《泛读教程》III Unit 6 Vocabulary Change

Unit 6

Text I

Vocabulary Change

Pre-reading questions

1.Give the meaning of the underlined words doublet and veal?

2.Give the main idea of paragraph 2, 4, 6, 9 and 10(9+10=the last two)

3.What are the causes for borrowing words according to the text?

4.How do people adapt to new borrowed words?

5.What changes are made of the meaning of borrowed words according to the text?

Borrowing

Borrowing is a way of adding new vocabulary items to a language. Speakers of a language often have contact with speakers of other language. If a speaker of one of these languages does not have a readily available word for something in the world and a speaker of the other language does, the first speaker often borrows the word from the second speaker. The first settlers in North America had contact with the Indians who had already developed names for places and things peculiar to the North American continent.Consequently, the settlers borrowed such words as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Chicago, and Mississippi, to mention a few place-names only.

Another large group of words came into English as a result of contact through invasion,in this case the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. V arious kinds of words were borrowed into English: for matters of government like crown, country, duke, court, and prince; for matters of law like judge, jury, crime, accuse, marry, and prove; for matters of war like battle, arms, soldier, siege, danger, and march; and for matters of religion like angel, saint, pray, save, blame, virtue, and vice. Then, too, today we find interesting pairs of words such as cow and beef, sheep and mutton, calf and veal, and pig and pork in which the first item, the name of the animal, is Germanic in origin and the second item, the meat of the animal, is a borrowing from French. Perhaps the occurrence of such pairs reflects a society in which the conquered Englishman raised the animals for the table of the conquering Norman.

Several points can be made about the Norman Conquest. First, the borrowings from French do not show much, if any, cultural superiority in the invaders. Secondly, although the Normans were conquerors, they eventually gave up their French to become speakers of English, just as their ancestors had eventually given up their Germanic language when they invaded France. Thirdly, the borrowings do not show the same intimate relationships between conquered and conqueror as the borrowings that resulted from the earlier Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries, when ''everyday'' words such as egg, sky, gate, skin, skirt, skill, skull, scatter, sister, law, weak, give, take, call, and hit, and particularly the pronouns they, them, and their,and the verb are were borrowed from the Danish invaders.

The kinds of contact speakers have with each other may often be judged from the particular

items that are borrowed. For example, English has borrowed numerous words from French having to do with clothing, cosmetics, and luxury goods, like ensemble, lingerie, suede, perfume, rouge, champagne, and deluxe. From German have come words associated with food like hamburger and delicatessen. From Italian have come musical words like piano, opera, solo, sonata, soprano, trombone, and serenade. From various Indian languages have come words for once exotic dress items like bandanna, sari, bangle, and pajamas. And from Arabic have come some interesting words beginning with al- (the Arabic determiner): alcohol, alchemy, almanac, and algebra.

Of course, Latin and Greek have provided English with the richest resource for borrowing more formal learned https://www.wendangku.net/doc/cb4103541.html,rge numbers of words have been borrowed into English from both languages, particularly learned polysyllabic words. Numerous doublets also exist in English, that is, words that have been borrowed twice, once directly from Latin, and the second time through another language, most often French:

Latin English French English

magister magistrate maitre master

securus secure sur sure

North American English shows a wide contact with other languages in its borrowings: French (levee, prairie); Spanish (mesa, patio); German (fatcakes, smearcase); Dutch (coleslaw, cooky, stoop); American Indian (squash, moccasin, squaw, wigwam); and various African languages (banjo, gumbo, voodoo).

At different times speakers of certain languages have shown (show)noticeable resistance to borrowing words, and they have preferred either to exploit native resources or to resort to loan translations instead. Such an English word as superman is a loan translation of the Ubermensch just as marriage of convenience is a loan translation of the French mariage de convenance and it goes without saying of the French ca va sans dire.

Borrowings are also assimilated to different degrees. Sometimes a borrowing is pronounced in a decidedly foreign way for a while, but it is usually soon treated according to native sound patterns if it occurs frequently. In English, words such as garage, salon, masseur, ghoul, and hickory, borrowed from a variety of foreign languages, are pronounced according to the sound system of English and not according to the phonological rules of the source language.

Narrowing and widening

One process involves narrowing the meaning of a word so that the word achieves a more restricted meaning over the course of time. Meat now means a particular kind of food, not food in general, as it does in the following quotation from the King James version of ''Genesis'': "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth,and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”Likewise, deer now refers to a particular kind of animal, not animal in general, as it did in Shakespeare's words "But mice and rats and such small deer have been Tom's food for seven long year." Worm now refers to a particular kind of crawling creature, not any crawling creature, although some of the original more general meaning is contained still in s lowworm, blindworm, and glowworm. Fowl and hound refer to particular kinds of bird and dog and wife, to a particular kind of woman.

However, in the case of the last word we can note a more general meaning in midwife, wife of Bath, and perhaps housewife. Finally, North Americans use the word corn in a narrow meaning to refer to maize, whereas the British use it to refer to grain in general. Keats' Ruth standing ''amid the alien corn'' is not standing in a field of maize.

The opposite process is widening of meaning. In this process a word achieves a more general meaning. The words bird and dog once referred to specific types of birds and dogs, not to the species in general. The word virtue described a characteristic associated with men, but not with women, just as only women could be said to be hysterical, since men were not possessed of wombs (hystera being the Greek word for ''uterus''. The word sensible once meant ''sensitive'', as it still does in French, and alibi referred to the fact that a person was elsewhere when something happened, not that he had some kind of excuse for something.

Notes to Words and background knowledge

1.peculiar to: particular to, special to

2.Luxury: very comfortable situation surrounded by the best and most expensive things; sth

expensive and enjoyable but unnecessary; lavishness, sumptuousness, extravagance; luxurious;

(luxuriant)

3.Originate: initiate, start, begin

4.Exotic: foreign, alien, unusual

5.Resort to: adopt, use

6.Exploit: develop; make use of, make the most of; take advantage of; abuse, misuse, ill-use

7.Assimilate: absorb, take in, help someone feel that they are part of a community and rather

than culture feeling foreign

8.Hysterical: n. hysteria; behaving in an uncontrolled way because one is extremely excited,

afraid, or upset

9.for matters of: things related with; speaking of, with regard to

10.vice: sin, crime

11.ensemble: set of clothes worn together, as a whole, all together,

12.lingerie: night gown; pajama

13.suede: leather with a soft brushed surface

14.rouge: blusher, make up, lipstick

15.deluxe: luxurious

16.delicatessen: a store that sells good quality cooked meat, cheese, and food from other

countries

17.sonata奏鸣曲

18.soprano：女高音

19.trombone：长号，拉管

20.serenade:小夜曲

21.bandanna:大头巾

22.sari：莎丽

23.bangle：bracelet; armlet; wristlet

24.alchemy：炼金术，魔法

25.almanac：日历，年鉴，历书

26.algebra：代数

27.polysyllabic:多音节的

28.doublet: 同源异形或义的同源词

29.levee: dock,

30.prairie: plain

31.mesa: plateau, highland

32.patio: terrace, yard, veranda,天井，院子

33.fatcakes

34.smearcase: cottage cheese

35.coleslaw:凉拌卷心菜

36.stoop：游廊

37.squash: 西葫芦, 2.〔英国〕果汁汽水

38.moccasin: a soft leather shoe with a flat heel, (北美印地安人等穿的)鹿皮靴；硬底软(拖)鞋；

(南美)有毒水蛇；噬鱼蛇

39.squaw: 北美印地安女人，印第安人的妻子

40.wigwam: tall tent used in the past by some native Americans as their home(印第安人的)棚屋

41.banjo: 班卓琴

42.gumbo：浓汤，秋葵荚

43.voodoo：伏都教徒，黑人巫师

44.marriage of convenience: a marriage in which the partners have married, not because they

love each other, but in order to obtain some benefit, such as the right to live in the other partner’s country.

45.Decidedly: definitely, absolutely

46.Salon: hair salon; beauty salon; rendezvous, get-together

47.masseur :男按摩师

48.Ghoul: 1: a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses

2:one suggestive of a ghoul; especially:one who shows morbid interest in things considered shocking or repulsive —ghoul·ish adjective;

—ghoul·ish·ly adverb; —ghoul·ish·ness noun

Synonym: ghost, phantom

49.Hickory: a North American tree that produces nuts

Narrowing and Widening

50.Behold: look on

51.Likewise: similarly

52.Slowworm: 蛇蜥

53.Blindworm: 蛇蜥

54.Glowworm: 萤火虫

55.uterus: womb

56.wife of Bath: 见The Wife of Bath's Tale专页

57.the Norman Conquest: see also《国概》

Norman conquest of England

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

changed significantly after earlier Scandinavian invasions. It is not known precisely how much English the Norman invaders learned, nor how much the knowledge of French spread among the lower classes, but the demands of trade and basic communication probably meant that at least some of the Normans and native English were

bilingual.[115] Nevertheless it is known that William the Conqueror himself never developed a working knowledge of English and for centuries afterward English was not well understood by the nobility.[116]

Immigration and intermarriage

Society

The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II of England. Harold's army had been badly depleted in the English victory at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Northern England on 25 September 1066 over the army of King Harald III of Norway. By early 1071, William had secured control of most of England, although rebellions and resistance continued until approximately 1088.

The Norman conquest was a pivotal event in English history. It largely removed the native ruling class, replacing it with a foreign, French-speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy. This, in turn, brought about a transformation of the English language and the culture of England in a new era often referred to as Norman England.

By bringing England under the control of rulers originating in France, the Norman conquest linked the country more closely with continental Europe, lessened Scandinavian influence, and also set the stage for a rivalry with France that would continue intermittently for many centuries. It also had important consequences for the rest of the British Isles, paving the way for further Norman conquests in Wales and Ireland, and the extensive penetration of the aristocracy of Scotland by Norman and other French-speaking families, with the accompanying spread of continental institutions and cultural influences.

P87 Glossary

1.mother tongue：母语

2.spoken language：口语

3.written language：书面语

4.living language：正在使用的语言

5.artificial language：计算机/人工语言

6.Queen’s English：英语普通话

7.Standard English：标准英语

8.Received pronunciation：标准发音

9.Cockney:伦敦佬

10.pidgin English：洋泾浜英语

11.dialect：方言

12.vernacular：本国语，本地话，土话

13.etymology：词源

14.semantics：语义学

15.linguistics：语言学

16.bilingual：双语

17.Anglicism：英国风格，英国说法，英国惯用语

18.Americanism：美国派，美式，美国习惯

19.Slang：俚语

20.Vulgarism：粗俗话

21.Colloquialism：口头表达

22.Euphemism: understatement, 委婉语

23.Byword: 俗话，谚语

24.Jargon: terminology, slang

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/cb4103541.html,nguage acquisition: 语言习得

26.Lexicographer: a person who does the job of editing a dictionary

27.OED: Oxford English dictionary

After reading questions

1. What is the nationality of the writer? How do you know?

2. Does the writer have prejudice against other peoples? Give proof to your answer.

3. Explore other forms of word change and give your statement of them. Reference books for word change

现代英语词汇学概论/张韵斐主编第3版

英语词汇学/汪榕培，王之江主编

实用英语词汇学/汪榕培，李冬编著

英语词汇学引论/林承璋，刘世平编著

实用英语词汇学/王文化，李红主编

实用英语词汇学概论/李云川著

实用英语词汇学/张华编著

英语词汇学教程/张维友编著

英语词汇学教程/杨信彰编著

英语词汇学新编/马秉义主编

现代英语词汇学/杨艳华，张树凡编著

现代英语词汇学/陆国强编著

等等

Words, Meaning and Vocabulary 2nd Edition: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology 2007 by Howard Jackson[some part of this book is accessible on the web.]