The origins of English vocabulary Celtic influence -- very little borowings: binn (=bin), torr (=peak), carr (=rock), bratt (=cloak); luh (=lake); Thames, Avon, Exe, Wye, London, Dover, Kent. Latin loans in the early Anglo-Saxon period: Names of plants, animals, food, drink, household items: plante (=plant), catte (=cat), cyse (=cheese), disc (=dish), ... Clothing: belt, buildings and settlements: weall (=wall), ceaster (=city), straet (=road). Military and legal institutions, commerce: pund (=pound), religion: maesse (Mass), munuc (=monk), mynster (=minster). Some old English words were given a new, Christian meaning, i.e. they were refashioned semantically: heaven, hell, gospel, God, Holy Ghost, Easter, sin. Loans from Latin Up to 1000 AD loans from spoken Latin tended to relate to everyday matters: alms, anchor, cancer, candle, cell, chest, cloister, place, giant, ginger, lentil, lobster, master, noon, paper, pope, priest, prime, prophet, purple, radish, rule, sock, temple, title, tiger, tunic, ... Influence of Old Norse Viking raids - from 787 AD for over 200 years. Mid 9^th century - regular settlement. 886 AD - Treaty of Wedmore - the Danes agreed to settle only in the north-eastern third of the country (east of a line running from Chester to London), so-called Danelaw. 991 AD - a further invasion, king Æthelred was forced into exile, the Danes seized the throne. England was under Danish rule for 25 years. General words from Old Norse - nearly 1000 of them became eventually part of Standard English: landing, score, beck, fellow, také, steersman, ... The vast majority of Old Norse loans did not begin to appearuntil the early 12^th century: ÿ skirt, sky, skin; both, get, give, same, ... ÿ they, them, their replaced the OE personal pronoun hí, híe, héo, ... ÿ sindon, OE plural form of the verb to be, was replaced by are from Old Norse ÿ spread of the 3^rd person singular ending -s in the present tense in other verbs. Norse loans in the Old English period: again, anger, awkward, bag, band, birth, bull, cake, call, crawl, die, dirt, egg, flat, fog, freckle, gap, get, guess, happy, husband, ill, kid, knife, law, leg, loan, low, neck, odd, race, raise, ransack, reindeer, rid, root, rugged, scant, scare, seat, seem, silver, sister, skill, skirt, sly, smile, sprint, steak, take, thrift, Thursday, tight, trust, want, weak, window, ... English personal (family) names ending in -son are also of Scandinavian origin (Jackson, Henderson, Davidson, Robson, ...). Old English and Old Norse were two related Germanic languages, mutually understandable. Types of development: ÿ two phonologically differentiated words of the same origin competed and one form has been retained: ON egg x ey OE sister x sweostor silver x seolfor ÿ two unrelated expressions with the same meaning competed: ON reike x path OE site x sorrow bolnen x swell ÿ both words have been retained (but the two words had to develop a difference in meaning): ON dike x ditch OE hale x whole raise x rise scrub x shrub sick x ill skill x craft skin x hide skirt x shirt ÿ sometimes one form has become standard, and the other has been kept in a regional dialect: ON garth x yard OE kirk x church laup x leap nay x no trigg x true Old English vocabulary preferred synonymy. Lexical construction used: ¨ derivation (related words formed lexical families) ¨ compounding ¨ loan translations (calques). Calques: Lat. trinitas x rriness OE significatio x getacnung coniunctio x geðeodnys praepositio x foresetnys French influence before 1066 King Edward the Confessor exiled to Normandy, returned to England in 1041. Few French loans before 1066: servian (>serve), castel (>castle), bacun (>bacon), prisun (>prison), cancelere (>chancellor) Old English had approx. 24,000 lexical items. 85 % of OE words are no longer in use. OE: 3 % only words were loan words. ModE: over 70 % words are loan words. Nearly half of ModE vocabulary comes from Latin or French. The Middle English period From the beginning of 12^th century to the middle of 15^th century. Even a century after the Norman invasion, texts were still being composed in the West Saxon variety. Dialects of Old English: ¨ Northumbrian (spoken north of the line between the Humber and Mersey rivers; 7^th - 8^th century) ¨ Mercian (spoken in the Midlands, i.e. between the river Thames and the river Humber, as far west as the present-day Welsh boundary; texts: 8^th century) ¨ Kentish (Juttish settlement) ¨ West Saxon (the Wessex dialect - south of the Thames and west as far as Cornwall, end of 9^th century; King Alfred). Modern Standard English descended from the Mercian dialect (spoken around London), not from West Saxon. 12^th century - English widely used among the upper classes. Frequent intermarriage. Royal court - still largely monolingual French-speaking. End of 12^th century - some children of nobility spoke English as a mother tongue and had to be taught French at school. The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) -- antagonism of the English and French. The spirit of English nationalism grew, the status of French diminished. 10,000 French words were adopted by English by 13th century -- largely related to law, administration, but also medicine, art and fashion. Many of them were ordinary, everyday terms, over 70 % of them nouns. A large number of abstract terms -- formed by French affixes con-, trans-, pre-, -ance, -tion, -ment. About 3/4 of the French loans are still part of the English language. Duplicate words -- two possible outcomes: o replacement of the OE word by the French equivalent: leod - people stow - place wlitig - beautiful o survival of both words, development of different senses or connotations: doom - judgment hearty - cordial house - mansion Lexical triplets: OE French Latin rise mount ascend holy sacred consecrated fast firm secure ask question interrogate fire flame conflagratio Dialect difference between Norman French and Parisian French (a prestige dialect): Norman French Parisian French warrant guarantee warden guardian reward regard gaol jail