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УДК 10.02.04
Parpiyeva G.A.
Tashkent Regional Chirchik State Pedagogical Institute
THE ETYMOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE MODERN
ENGLISH VOCABULARY
Annotation: This article discusses the origin of the Modern English vocabulary and its essence.
Key words: Etymology, native elements, peculiarity, origin, polysemantic.
Etymology is the study history of words, origin; formation and how meaning have changed over time. The term "Etymology" derived from the Greek word "etymon"- which means the true, original meaning of a word. By an extension, the term "etymology (of a word)" means the origin of a particular word. For languages with a long-written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods of their history and when they entered the languages in question. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family. Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, currently much etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian. English is generally regarded as the richest of the world's languages. "The English language", observed Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven."
Etymology in the modern sense emerged in the late 18th century European academia, within the context of the wider "Age of Enlightenment," although preceded by 17th century pioneers such as Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Vossius, Stephen Skinner, Elisha Coles, and William Wotton. The first known systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made in 1770 by the Hungarian, Janos Sajnovics, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian
According to the etymological principle the English vocabulary is usually divided into two uneven classes: native words which make up about 30% of the English vocabulary and borrowed words which make up about 70% of the English vocabulary.
The Basic Word Stock- is the stable stock of the most frequently used three or four thousand words which constitute the core of the vocabulary, preserving the
national peculiarities of the language. The changes in the Basic Word Stork are very slow and not easily perceptible.
Native words have a higher frequency value than most of the borrowings. They occur in any spoken or written speech forming the foundation and framework of the English language, e.g. words of native origin include most of the conjunctions, numerals, prepositions, pronouns and strong verbs, the definite and indefinite articles are also of native origin.
The native element in modern English is mostly monosyllabic but as for their meanings they are usually polysemantic. They show great word building power and make up the majority of proverbs and set expressions, e.g. water - to water, watery, waterproof, waterfall, "blood is thicker than water" (свой своего не обидит); milk - milky way, milkman - " it's no use crying over spilt milk" etc.
According to their origin native words may be divided into 3 groups:
> Indo-European
> Common German (общегерманские)
> Specifically English or English words proper
Native words of the Indo-European origin are the oldest. They have correlated words in different Indo-European languages: Romanic, Slavonic, Germanic and even in Sanskrit. Here belong such words as
> words expressing family relations: brother, daughter, father, mother,
son;
> names of parts of the human body: foot, eye, ear, nose, tongue;
> names of trees, birds, animals: tree, birch, cow, wolf, cat;
> names expressing basic actions: to come, to know, to sit, to work;
> words expressing qualities: red, quick, right, glad, sad;
> numerals: one, two, three, ten, hundred, etc.
Native words of the Common Germanic Stock have parallels in the languages of the Germanic group only: Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic etc. but not in Russian, French or Italian. They constitute a larger part of the native words in English. Here belong such words as:
> nouns: hand, life, sea, ship, meal, winter, ground, coal, goat;
> adjectives: heavy, deep, free, broad, sharp, grey;
> verbs: to buy, to drink, to find, to forget, to go, to have, to live, to make;
> pronouns: all, each, he, self, such;
> adverbs: again, forward, near; '
> prepositions: after, at, by, over, under, from, for.
The 3rd group of native words is represented by the so-called English words proper which have no cognates or parallels in other languages. They are: boy, girl, lady, lord, daisy, always, woman, bird, word.
The origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William Jones, an English philologist living in India, who in 1782 observed the genetic relationship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. Jones published his The Sanscrit Language in 1786, laying the foundation for the field of Indo-European linguistics
The study of etymology in Germanic philology was introduced by Rasmus Christian Rask in the early 19th century and elevated to a high standard with the German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm. The successes of the comparative approach culminated in the Neogrammarian school of the late 19th century. In 19th century, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used etymological strategies (principally and most famously in On the Genealogy of Morals, but also elsewhere) to argue that moral values have definite historical (specifically, cultural) origins where modulations in meaning regarding certain concepts (such as "good" and "evil") show how these ideas had changed over time—according to which value-system appropriated them. This strategy gained popularity in the 20th century, and philosophers, such as Jacques Derrida, have used etymologies to indicate former meanings of words to de-center the "violent hierarchies" of Western metaphysics.
Sources used:
1. Arnold I. V. The English Word. M. "ВШ". 1973.
2. Антрушина Г.Б., Афанасьева О.В., Морозова Н.Н. Лексикология английского языка. - М.: Дрофа, 1999 - стр. 44-55; 62-71.
3. Berezin F.M. Lectures on Linguistics. M. Higher school Publishing House. 1969. p. 95.
4. Buranov J.B, Muminov A.A. Practical Course in English Lexicology. T. "Ukituvchi" 1990. p. 54.
