《泛读教程》III_Unit_6_Vocabulary_Change

Unit 6

Text I

Vocabulary Change

Pre-reading questions

1. Give the meaning of the underlined words doubletandveal?

2. Give the main idea of paragraph 2, 4, 6, 9 and 10(9+10=the last two) 3. What are the causes for borrowing words according to the text? 4. How do people adapt to new borrowed words?

5. What changes are made of the meaning of borrowed words according to the text?

Borrowing

Borrowing is a way of adding new vocabulary items to a language. Speakers of a language often have contact with speakers of other language. If a speaker of one of these languages does not have a readily available word for something in the world and a speaker of the other language does, the first speaker often borrows the word from the second speaker. The first settlers in North America had contact with the Indians who had already developed names for places and things peculiar to the North American continent.Consequently, the settlers borrowed such words as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Chicago, and Mississippi, to mention a few place-names only.

Another large group of words came into English as a result of contact through invasion,in this case the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Various kinds of words were borrowed into English: for matters ofgovernment like crown, country, duke, court, and prince; for matters of law like judge, jury, crime, accuse, marry, and prove; for matters of war like battle, arms, soldier, siege, danger, and march; and for matters of religion like angel, saint, pray, save, blame, virtue, and vice. Then, too, today we find interesting pairs of words such as cow and beef, sheep and mutton, calf and veal, and pig and pork in which the first item, the name of the animal, is Germanic in origin and the second item, the meat of the animal, is a borrowing from French. Perhaps the occurrence of such pairs reflects a society in which the conquered Englishman raised the animals for the table of the conquering Norman.

Several points can be made about the Norman Conquest. First, the borrowings from French do not show much, if any, cultural superiority in the invaders. Secondly, although the Normans were conquerors, they eventually gave up their French to become speakers of English, just as their ancestors had eventually given up their Germanic language when they invaded France. Thirdly, the borrowings do not show the same intimate relationships between conquered and conqueror as the borrowings that resulted from the earlier Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries, when ''everyday''words such as egg, sky, gate, skin, skirt, skill, skull, scatter, sister, law, weak, give, take, call, and hit, and particularly the pronouns they, them, and their, and the verb arewere borrowed from the Danish invaders.

The kinds of contact speakers have with each othermay often be judged from the particular

items that are borrowed. For example, English has borrowed numerous words from French having to do with clothing, cosmetics, and luxury goods, like ensemble, lingerie, suede, perfume, rouge, champagne, and deluxe. From German have come words associated with food like hamburger and delicatessen. From Italian have come musical words like piano, opera, solo, sonata, soprano, trombone, and serenade. From various Indian languages have come words for once exotic dress items like bandanna, sari, bangle, and pajamas. And from Arabic have come some interesting words beginning with al- (the Arabic determiner): alcohol, alchemy, almanac, and algebra.

Of course, Latin and Greek have provided English with the richest resource for borrowingmore formal learned items.Large numbers of words have been borrowed into English from both languages, particularly learned polysyllabic words. Numerous doublets also exist in English, that is, words that have been borrowed twice, once directly from Latin, and the second time through another language, most often French:

Latin English French English magister magistrate maitre master securus secure sur sure

North American English shows a wide contact with other languages in its borrowings: French (levee, prairie); Spanish (mesa, patio); German (fatcakes, smearcase); Dutch (coleslaw, cooky, stoop); American Indian (squash, moccasin, squaw, wigwam); and various African languages (banjo, gumbo, voodoo).

At different times speakers of certain languages have shown (show)noticeable resistance to borrowing words, and they have preferred either to exploit native resources or to resort to loan translations instead. Such an English word as superman is a loan translation of the Ubermensch just as marriage of convenience is a loan translation of the French mariage de convenance and it goes without saying of the French ca va sans dire.

Borrowings are also assimilated to different degrees. Sometimes a borrowing is pronounced in a decidedly foreign way for a while, but it is usually soon treated according to native sound patterns if it occurs frequently. In English, words such as garage, salon, masseur, ghoul, and hickory, borrowed from a variety of foreign languages, are pronounced according to the sound system of English and not according to the phonological rules of the source language.

Narrowing and widening

One process involves narrowing the meaning of a word so that the word achieves a more restricted meaning over the course of time. Meatnowmeans a particular kind of food, not food in general, as it does in the following quotation from the King James version of ''Genesis'':\said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth,and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”Likewise, deer now refers to a particular kind of animal, not animal in general, as it did in Shakespeare's words\Worm now refers to a particular kind of crawling creature, not any crawling creature, although some of the original more general meaning is contained still in slowworm, blindworm, and glowworm. Fowl and hound refer to particular kinds of bird and dog and wife, to a particular kind of woman.

However, in the case of the last word we can note a more general meaning in midwife, wife of Bath, and perhaps housewife. Finally, North Americans use the word corn in a narrow meaning to refer to maize, whereas the British use it to refer to grainin general. Keats' Ruth standing ''amid the alien corn''is not standing in a field of maize.

The opposite process is widening of meaning. In this process a word achieves a more general meaning. The words bird and dog once referred to specific types of birds and dogs, not to the species in general. The word virtue described a characteristic associated with men, but not with women, just as only women could be said to be hysterical, since men were not possessed of wombs (hystera being the Greek word for ''uterus''. The word sensible once meant ''sensitive'',as it still does in French, and alibi referred to the fact that a person was elsewhere when something happened, not that he had some kind of excuse for something.

Notesto Wordsand background knowledge 1. peculiar to: particular to, special to

2. Luxury: very comfortable situation surrounded by the best and most expensive things; sth

expensive and enjoyable but unnecessary; lavishness,sumptuousness, extravagance; luxurious; (luxuriant)

3. Originate: initiate, start, begin 4. Exotic: foreign, alien, unusual 5. Resort to: adopt, use

6. Exploit: develop; make use of, make the most of; take advantage of; abuse, misuse, ill-use 7. Assimilate: absorb, take in, help someone feel that they are part of a community and rather

than culture feeling foreign

8. Hysterical: n. hysteria; behaving in an uncontrolled way because one is extremely excited,

afraid, or upset

9. for matters of: things related with; speaking of, with regard to 10. vice: sin, crime

11. ensemble: set of clothes worn together, as a whole, all together, 12. lingerie: night gown; pajama

13. suede: leather with a soft brushed surface 14. rouge: blusher, make up, lipstick 15. deluxe: luxurious

16. delicatessen: a store that sells good quality cooked meat, cheese, and food from other

countries

17. sonata奏鸣曲 18. soprano：女高音

19. trombone：长号，拉管 20. serenade:小夜曲 21. bandanna:大头巾 22. sari：莎丽

23. bangle：bracelet; armlet; wristlet 24. alchemy：炼金术，魔法 25. almanac：日历，年鉴，历书

26. algebra：代数

27. polysyllabic:多音节的

28. doublet: 同源异形或义的同源词 29. levee: dock, 30. prairie: plain

31. mesa: plateau, highland

32. patio: terrace, yard, veranda,天井，院子 33. fatcakes

34. smearcase: cottage cheese 35. coleslaw:凉拌卷心菜 36. stoop：游廊

37. squash: 西葫芦, 2.〔英国〕果汁汽水

38. moccasin: a soft leather shoe with a flat heel, (北美印地安人等穿的)鹿皮靴；硬底软(拖)鞋；

(南美)有毒水蛇；噬鱼蛇

39. squaw: 北美印地安女人，印第安人的妻子

40. wigwam: tall tent used in the past by some native Americans as their home(印第安人的)棚屋 41. banjo: 班卓琴

42. gumbo：浓汤，秋葵荚

43. voodoo：伏都教徒，黑人巫师

44. marriage of convenience: a marriage in which the partners have married, not because they

love each other, but in order to obtain some benefit, such as the right to live in the other partner’s country.

45. Decidedly: definitely, absolutely

46. Salon: hair salon; beauty salon; rendezvous, get-together 47. masseur :男按摩师

48. Ghoul: 1: a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses

2: one suggestive of a ghoul; especially : one who shows morbid interest in things considered shocking or repulsive— ghoul·ish adjective;

— ghoul·ish·ly adverb; — ghoul·ish·ness noun

Synonym: ghost, phantom

49. Hickory: a North American tree that produces nuts

Narrowing and Widening 50. Behold: look on 51. Likewise: similarly 52. Slowworm: 蛇蜥 53. Blindworm: 蛇蜥 54. Glowworm: 萤火虫 55. uterus: womb

56. wife of Bath: 见The Wife of Bath's Tale专页 57. the Norman Conquest: see also《国概》

Norman conquest of England

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army ofNorman, Breton, and French soldiers led by Duke William II of Normandy, later William the Conqueror. William's claim to the English throne derived from his familial relationship with the (childless)Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, who may have encouraged William's hopes for the throne. Edward died in January 1066 and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson. The Norwegian kingHarald Hardrada invaded northern England in September 1066, was victorious at the Battle of Fulford, but Harold defeated and killed him at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066. Within days, William landed in southern England. Harold marched south to confront him, leaving a significant portion of his army in the north. Harold's army confronted William's invaders on 14 October at the Battle of Hastings; William's force defeated Harold, who was killed in the engagement. Although William's main rivals were gone, he still faced rebellions over the following years and was not secure on his throne until after 1072. The lands of the resisting English elite were confiscated; some of the elite fled into exile. To control his new kingdom, William gave lands to his followers and built castles commanding military strongpoints throughout the land. Other effects of the conquest included the court and government, the introduction of Norman French as the language of the elites, and changes in the composition of the upper classes, as William enfeoffed lands to be held directly from the king. More gradual changes affected the agricultural classes and village life: the main change appears to have been the formal elimination of slavery, which may or may not have been linked to the invasion. There was little alteration in the structure of government, as the new Norman administrators took over many of the forms of Anglo-Saxon government. Consequences Elite replacement English emigration Governmental systems Language One of the most obvious effects of the conquest was the introduction of Anglo-Norman, a northern dialect of Old French, as the language of the ruling classes in England, displacing Old English. French words entered the English language, and a further sign of the shift was the usage of names common in France instead of Anglo-Saxon names. Male names such as William, Robert and Richard soon became common; female names changed more slowly. The Norman invasion had little impact onplacenames, which had

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