrete meaning and a great wordforming power. There is only one four-syllable item in AmE, the word American itself, while, in BrE, there is none.

Native words are also concrete and have a great word-forming power. They tend to be preferred in everyday speech due to their being vague enough to convey many shades of meaning, as opposed to borrowed words, which are more precise and concrete and less easy to handle. Furthermore, as Jackson and Amvela (2007: 54) point out, native English words “are considered more human and emotional, whereas many polysyllabic loans from Greek, Latin or the Romance languages are considered cold and formal. For example, in an informal everyday situation, when faced with the choice between initiate, commence and start, or between nourishment, nutrition and food, most people would opt for the short, Anglo-Saxon word. In formal situations, however, it may seem more appropriate to allude to a nauseating odour or even an obnoxious effluvium rather than a nasty smell”.

2.3. Borrowed words in English

Apart from the native stock, English is a mosaic of words borrowed from a number of other languages, in various moments along its development (reference will be made to the periods in its evolution mentioned above, to highlight the most generous sources from which English has taken some elements of its vocabulary). Lexical items from other languages have been borrowed into English for various reasons, some of which are analyzed by Katamba (2005). His ideas in this respect will be summarized in the following section.

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Words about Words

2.3.1. Reasons for borrowing

One of the reasons for borrowing vocabulary items from one language into another is identity. Language is not only a means of communication but also a symbol of its user’s identity. By using a particular language, a speaker suggests ways in which s/he perceives herself / himself and would like to be perceived by the others. Thus, if in a Spanish doctor’s surgery in Great Britain or the United States, a patient of the same nationality initiates a discussion in Spanish, s/he might want to signal solidarity, to emphasize their belonging to the same ethnic group. Alternatively, the two may resort to code-switching, i.e. to interspersing English with Spanish words. In mentioning the role played by codeswitching in the process of borrowing, Katamba’s (2005: 139) opinion is that “if foreign words are used habitually in it, they may pass from one language into another and eventually become fully integrated and cease being regarded as foreign. That is probably how words like chutzpah (“brazen impudence”), schlemiel (“a very clumsy, bungling idiot who is always a victim”), schmaltz (“banal sentimentality”) and goyim (“gentile”) passed from Yiddish into (American) English. The fact that there is no elegant English equivalent to these Yiddish words was no doubt also a factor in their adoption”.

Closely connected to identity is prestige. The desire of some to signal that they are related to a fashionable foreign culture, they are modern, the “crème de la crème”, manifests itself in these people’s using words belonging to the language of that culture. French, for example, has been a source of such loan words for English as well as for other European languages. Katamba (2005: 139) quotes the words of Shakespeare’s Mercutio, who, in his parody of the pardonnez-moi brigade, emphasizes this point succinctly:

Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnezmoi, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bons, their bons!

(Romeo and Juliet, II, iv).

Another reason for borrowing is to fill a gap created by the unavailability in English of a word to refer to a particular concept, creature, artefact, institution, religion initially belonging to a foreign culture. At various periods in history, different civilizations have been in leading positions in a particular domain and, as a normal consequence of this, their language in that domain has become the lingua franca of the field.

Thus, in the late medieval and early modern periods, when many voices raised against the inadequacy of English for poetry, an infusion of

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