Seminar 9 Etymological peculiarities of the English word-stock

I. 1. Native words. Words of native origin and their characteristics.

2. Borrowings. Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed aspect: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings.

3. Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms). Classification of borrowings according to the language from which the word was borrowed: Romanic borrowings (Latin borrowings, French borrowings, Italian borrowings, Spanish borrowings); Germanic borrowings (Scandinavian borrowings, German borrowings, Holland borrowings). Etymological doublets

II. Exercises to Seminar 9

1. Word Origins. Look up the words listed below in a dictionary which gives word origins. Classify them as NATIVE, LATIN, GREEK or EXOTIC.

chaos	chocolate	complex	deprecate	gradient
hand	hurricane	husband	mammoth	renovate
robot	telegraph	tooth	trauma	tree

2. Word Histories. Look up the following words in a dictionary which gives word origins. Trace the history of each word as completely as possible.

Example: sherbet Turkish < Persian < Arabic ( < = 'from')

a. sugar	d. hurricane
b. chocolate	e. bizarre
c. robot	f. horde

3. Greek and Latin Roots. For each underlined root below, decide whether it originally comes from Greek or from Latin. Indicate which letter in the root provides the clue.

chrysalis	renovate	telegraph	psychic
equal	homonym	visual	chaos
kilometer	homonym	ferrous	helicopter

4. Test (Multiple Choice Questions)

1. In the Old English period, English borrowed a lot of words from ________.

A) Latin B) Old French C) Greek D) Germany

2. In the Middle English period, English borrowed a lot of words from ________.

A) Latin B) Old French C) Greek D) Germany

3. At the beginning of the Modern English period, English borrowed a lot of words from ________.

A) Latin B) Old French C) Greek D) Germany

4. In its historical development the English language adopted words from almost every known language, especially from ______.

A) Latin, German and French

B) Latin, Greek and French

C) Latin, Greek and Dutch

D) Latin, German and Spanish

5. The English vocabulary has grown from 50,000 to 60,000 words in Old English to the tremendous number of over ______ words today.

A) 100,00 B) 500,000 C) 1,000,000 D) 5,000,000

6. The vocabulary of Old English contains some fifty or sixty thousand words, which were chiefly _______.

A) Celtic B) Old Norse C) Anglo-Saxon D) Latin

7. The English language from ________ to the present is called Modern English.

A) 450 B) 1100 C) 1600 D) 1800

8. Middle English began with the ________ conquest of England in 1066.