Immediate Constituents Analysis

• originally, a model of sentence analysis first explicitly introduced by Leonard Bloomfield (American Structuralism) in his book Language (1933); the most basic syntactic organisational principle of transformational grammar;

• the goal and consequence of IC analysis is to analyse a linguistic expression into a hierarchically defined series of constituents;

• it is based upon a binary principle: each stage of procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into, i.e. immediate constituents (ICs); the analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. ultimate constituents (UCs);

Sample analysis

1) un + gentlemanly - IC

2) un + {gentleman + ly} - IC

3) un + { [gentle + man] + ly} - IC

3. English Vocabulary: General Considerations

• the native stock of words (25-30%) – words known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period; they were brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century AD by the Germanic tribes of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes

• the borrowed stock of words (70-75%) – words taken over from other languages and modified in phonetic shape, spelling, paradigm or / and meaning according to the standards of the English language

Native Element in the English Vocabulary: Characteristic Features

• high frequency value – 80% of the 500 most frequent words;

• monosyllabic structure: eye, red, head, sun, door, help etc;

• a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency: to raise / bend / bow / shake / bury one’s head; clear / cool / level head; above one’s head; in one’s head etc.

• developed polysemy: head, n. 1) the part of the body; 2) the mind or brain; 3) ability; 4) a leader; 5) side of the coin etc.

• great word-building power: headed, heading, headache, header, headline, to behead etc;

• enter a number of set expressions: heads or tails; head over heels, to keep one’s head above water, from head to toe etc.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary:Words of Indo-European Stock

Words of Indo-European stock have cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages:

• terms of kinship: mother, father, son, brother, daughter etc.;

• parts of the human body: foot, nose, eye, heart etc.;

• names of animals and birds: bull, swine, goose, fish, wolf, cat etc;

• names of plants: tree, birch, corn etc.;

• names of celestial bodies: sun, star, moon etc.;

• calendar terms: day, year, month etc.;

• names of domestic objects: home, house, door, stool, floor etc.;

• common verbs: be, go, do, have, see, sit, think, help, love, kiss, drink, bear, eat, ask etc.;

• common adjectives: hard, slow, wide, long, dark, red, white etc.;

• numerals: 1 .. 100;

• pronouns: I, my, that etc.

The evolution of I

• O.E. ic (1st p. Sg. Nom.) < Pr.G. *ekan (cf. O.Fris. ik, O.N. ek, Norw. eg, Dan. jeg, O.H.G. ih, Ger. ich, Goth. ik) < PIE *ego(m) (cf. Skt. aham, Hitt. uk, L. ego, Gk. ego, Rus. ja);

• the dot on the ‘small’ letter -i- began to appear in the 11th c. Latin manuscripts, to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-);

• ic was reduced to i by 1137;

• I became capitalised since 1250.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary:Words of Common Germanic Stock

Words of Common Germanic stock have cognates only in other Germanic languages, e.g. Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc. Their areal distribution reflects the contacts between the Germanic tribes at the beginning of their migration:

• common nouns: hand, sand, earth, sheep, fox, bath, child, winter, rain, ice, house, life, bridge, rest etc.;

• common verbs: make, starve, sing, come, send, learn, can, buy, drive, burn, bake, keep, meet etc.;

• common adjectives: green, brown, cold, dead, deaf, deep, damp, thick, high, old, small etc.;

• adverbs: behind, much, still, well, yet etc.;

• pronouns: we, he, you, it, self etc.

Native Element in the English Vocabulary:Words of Proper English Stock

Words of proper English stock do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages:

• words whose roots have not been found outside English, e.g. bird;

• compounds and derived words formed from the Germanic roots in England, e.g.

woman (O.E. wifman) < wife + man;

lord (O.E. hlāford) < loaf + weard (‘keeper’);

lady (O.E. hlāfdiʒe) < loaf + knead (‘bread-kneading’);

sheriff (O.E. scirʒerefa ‘chief of the shire’).

4. Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary

• The O.E. vocabulary was almost entirely Germanic and on the whole was highly resistant to borrowings.

• The English vocabulary of the 17th c. contained words derived from no less than 50 world languages.

• Over 120 languages are on record as sources of Modern English vocabulary

Language Frequent thousand	English	French	Latin	Danish	Other
First thousand	83%	11%	2%	2%	2%
Second thousand	34%	46%	11%	2%	7%
Third thousand	29%	46%	14%	1%	10%
Fourth thousand	27%	45%	17%	1%	10%

Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary

Motivation for borrowing a word:

• to fill a gap in the vocabulary, e.g. butter (Latin), yogurt (Turkish), whisky (Scottish Gaelic), tomato (Nahuatl /’na: watl/ - the Aztec language), sauna ( /’so:nə/ Finnish) etc.;

• to represent the same concept in a new aspect, supplying a new shade of meaning or a different emotional colouring, e.g. cordial (Latin), a desire (French), to admire (Latin) etc.;

• prestige, e.g. picture, courage, army, treasure, language, female, face, fool, beef (Norman French); in many cases these fashionable words simply displaced their native English equivalents, which dropped out of use.

Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary

The term source of borrowing is applied to the language from which the loan word was taken into English.

The term origin of borrowing refers to the language to which the word may be traced.

paper < Fr papier < Gr papyros ‘paper made of papyrus stalks’

umbrella < It ombrella < L umbra ‘shade, shadow’ (cf. Ukr. парасоля)

beauty < ME beauty < L bellus ‘pretty’

Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary: Types of borrowings

Translation loans (calques) are compound words or expressions formed from the elements existing in the English language according to the patterns of the source language; such loans came in handy when original words were hard to reproduce.

	Original	Modern English
German	Umgebung world outlook Heimweh Übermensch	environment Weltanschauung home-sickness superman
French	par coeur vers libre	by heart free verse
Latin	lingua materna lapsus linguae	mother tongue a slip of the tongue

Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary: Types of borrowings

Modern English names of the days of the week were also created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations and are the earliest examples of calques; have become regularly capitalised since the 17th c .

• Monday (O.E. mōnan-dæʒ) < L. Lunae dies ‘day of the moon’;

• Tuesday (O.E. tiwes-dæʒ) < L. Martis dies (Tiw – a Teutonic God corresponding to Roman Mars);

• Wednesday (O.E. wodnes-dæʒ) < L. Mercurii dies (Odin – the chief Teutonic god, the All-Father); cf. М.G. Mittwoche, Ukr. середа);

• Thursday (O.E. Þurres-dæʒ) < L. Jovis dies (Jupiter);

• Friday (O.E. frige-dæʒ) < L. Veneris dies;

• Saturday (O.E. sæter-dæʒ) < L. Saturni dies (partial calque);

• Sunday (O.E. sunnan-dæʒ) < L. solis dies (partial calque);

Borrowed Element in the English Vocabulary: Types of borrowings

The term semantic loans is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language.

pioneer ‘one who goes before’ ← ‘a member of the young communist organisation’;

dream ‘joy, music’ (O.E.) ← ‘a vision during sleep’ (Sc.);

gift ‘ransom for a wife’ (O.E.) ← ‘a present’ (Sc.);

plough ‘a unit of measurement’ (O.E.) ← ‘an agricultural implement’ (Sc.);

dwell ‘to wander’ (O.E.) ← ‘to live’ (Sc.);

bloom ‘metal’ (O.E.) ← ‘a blossom, a flower of a seed plant’ (Sc.)