lexicology / 16-17

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element in the vocabulary of MnE is much bigger than the original stock of words inherited by English from Old Germanic.

The bulk of the native clement has survived the centuries of language development. The reason of such stability lies in the fact that native words stand for fundamental things, they express the most vital concepts:

everyday objects: food, meat, milk, water:

natural phenomena: land, sun, moon, summer, wind;

common actions: see, go, come, sit, stand, love, hunt:

common qualities: long, short, warm, hard, quick, red, white:

terms of kinship: father, son, daughter, brother;

names of common animals and birds, bull, cat, goose, wolf,

parts of the human body: arm, ear, foot, heart.

The native stock of words include functional words: modal and auxiliary verbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, numerals and most notional words which denote common things, relations, qualities and actions of everyday life (already mentioned above).

The other important peculiarities of die words belonging to the native elements arc (besides great stability and vital importance):

(1) Plurality of meaning

For example, the word 'head has the following meanings recorded in a dictionary (to mention the first 10):

1 the upper part of the body that contains the brain, the chief sense organs, and the mouth

2. the seat of the intellect

3. the obverse of a coin (usually used in plural)

4. a person, individual

5. the end that is upper or higher or opposite the foot

6. one in charge of a division or department in an office or institution

7. the leading element of a military column or a procession

8. the uppermost part of an object

9 the place of leadership, honour, or command 10. a turning point, crisis

(2) Great word-building power

For example, we find the stem 'head" in the following derived and compound words: headache, headed, header, heading, headless, headline, headquarters, headmaster, headstrong, level-headed.

(3) Great combinative power in phraseology

There arc a lot of phraseological units with the word 'head': above someone's head, an old head on young shoulders, to talk one's head off. have one's head in the clouds, bury one s head in the sand, head over heels.

(4) Words of the native stock are stylistically neutral

Most native words arc short, often monosyllabic. Those which are not, for the most part have stress on the first syllable, e.g. father, brother, winter

In spite of the fact that native words make up only 30 per cent of the English vocabulary the importance and frequency value of native words in speech by far exceeds that of words of foreign languages. In actual speech the proportion of native words amount to 70 per cent or even 80.

3.3. Lexical Borrowings in MnE Vocabulary and Their Assimilation

For the most part borrowed words serve to satisfy genuine needs for expressing new ideas, especially abstract and special scientific concepts. Borrowings also enrich the English language with a wealth of synonyms permitting to express shades of meaning, to vary the style and emotional colouring of speech.

Sometimes a borrowed word replaces a native one. (e.g. ""take* for "niman"). In that case no actual enrichment of the vocabulary took place.

Borrowed words also brought into English new patterns of morphological structure of words.

But lexical borrowings, however numerous, do not radically change the structure of the borrowing language. Rather, the borrowed words themselves change in accordance with the structural peculiarities of the language they are brought into.

English sounds and stress are substituted for die sounds and stress of the original language.

e.g. gardin (Fr.j - garden

Borrowed words also get subordinated to the rules of English grammar. They usually lose or change their original endings and assume English grammar forms.

e.g. portus (Lot.) port

exaggerare (Fr.) - exaggerate

Borrowed words change their semantic structure when they get into the receiving language.

Thus through phonetic, spelling and morphological changes borrowed words become similar to native words, in other words are assimilated.

The degree of assimilation depends on the length of period during which the word has been used in the receiving language, upon its importance for communication purposes and its frequency. Oral