Unit 3

● Indo-European Language Family
　　1.1 The Indo-European Language Family
　　It is assumed that the world has approximately 3,000 (some put it 5,000) languages, which can be grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities in their basic word stock and grammar. The Indo-European is one of them. It is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India. The prehistoric Indo-European parent language is thought to be a highly inflected language . It was a language in which the various forms of a given word showed its relationship to other words in a sentence. When groups of this language moved away from the original homeland, believed to be somewhere in the eastern most part of Europe, the language of each group grew and developed along different lines in much the same way that American and Australian English now show differences from the language of England. Over very long periods of complete isolation from each other, these dialects of a single language changed so much that they became separate languages. Speakers of one were not understood by speakers of another.
　　The surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another. The similarity bear a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distribution. They accordingly fall into eight principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set: Balto-Slavic , Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Albanian; a Western set: Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Germanic.
In the Eastern set, Armenian and Albanian are each the only modern language respectively. The Balto-Slavic comprises such modern languages as Prussian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Russian. In the Indo-Iranian we have Persian, Bengali, Hindi, Romany , the last three of which are derived from the dead language Sanskrit.
　　In the Western set, Greek is the modern language derived from Hellenic. In the Celtic, we find Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Breton, etc. The five Romance languages, namely, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Roumanian all belong to the Italic through an intermediate language Latin. The Germanic family consists of the four Northern European Languages, which are generally known as Scandinavian languages. Then there is German, Dutch, Flemish and English.
　　All these languages have some influence on English to a greater or lesser extent because each has lent words into the English vocabulary. Some of them have played a considerable role in the course of the development of the English vocabulary.
● Historical Overview of the English Vocabulary
　　2.2 A Historical Overview of the English Vocabulary
　　 Students of English are so accustomed to thinking of English as inseparable to the English people that they are likely to forget that it has been the language of England for a comparatively short period. The first peoples known to inhabit the land were Celts. Their languages were dialects of still another branch of the Indo-European language family-Celtic. The second major language known in England was the Latin of the Roman Legions. In 55-54 B. C., the Romans invaded the British Isles and were to occupy the land until about 410. When the Roman empire began to crumble, the Germanic tribes came in. As the invading tribes took over and settled in Britain, the Celtic languages gradually retreated. As a result, Celtic made only a small contribution to the English vocabulary with such words as crag and bin and a number of place names like Avon, Kent, London, Themes. This is the summary: Celts→ (55-54BC) Romans → (410) Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)
●● Old English
　　 2.2.1 Old English (450-1150)
　　After the Romans, the Germanic tribes called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came in great numbers. Soon they took permanent control of the land, which was to be called England (the land of Angles). Their language, historically known as Anglo-Saxon, dominated and almost totally blotted out the Celtic. Now people generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as Old English. Even as this happened, changes were taking place. Latin-speaking Roman missionaries under St. Augustine came to spread Christianity in Britain at the end of the 6th century. The introduction of Christianity had a great impact on the English vocabulary. It brought many new ideas and customs and also many religious terms such as abbot, candle, altar, amen, apostle.
　　However, users of Old English did not borrow as heavily from Latin and other languages in this period as they did later. Some-times they changed meanings of native words, eg. Easter (originally, name of the spring festival honouring the goddess of dawn). The common practice was to create new words by combining two native words, for example, handbook (manual).
　　In the 9th century the land was invaded again by Norwegian and Danish Vikings. They came first to plunder, then to conquer. Finally, they succeeded in placing a Danish king on the throne of England for a time. With the invaders, many Scandinavian words came into the English language. These, however, did not identify new ideas and objects. They were everyday words for which the English had terms and expressions, for the Scandinavian invaders were Germanic people like the Anglo-Saxons. Many words were exactly alike, for example, father, husband, house, life, man, mother, summer, and winter. Other words were so much alike that they were used interchangeably. It is estimated that at least 900 words of Scandinavian origin have survived in modern English. Many are essential to our daily life and speech such as skirt, skill, window, leg, grasp, birth, they, their, them, egg.
　　Old English has a vocabulary of about 50,000 to 60,000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like modern German. Therefore, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs had complex endings or vowel changes or both, which differ greatly from the language that we use today. The characteristics can be summarized as followes:
　　1. Vocabulary was small;
　　2. The small number of borrowings came from Latin and Scandinavian;
　　3. Vocabulary was full of endings.

●● Middle English
　　2.2.2 Middle English (1150-1500)
　　Old English began to undergo a great change when the Normans invaded England from France in 1066. Until then, although there were borrowings from Latin, the influence on English was mainly Germanic. But the Norman Conquest started a continual flow of French words into English.
　　The English were defeated but not killed off, nor were they driven from their country. They were reduced to the status of an inferior people, i.e. good swineherds and servants. Norman French became the polite speech. The native tongue was a despised language which was left to the use of boors and serfs. By the end of the eleventh century, virtually all of the people who held political or social power and many of those in powerful Church positions were of Norman French origin. Therefore, those in power spoke French; those who were literate read and wrote French; those who could educate their children taught them in French; and any young man who sought to earn his living as a scribe learned Latin or French because there was no market for such services in English. The situation of three languages (French, Latin, English) existing simultaneously continued for over a century.
　　However, by the end of the 13th century, English gradually came back into the schools, the law courts, and government and regained social status. It made the final step back to a position of importance when it emerged once again as a respected literary medium with the Wycliff translation of the Bible and the writings of Chaucer, Langland and others. Between 1250 and 1500 about 9,000 words of French origin poured into English. Seventy-five per cent of them are still in use today. We can find words relating to every aspect of human society, eg. government, social scales, law, religion, moral matters, military affairs, food, fashion and so on. Words such as state, power, prince, duke, judge, court, crime, angel, mercy, peace, battle, pork, bacon, fry, roast, dress, coat are just a few in frequent use.
　　During this period, Britain had trade relations with the low countries, especially Holland. As a result, as many as 2,500 words of Dutch origin found their way into English. Some examples are boom (at the bottom of a sail), deck, easel, freight, and stoop (porch or entrance).
　　Middle English retained much few inflections. Endings of nouns and adjectives marking distinction of number, case and often of gender lost their distinctive forms. The same is true of the verb. If we say that Old English was a language of full endings, Middle English was one of leveled endings. The main characteristics are:
　　1. It had a comparatively large vocabulary;
　　2. It had absorbed a tremendous number of foreign words mainly from
French and Latin;
　　3. Word endings became leveled.

●● Modern English
　　2.2.3 Modern English (1500-up to now)
　　Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. Considering the changes in vocabulary, it is necessary to subdivide it into Early (1500-1700) and Late (1700-up to the present) Modern English. Contemporary English (1945-)
　　In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the Renaissance. Latin and Greek were recognized as the languages of the Western world's great literary heritage and of great scholarship, but translators were rapidly making great literary works available in English. Translators and scholars borrowed heavily from the Latin vocabulary of their source materials during this period and enormous numbers of Latin words became part of English vocabulary. From the 1500's through the 1700's, many writers experimented with words. Over 10,000 new words entered the English language. Many of these were taken from Latin and Greek by scholars who wanted to replace the forms earlier adopted from French. In fact, More than twenty-five per cent of modern English words come almost directly from classical languages (WBD). These, added to the vocabulary already borrowed from French and those supplemented during earlier periods of borrowing from Latin, contributed to the decidedly Latinate flavour of Modern English.
　　In the mid-seventeenth century, England experienced the Bourgeois Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution and rose to be a great economic power. With the growth of colonization, British tentacles began stretching out to every corner of the globe, thus enabling English to absorb words from all major languages of the world.
　　Since the beginning of this century, particularly after World War II, the world has seen breathtaking advances in science and technology. As a result, thousands and thousands of new words have been created to express new ideas, inventions, and scientific achievements. Although borrowing remained an important channel of vocabulary increase, yet more words are created by means of word-formation (see Chapter 3). Now new words are multiplied in all walks of life: politics, economy, commerce, culture, entertainment, education, sports, transportation, mass media, etc.
In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions. It can be concluded that English has evolved from a synthetic language (Old English) to the present analytic language. Compare the following examples:

　　　　　　Old　　　　Middle　　　　Modern
　　　　　　eorn-ian 　　lern-en　　　　 learn
　　　　　　mon-a 　　 mone-e 　　　　moon
　　　　　　stan-as 　　 ston-es 　　　　stones
　　　　　　sun-ne 　　 sun-ne 　　　　 sun
　　　　　　sun-u 　　　sun-e 　　　 　 sun

● Growth of Present-day English Vocabulary
　　2.3 Growth of Present-day English Vocabulary
　　Today, new words sweep in at a rate much faster than at any other historical period of time. New words are being invented or introduced every day to express new things and new changes in society, both material and intellectual. Meanwhile, they are coined and used to arouse public attention and interest. In time they gain acceptance and become part of the English vocabulary. Generally, there are three main sources of new words: the rapid development of modern science and technology; social, economic and political changes; the influence of other cultures and languages. Gozzi, the author of New Words and Changing American Culture (1990), studied 160 pages of entries from 12,000 Words and discovered that science and technology terms make up approximately 45 percent of new words, words associated with life-style constitute 24 percent, and social and economic terms amount to more than 11 percent.
　　Rapid growth of science and technology breeds such new words as green revolution, astrobiology, astro-chemistry in biology and chemistry; space shuttle, earthrise, moon walk, parking orbits in space science; retrovirus, open heart surgery in medicine; smart bomb, fallout, irradiation in atomic technology, etc.
　　Social, economic and political changes bring about an increasing number of new words. There are new words relating to food like fast food, TV dinner, megavitamin, soy milk. Granny glasses, pant suit, hip huggers are the result of people's changing view of clothing. We also find music terms: disco, punk rock, soul music; words concerning television and films: talk shows, family movies, boob tube and the like. Changes in politics and economy supply such words as petropolitics, Watergate, the fourth world, stagflation, demand-pull and so on. The development in education gives us open university, pass-failing grade, telequiz, etc. Women's liberation leaves us chairperson, girlcott, Ms and the like. The drug culture forces Mary Jane, soft drug, headshop into English.
　　The influence of other cultures and languages can be felt in many different fields. English has borrowed a host of terms concerning cuisine like stir frying, pita bread, tahini, felafel from Middle East. Some black nationalists wear dashhikis to emphasize African roots. Mao jackets and Nehru jackets add to the vocabulary of American fashion. Martial arts from the Far East also find their way into English vocabulary such as aikido, kungfu, dojo and black belt. These are just a few new words. But they will suffice to show the nature of present-day English vocabulary and the trend of vocabulary growth.

● Modes of Vocabulary Development
　　2.4 Modes of Vocabulary Development
　　On the basis of the discussion so far in this chapter, we can conclude that modern English vocabulary develop through three channels: creation, semantic change, borrowing.
　　1. Creation refers to the formation of new words by using the existing materials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. The major means of word-building will be discussed in the chapter to follow. In modern times, this is the most important way of vocabulary expansion, e.g.
　　　　supercomputer
　　　　super-rich
　　　　super-fit
　　　　colaholic
　　　　chocaholic
　　　　newscast
　　　　sportcast

　　2. Semantic change means an old form which takes on a new meaning to meet the new need. This does not increase the number of word forms but create many more new usages of the words, thus enriching the vocabulary, e.g.
　　　　break (dance)
　　　　mouse
　　　　web
　　　　monitor

　　3. Borrowing has played a vital role in the development of vocabulary, particularly in earlier times. Though still at work now, it can hardly compare with what it did in the past. According to Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1982), borrowed words constitute merely six to seven percent of all new words. In earlier stages of English, French, Latin, Greek and Scandinavian were the major contributors.
In modern times, however, the components of borrowings show a difference. A study based on 6000 WORDS and The Barnhart Dictionary of New English indicates that 473 words were borrowed from other languages from 1961 to 1976. Thirty percent of them come from French, eight percent from Latin, seven percent from Japanese and Italian respectively, six percent from Spanish, five percent from German and Greek respectively, four percent from Russian and Yiddish respectively, and the rest from other languages. It can be said that with the change of world situation and the development of economy the role of each foreign contributor will change accordingly.
　　Reviving archaic or obsolete words also contributes to the growth of English vocabulary though quite insignificant. This is especially true of American English. For instance, loan used as a transitive verb was prevalent in the thirteenth century and then fell out of use. It was replaced by lend. But this use of loan survives in American English. At present, the American use of guess for think, druggist for chemist, fall for autumn, sick for ill can all be traced back to much earlier times in British English.
Finally, mention should be made of an opposite process of development, i.e. old words falling out of use. For example, in the epic Beowulf, as Jespersen (1948) notes, there were more than 37 words used to express 'prince'. Now most of them are no longer in use. Likewise, over 30 words denoting the 'sea' in old poems and writings have hardly survived. This is because we do not have the same need for the words as our forefathers did in their time.