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The Sources of The English Lexicon

The English lexicon is derived from several sources: 1) Native vocabulary from Old English/Anglo-Saxon roots that provide basic words still in everyday use. 2) Foreign borrowings, including some early Celtic words and many later Latin and Scandinavian borrowings, as well as over 10,000 words from French after the Norman conquest. 3) Word formation within English, including affixation (adding prefixes and suffixes), compounding (joining words), conversion (changing word classes), blending (joining beginnings and endings of words), and clipping (shortening words).

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512 views1 page

The Sources of The English Lexicon

The English lexicon is derived from several sources: 1) Native vocabulary from Old English/Anglo-Saxon roots that provide basic words still in everyday use. 2) Foreign borrowings, including some early Celtic words and many later Latin and Scandinavian borrowings, as well as over 10,000 words from French after the Norman conquest. 3) Word formation within English, including affixation (adding prefixes and suffixes), compounding (joining words), conversion (changing word classes), blending (joining beginnings and endings of words), and clipping (shortening words).

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Alyona Stulina
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8.

The sources of the English lexicon:


1. Native Vocabulary
Many lexemes arrived with the Germanic invaders, and have never fallen out of use. The Anglo-
Saxon lexical character continues to dominate everyday conversation, whether it be grammatical
words (in, on, be, that) or lexical words (father, love, name), or affixes (miss, ness, less).
Although Anglo-Saxon lexemes comprise only a relatively small part of total modern lexicon,
they provide almost all the most frequently used words in the language.
2. Foreign borrowings
When one language takes lexemes from another, the new items are usually called loan words or
borrowings. The borrowing began even before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. There are very few
Celtic loans during that period: dum (hill), Kennedy (ugly head), coil (forest).
The influence of Latin is very strong: school, plant, priest, bishop.
Scandinavian words: egg, kid, leg, skin, sky, window.
More than 10.000 words came into English from French after the Norman Conguest: arrest,
crime, blame, dress, fashion etc.
3. Word-formation in English
Many words are formed on the bases of other words. The three major types of word-formation
are affixation, compounding and conversion.
3.1. Affixation (or derivation) Lexemes are made by adding an affix to previously existing
forms. There are 2 possible types of affix in English: prefixes and suffixes. Mislead has a prefix,
actress has a suffix; disrespectful has a prefix and a suffix.
3.2. Compounding is a joining of the separate words to produce a single form. A compound  is a
unit of vocabulary which consists of more than one lexical stem. Flower-bed does not refer to a
flower and a bed, but to a single object. It is pronounced as a unit, with a single main stressed,
and it is used grammatically as a unit. Common English compound nouns are: bookcase,
fingerprint, sunburn, textbook.
3.3. Conversion. Lexemes can be made to change their word class without the addition of the
affix. This process is known as a conversion. The items chiefly produced in this way are Nouns,
Adjectives and Verbs.
V→N: bottle, butter, chair.
N→V: to doubt, to guest, must.
V →A: see-through (to see through)
A→V: to dirty, to empty.
3.4. Blending is the combination of 2 separate forms to produce A SINGLE NEW TERM.
However, blending is typically accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and
joining it to the end to the other word.
Examples: motel (motor+hotel), smog (smoke+fog).
3.5. Clipping. This occurs when a word of more than 1 syllable is reduced to a shorter form.
There are two chief types of clipping: the first part is kept : exam (examination), and the last part
is kept: plane (airplane). (у наступному питанні є ще 3 види, вони менш поширені)

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