Chapter 2 Sources of English Vocabulary 词汇学教材.pptVIP

Middle English retained much fewer inflections. Endings of nouns and adjectives marking distinction of number, came and often of gender lost their distinctive forms. If we say old English was a language of full endings, Middle English was one of leveled endings. Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the Renaissance. Latin and Greek were recognized as the languages of the Western world’s great literary heritage and of great scholarship, but translators were rapidly making great literary works available in English. Translators and scholars borrowed heavily from the Latin vocabulary of their source materials during this period and many Latin words became part of English vocabulary. In the mid-seventeenth century, England experienced Bourgeois Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution and rose to be a great economic power. With the growth of colonization. British tentacles began stretching out to every corner of the globe. Since the beginning of the last century, esp, after World War II, the world has seen breathtaking advances in science and technology. Many new words have been created to express new ideas, etc. ,yet more words are created by means of word-formation. In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions. English has evolved from a synthetic language to the present analytic language. Classification of words: English words may fall into the basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary by use frequency, into content words and functional words by notion and into native words and borrowed words by origin. Basic Word Stock: All national character: Words of the basic word stock denote the most common things and phenomena of the world around us, which are indispensable to all the people who speak the language. Stability: As they denote the commonest th