Etymological layers of the Old English vocabulary

Module 6

OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Outline

1. Etymological survey of the OE vocabulary

1.1. Native words

1.2. Foreign element in the OE vocabulary

1.2.1. Borrowings from Celtic

1.2.2. Latin influence on the OE vocabulary

2. Word-formation in OE

2.1. Word structure

2.2. Ways of word formation

2.2.1. Word derivation

2.2.1.1.1. Prefixation

2.2.1.1.2. Suffixation

2.2.2. Composition

3. Stylistic stratification of OE vocabulary

4. Conclusions

Etymological survey of the Old English vocabulary

The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes.

Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers coming from different historical periods. The three main layers in the native OE words are: a) common IE words, 2) common Germanic words, 3) specifically OE words.

Table 6.1

Etymological layers of the Old English vocabulary

1) Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. They were inherited by PG from the IE parent-language and passed into the Germanic languages of various subgroups, including English.

Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. OE examples of this layer are: eolh ‘elk’, mere 'sea', mōna ‘moon’, trēow ‘tree’, sāwan ‘sow’, næ¥l ‘nail’, beard ‘beard’, brōðor ‘brother’, mōdor ‘mother’, sunu ‘son’, dōn ‘do’, bēon ‘be’, niwe ‘new’, long ‘long’, ic ‘I’, min ‘my’, pæt ‘that’, twā ‘two’, etc.

2) The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. Being specifically Germanic, these words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words.

Common Germanic words originated in the common period of Germanic history, i.e. in PG when the Teutonic tribes lived close together. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life. OE examples of this layer are given together with parallels from other OG languages (Table 6.2).

Table 6.2

Some of the words did not occur in all the OG languages. Their areal distribution reflects the contacts between the Germanic tribes at the beginning of their migrations: West and North Germanic languages (represented here by OE, OHG and O Icel) had many words in common, due to their rapprochement after the East Teutons (the Goths) left the coast of the Baltic Sea. The languages of the West Germanic subgroup had a number of words which must have appeared after the loss of contacts with the East and North Teutons but before the West Germanic tribes started on their migrations.

3) The third etymological layer of native words can be defined as specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few, if we include here only the words whose roots have not been found outside English; OE clipian 'call', OE brid ‘bird’and several others. However, they are far more numerous if we include in this layer OE compounds and derived words formed from Germanic roots in England. For instance, OE wifman or wimman ‘woman’consists of two roots which occurred as separate words in other OG languages, but formed a compound only in OE, e.g. OHG wib, O Icel vif ‘wife’;OE man, Gt mann(a) ‘man’. Other well-known examples are OE hlāford, originally made of hlāf ‘loaf’,cf. R xлeб and weard 'keeper' (cf. Gt wards). This compound word was simplified and was ultimately shortened to NE lord. OE hlæfdi¥e was a compound consisting of the same first component hlāf ofthe root *di¥e which is related to parallels in other OG languages: Gt digan, O Icel deigja 'knead' (lit. 'bread-kneading'), later simplified to NE lady. Some compounds denoted posts and institutions in OE kingdoms: OE scīr¥erefa 'chief of the shire" (NE sheriff), OE witena¥emōt ’meeting of the elders, assembly'.