2. Synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of language

In linguistics, a synchronic analysis is one that views linguistic phenomena only at a given time, usually the present, though a synchronic analysis of a historical language form is also possible. This may be distinguished from diachronic, which regards a phenomenon in terms of developments through time. Diachronic analysis is the main concern of historical linguistics; most other branches of linguistics are concerned with some form of synchronic analysis. Synchronic and diachronic approaches can reach quite different conclusions. For example, a Germanic strong verb like English sing - sang - sung is irregular when viewed synchronically: the native speaker's brain processes these as learned forms, whereas the derived forms of regular verbs are processed quite differently, by the application of productive rules (for example, adding -ed to the basic form of a verb as in walk - walked). This is an insight of psycholinguistics, relevant also for language didactics, both of which are synchronic disciplines. However a diachronic analysis will show that the strong verb is the remnant of a fully regular system of internal vowel changes; historical linguistics seldom uses the category "irregular verb"

3. Etymological survey of the English language. Native and borrowed words. Some basic notions

The most characteristic features, of English is said to be its mixed character. While it is wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a while, the composite nature of the English vocabulary cannot be denied.

l) The term native in linguistic literature is used to denote word of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the Britain from the continent in the 5th century by Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes)- Practically, the term is often applied to words, whose origin cannot be traced to any other language, for example, the word path.

2) prof. Smirnitsky A.I, suggested another interpretation of the term: as words which existed in the English word—stock of the 7th century.

3) Ginsburg and her colleagues proceed from a different understan­ding of the term native as comprising not only the ancient. Anglo-Saxon core bur also words coined later by means of various processed operative in English; namely word-formation, split of polysemy, etc.

The term borrowing is used to denote the process of adopting we words from other languages and also the resulting of this process, the language material itself. Not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English such as -able, -ment, -ity, etc. As well as some word-groups: coup d'etat¹, vis-à-vis².

4. Words of native origin in Modern English. Semantic and stylistic characteristics of native words. Word-forming ability of native words.

Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements (Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates). The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have passed out of existence.

To assign the native element its true place it's not so im­portant to count the number of Anglo-Saxon words as to study their semantic and stylistic character, frequency value, collocability³, their word-building ability, the productivity of the word-building patterns.

As we know almost all words of Anglo-Saxon origin belong to very important semantic groups. They include

Most of the auxilary and modal verbs: shall, will, should, would, must, can, may, etc.

Pronouns: I, you, he, my, your, his, who, whose.

Prepositions: in, out, on, under, etc.

Numerals: one, two, three, four, etc.

Conjunctions; and, but, till, as, etc.

National words of Anglo-Saxon origin include: such groups as words denoting:

Parts of the body ( head, hand, arm, back, etc.)

Members of the family and closest relatives (father, mother, brother, son, wife)

Natural phenomena and planets (snow, rain, wind, frost, sun, the Moon)

Animals (horse, cow, sheep, cat)

Qualities and properties (old, young, cold, hot, heavy, light, white, long, etc.)

Common actions (do, make, go, come, see, hear, eat, etc.)

Most of the native words have undergone striking transformation in semantic structure and as a result are nowadays highly polysemantic. E.g. the word "finger" does not only denote a part of a hand as in Old English, but also: 1) the part of a glove covering one of the fingers; 2)a finger-like part in various machines; 3) a hand of a clock; 4)an index; 5) a unit of measurement

Highly polysemantic are the words man, head, go, etc. Most native words are stylistically neutral.

Due to their semantic characteristic and great stability most native words possess a wide range of lexical and grammatical valence. Many of them enter a number of phraseological units, e. g. the word heel enters the following units: heel over head = upside down; cool one's heels=be kept waiting; heel of Achilles⁴.