Native Words

Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymol­ogical layers coming from different historical periods. The three main 131 layers in the native OE words are: a) common IE words, 2) common Germanic words, 3) specifically OE words.

Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. They go back to the days of the IE parent-language before its extension over the wide territories of Europe and Asia and before the appearance of the Germanic group. They were inherited by PG and passed into the Germanic languages of various subgroups, including English.

Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. In addition to roots, this portion of the OE (and Germanic) heritage includes word-building and form-building elements. OE example of this layer are: eolh, mere, mōna, trēow, sāwan, næʒl, beard, brōðor, mōdor, sunu, dōn, bēon, nīwe, long, ic, mīn, pæt, twā, etc. (NE elk, 'sea', moon, tree, sow, nail, beard, brother, mother, son, do, be, new, long, I, my, that, two). Some words of this oldest layer are not shared by all the groups of the IE family but are found only in certain areas. In the early days of their separate history the Germanic tribes were more closely connected with their eastern neighbours, the Baltic and Slavonic tribes, while later they came into closer contact with the Italic and Celtic groups. These facts are borne out by the following lexical parallels: OE beard (NE beard) is found in the Germanic group (OHG bart) and has parallels in Latvian barda and in R борода. OE tūn (NE town) belongs to the Germanic vocabulary (cf. Ο Icel tún) and is also found in Celtic: Old Irish dun; OE lippa (NE lip), and its OHG parallel leffur, appears in the Italic group as L labium; other examples of the same type are OE spere, NE spear, OHG sper, L sparus, OE em ene ‘common’, OHG gimeini, L communus.

The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. Being specifically Germanic, these words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. (The ratio between specifically Germanic and common IE words in the Germanic languages was estimated by 19th c. scholars as 1:2; since then it has been discovered that many more Germanic words have parallels outside the group and should be regarded as common IE.)

Common Germanic words originated in the common period of Germanic history, i.e. in PG when the Teutonic tribes lived close together. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life. OE examples of this layer are given together with parallels from other OG languages (Table 1).

Some of the words did not occur in all the OG languages. Their areal distribution reflects the contacts between the Germanic tribes at the beginning of their migrations: West and North Germanic languages (represented here by OE, OHG and Ο Icel) had many words in common, due to their rapprochement / ræ'prɔʃmɔ/ after the East Teutons (the Goths) left the coast of the Baltic Sea.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11