拉丁语对古英语词汇影响.docVIP

拉丁语对古英语词汇影响【Abstract】According to the 19th century histories of the English language, Latin influences upon early English vocabulary are considered to be classified into two periods, including continental borrowing and the Christianizing of Britain. From the points of views of Earl R. Anderson, a professor of Cleveland State University, words borrowed from Latin into Continental Germanic before the fifth century A.D. mostly belong to the semantic fields of commerce and military activity; words borrowed during the seventh century, when the Anglo－Saxons gradually adopted Christianity, mostly belong to the semantic fields of religion, literacy and education, etc. This article tries to analyze how Latin influences Old English vocabulary in various ways respectively. 【Key Words】Latin influenceOld English vocabularysemantic fields 【中图分类号】H310.9【文献标识码】A【文章编号】1674－4810（2012）11－0033－02 ⅠIntroduction The 19th century histories of the language identified two periods of Latin influence upon Old English, that is, Latin words transmitted through Celtic during the period of Anglo－Saxon migration to Britain, and words borrowed as the result of Christian influence. Our introduction of Latin influence on Old English nowadays is essentially the one given by Albert Baugh 60 years ago in his A History of the English Language. Baugh identifies four periods of Latin influence, each with its particular circumstances and typifying range of semantic fields:（1）a period of Continental borrowing before the mid－fifth century A.D., when Germanic tribes were in contact with Romans along the imperial frontier, and the words borrowed from Latin had to do mainly with commerce and military activity; （2）the mid－fifth to sixth centuries, a time of Anglo－Saxon expansion into Britain, when a limited number of Latin words, mostly typonyms, passed into English by way of Celtic;（3）the seventh－century Christianizing of the Anglo－Saxons, when English adopted Latin words relating to the church, lite