english lexicology (英语词汇学).pptVIP

English LexicologyThe History of English and Sources of English Vocabulary Introduction In the study of English vocabulary, it is important to know about the history of English. We will look at the major historical events that have shaped the English language. We pay special attention to the development of the native Germanic vocabulary, and to the forces that introduced a large number of foreign words, especially from Latin, Greek, and French. This combination makes English vocabulary extremely rich and heterogeneous among the world languages. The World Languages It is estimated that there are about 5000 languages all over the world, which can be grouped into different language families, such as Sino-Tibetan Family, Indo-European Family, Altaic Family, Austronesian Family, and so on. Chinese is a member in the Sino-Tibetan Family, while English is a member in the Indo-European Family. The Indo-European Family Linguists have divided the Indo-European languages into several groups, or branches. For example, the Italic branch includes Latin and its descendants the Romance (‘originating in Rome’) Languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), as well as other extinct languages. Other groups important in the history of English include Celtic (e.g., Welsh, Irish, and Scots Gaelic), Hellenic (Greek), etc. Family vs. Branch These branches are like families: groups of related languages have a common ancestor. We refer to their common ancestor languages by using the Proto- prefix: Proto-Italic, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Hellenic. The only difference between a branch and a family is that a branch’s proto-language has an identified ancestor: the ancestor of Proto-Italic was Proto-Indo-European, but we don’t know what the ancestor of Proto-Indo-European was. The Germanic Branch The branch of Indo-European that includes English is called the Germanic group. Proto-Germanic was probably spoken in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. Proto-Germanic devel