词汇历史).ppt

(OE) He cw?e. Soelice sum man h?fde twegen suna. 12 ta cw?e se gingra to hys f?der syle me mynne d?l mynre ?hte. Te me to gebyree. Ta d?lde he hym hys ?hta. 13 ta ?fter feawa dagum ealle hys tyng gegaderode se gingra sunu 7 ferde wr?clice on feorlen ryce. 7 t?r forspylde hys ?hta lybbende on hys g?lsan. Features of Old English: Old English contained some 50 to 60 thousand words. Old English was a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse (the Scandinavian language in its very early stage, as a result of the Scandinavian conquest of England in the 9th century) and Latin. Old English was a highly inflected language. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs had complex endings or vowel changes marking distinction of number, case and of gender. Features of Middle English Middle English was characterized by the strong influence of French. It showed vast and significant changes in the vocabulary—the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the adoption of thousands of French words, e.g. government, state, robe, beauty, poet, chapter, beef, mutton, pork, dinner, bacon, fry, roast. Middle English retains much fewer inflections. Endings of verbs, nouns and adjectives marking distinction of number, case and of gender lost their distinctive forms. * 3.4 Growth of the present –day English vocabulary After World War II, neologisms (new words or new meanings for established words) swept in at any rate much faster than that of the pre-war period. The main reasons for the frequent appearance of neologisms are three: . * 3.4.1. Marked progress of science and technology: Since the end of World War II, tremendous new advances in all fields of science and technology have given rise to the creation in the English language of tens of thousands of new words * The great majority of these are technical terms known only to the specialists, but a certain number of them have become familiar to the public and passed into general use. e.g. Words used in con