266D I E T E R K A S T O V S K Y

4.5Modern English

In the late eighteenth century the developments sketched above continued. The vocabulary grew steadily due to language contact and the expansion of English around the globe, until it became the international language it is today. Also, extralinguistic requirements such as technical and scientific discoveries made themselves felt especially in word formation, and the introduction of many Latin and Neo-Latin affixes contributed to this development. With the rapid technical and scientific developments in the twentieth century, the size of the vocabulary grew even more rapidly. Furthermore, the development of what has come to be called ‘Englishes’ (cf. Gorlach,¨ 1991, 1995, 1998, 2002 and Rissanen et al., 1992) – i.e. varieties of English in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Central Africa, India, etc. – has resulted in a remarkable diversification of ‘English’. This has also led to the publication of dictionaries for these varieties, e.g. The Australian National Dictionary (1988), Cassidy & Le Page (1980) for Jamaican English, or Branford (1987) for South African English, to mention only a few. Nevertheless, as Algeo (1998: 61) rightly argues, there is still a basic homogeneity despite these regional differences, which allows us to speak of ‘the English language’ in general, although admittedly with a certain amount of national/regional variation; see also Chapter 9.

The growth pattern of the vocabulary is difficult to assess precisely because of the unreliability of the sources on which the estimates are based (Algeo, 1998: 61ff.). The major source for such estimates is the Oxford English Dictionary (1st edition, 1884–1933, with Supplements; 2nd edition 1989; 3rd edition online, 2001–), and its derivative, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which in turn served as the basis for Finkenstaedt et al. (1970), the most comprehensive survey of the growth of the English vocabulary. This in turn was the input to Finkenstaedt et al. (1973), a statistical survey of the vocabulary growth over the centuries. There is one basic problem with these data, however, namely documentation: the problem is what sources were used by the dictionary compilers, on which the information on first recordings of lexical items is based. Unfortunately, this is most uneven, and therefore quite a number of re-datings had to be made for the earlier periods (cf. Sch¨afer, 1980). For the period in question it seems that documentation is also particularly uneven. Thus, according to Finkenstaedt et al. (1970, 1973), of the lexical items added to the English vocabulary after 1776, ‘51 per cent were coined in the mid-nineteenth century (1826–75), and only 4 per cent in the early twentieth century’ (Finkenstaedt et al., 1970). This ratio is most implausible and probably just reflects the lack of relevant data in the source material, the first edition of the OED. First of all, the sources of the OED are primarily literary and therefore neglect other genres, especially scientific literature,

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newspapers, etc. Also, the sources are primarily based on British English not on American texts (some of the American sources were lost or disregarded). This means that the discontinuities in the growth of the vocabulary (a peak in the seventeenth century, a slump in the eighteenth century, and a rise again after that) are an artefact of the documentation available. Therefore, on the whole, despite the ups and downs, we might – in view of the present-day situation – assume a fairly steady increase of the vocabulary growth during this period, fed by the usual sources, borrowing and word formation, rather than the up-and-down development suggested in Finkenstaedt et al. (1973). But in order to substantiate this, we would need other sources than the OED.

At the beginning of the Modern English period, it would seem that the classical languages (Latin and Greek) were still the major source of loans, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the spectrum substantially widened. While the classical languages remained prominent, especially in scientific and technical terminology, although in this respect rather through word formation than direct borrowing, languages like French and Spanish, and more exotic languages like Indian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc. (see Section 4.1.3 above) became more and more important.

Perhaps the most important source apart from the classical languages is French, the reason being the proximity of France with regard to the British Isles and its role as the first foreign language taught at school. Moreover, there had always been a certain cultural prominence in fields such as couture and cuisine, the fine arts and entertainment, which provided loans such as aperitif, art deco, blouse, charade, courgette, lingerie, menu, nuance, premiere, resum´e´, repertoire, restaurant, sorbet, souffle´, suede`, but also from other domains, such as chauffeur, espionage, fuselage, garage, hangar, limousine, morgue, ravine.

The prominent position of Spanish is partly due to its influence on American English because of the substantial (and growing) Spanish-speaking population, from where lexical items such as bonanza, cafeteria (and its derivatives luncheteria, washeteria, etc.), canyon, lasso, mustang, ranch, rodeo migrated to other varieties of English.

Italian contributed confetti, fiasco, intermezzo, spaghetti, studio, vendetta; whilst from Arabic we have razzia, safari; of Indian origin are cashmere, chutney, khaki, loot, pyjamas; from Japanese we have geisha, harakiri, tycoon; and from Australia we have boomerang, koala, outback.

But it was not only overseas varieties that contributed to the expansion of the vocabulary; there were also regional sources, especially Scots (see Gorlach,¨ 1999:102f.), due in part to the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, from where words such as awesome, blackmail, brownie, cosy, glamour, glint, guffaw, kith, raid, winsome made it into standard English.

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micro- (micro-bacillus, micro-cosmos), neo- (Neo-Platonism, Neo-Cambrian), per- (perchloride, percloric), poly- (polychromatic, polygrooved (rifle)), pro- (pro-ethnic, pro-British), retro- (retro-act, retro-buccal), semi- (semi-fluid, semi-ape).

With suffixes, we do not find so many innovations, the most noticeable being

-ate (acetate, citrate), -ine (bovine, chlorine, fluorine). Thus the number of borrowed prefixes by far outnumbers the number of borrowed suffixes. Here an investigation of the development of the scientific and technical nomenclature is still pending, especially since there had also been uncertainties with regard to the development of this kind of terminology.

Apart from these more conventional means of word formation there are three others, which became extremely productive in the late nineteenth but especially during the twentieth century: clipping, blending and acronyms (cf. Section 4.1.5 above).

Clipping as such is not a new process, but in Modern English it seems to have gained great popularity. We can distinguish three types:

(a)Back-clippings, i.e. the first part of the word is retained: ad(vertisement), bike (bicycle), brill(iant), cable(gram), co-op(erative association), co-ed(ucational female student), doc(tor), grad(uate), fax (facsimile), memo(randum), Met(ropolitan Opera), mike (microphone), prefab(ricate house), sarge (sergeant), Tech(nological Institute), vet(erinary). Also frequent are clippings of names, e.g. Al(fred); see further Section 6.3.8. Sometimes, a hypocoristic suffix is added, as in Alfie, Aussie, bookie, commie, Jerry, movie, telly.

(b)Fore-clippings, i.e. the latter part of the word is retained: (air)plane,

(auto)bus, (Ara)Bella, (Her)Bert(ie), (rac)coon, (tele)phone, (uni)varsity, (violin)cello, Web (World Wide Web); Sandie (Alexander), Trixy (Beatrice).

(c)Back- + fore-clipping, i.e. the middle of the word is retained:

(in)flu(enza), (de)tec(tive), (E)Liz(abeth), (re)fridge(rator), (San) Fr(anc)isco.

Blending and clipping compounds (cf. Pound, 1914) also became more and more popular in the nineteenth and, especially, the twentieth centuries. Genuine blends are instances where both parts lose part of their phonological substance, e.g. the classical examples brunch (breakfast + lunch), motel (motor (car) + hotel), smog (smoke + fog), and also Lewis Carroll’s imaginative creations such as slithy (slimy + lithe), chortle (chuckle + snort); others are electro(exe)cution, info(rmation enter)tainment, positron (positive electron), sitcom (situation comedy), stagflation (stagnation + inflation).

In clipping compounds, a clipped lexical item is combined with a regular lexical item (the delimitation from blending is not always quite clear): Amer(ican)indian, cam(era)(re)corder, cell(ular tele)phone, Clint(ec)onomics, cyber(net)cafe´,