Native meaning of word

Recent Examples on the Web

The herb is also known as creeping phlox, moss phlox or mountain phlox and is native to the eastern U.S.


—Julia Musto, Fox News, 7 Apr. 2023




What is Marburg virus, and what are the symptoms? Marburg is a virus that can infect humans who come into contact with its animal host, a type of bats native to Africa.


—Alexander Tin, CBS News, 6 Apr. 2023




The compounds themselves are produced by flora native to Minorca.


—Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2023




The wildflower is native to eastern North America and often attracts butterflies that herald spring’s arrival, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.


—Taylor Nicioli, CNN, 5 Apr. 2023




The American water spaniel is thought to be the only dog breed native to Wisconsin, credited to New London physician Fred J. Pfeifer.


—Amy Schwabe, Journal Sentinel, 3 Apr. 2023




As previously covered by Chron, decades of pollution and mass death of other species have yet to vanquish this uniquely ancient and resilient fish native to Texas, Louisiana and a handful of southern and lower Midwest states.


—Michael Murney, Chron, 31 Mar. 2023




The margaritas are many, available in flavors including passion fruit, guava, and lulo (also known as naranjilla, a citrusy fruit native to South America), or mixed with prosecco or Corona.


—Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2023




Tosin Oshinowo is part of the new generation of architects leading the charge, with buildings that prioritize methods and materials that are native to her country.


—Camille Okhio, ELLE Decor, 31 Mar. 2023

The 26-year-old native of Georgia, in Eastern Europe, turned it around with her performance on Idol, which aired Sunday night (April 9), after an incident during the previous duets round in which she was accused of sleeping on the job.


—Lars Brandle, Billboard, 10 Apr. 2023




The Muscle Shoals native finished second on the team in scoring (12.5 points per game) behind Miller while averaging a team-high 1.2 steals per game.


—Mike Rodak | Mrodak@al.com, al, 9 Apr. 2023




Local vendors will sell organic tomato starts, perennials, natives, garden tools, houseplants and more.


—Corey Sheldon | , oregonlive, 8 Apr. 2023




As an Oberstdorf native, co-author Angelika Patel had one motive when beginning to research the town in 2005 with the aim of answering a question: How was this possible?


—Julia Boyd, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Apr. 2023




How have Kentucky natives, and those who played their collegiate golf in the Bluegrass State, fared in the major over the years?


—Ryan Black, The Courier-Journal, 6 Apr. 2023




Reese — a Randallstown native, St. Frances Academy graduate and University of Maryland transfer — capped an extraordinary season by leading LSU to its first NCAA women’s basketball title.


—Hayes Gardner, Baltimore Sun, 3 Apr. 2023




The Bay Area native, a former Chronicle paperboy, has worked at The Chronicle since 2000.


—Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Apr. 2023




Seated in a Beverly Hills hotel room, the Atlanta native, who has relocated to Las Vegas, was low-key and personable, worlds away from his brash, fast-talking characters.


—Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2023


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According
to the origin, the word-stock of English may be subdivided into two
main sets – native and borrowed (loanwords).
Native
Words
A
native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as
known from the Old English period. The native words are further
subdivided into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common
Germanic origin.
The
words of Indo-European origin
are mainly terms of kinship (e.g. father, mother, son), terms from
nature (e.g. sun, moon, water, tree), names of animals and birds,
(e.g. bull, cat, wolf), parts of the human body (e.g. arm, eye,
foot), most frequent verbs (e.g. come, sit, stand) and others.
A
bigger part of the native vocabulary is formed by words of the Common
Germanic stock.
These words have parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic,
etc. The number of semantic groups is bigger than those of
Indo-European origin. Their character is mainly general. E.g.:
summer, winter, rain, bridge, house, shop, shirt, shoe, life, need,
to bake, to buy, to learn, to make, to see, and many others.
Native
words constitute about 80 % of the 500 most frequent words in
English. They may
be characterized by a
high lexical and grammatical valency (ability to combine with other
words), high frequency and developed polysemy. They are often
monosyllabic, have great wordbuilding power and enter a number of set
expressions.

Most
of the native words have
undergone great changes in their semantic structure,
and as a result are nowadays polysemantic, e.g. the word finger does
not only denote a part of a hand as in Old English, but also 1) the
part of a glove covering one of the fingers, 2) a finger-like part in
various machines, 3) a hand of a clock, 4) an index, 5) a unit of
measurement. Highly polysemantic are the words man, head, hand, go,
etc.

36. Etymological survey of the English language: sources and types of borrowings. (По типам чет нихера не нашел).

The
English language happened to come in long and close contact with
several other languages, mainly Latin,
French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian).
Investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady
and uninterrupted. The greatest number has come from French (e.g.
air,
place, brave).
They refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and
cultural life. A large portion of borrowings (41%) is scientific and
technical terms.

The
number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the
historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but
also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of
languages concerned. The
closer the languages, the deeper and more versatile is the influence.
This
largely accounts for the well-marked contrast between the French and
the Scandinavian influence on the English language. Thus under the
influence of the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related
to Old English, some classes of words were borrowed that could not
have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages
(the pronouns they,
their, them, for
instance); a number of Scandinavian borrowings were felt as derived
from native words (they were of the same root and the connection
between them was easily seen), e.g. drop
(AS.)
— drip
(Scand);
the Scandinavian influence even accelerated to a certain degree the
development of the grammatical structure

of
English.

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Lecture №1. The Object of Lexicology. Words of Native Origin and their Characteristic

Modern English Lexicology aims at giving a systematic description of the word-stock of Modern English. Words, their component parts – morphemes – and various types of word-groups, are subjected to structural and semantic analysis primarily from the synchronic angle. In other words, Modern English Lexicology investigates the problems of word-structure and word-formation in Modern English, the semantic structure of English words, the main principles underlying the classification of vocabulary units into various groupings the laws governing the replenishment of the vocabulary with new vocabulary units. It also studies the relations existing between various lexical layers of the English vocabulary and the specific laws and regulations that govern its development at the present time. The source and growth of the English vocabulary, the changes it has undergone in its history are also dwelt upon, as the diachronic approach revealing the vocabulary in the making cannot but contribute to the understanding of its workings at the present time.

LEXICOLOGY

The term «lexicology» is of Greek origin / from «lexis» – «word» and «logos» – «science»/. Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups. The term «vocabulary» is used to denote the system of words and word-groups that the language possesses. The term «word» denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance. The term «word—group» denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word-group «as loose as a goose» means «clumsy» and is used in a sentence as a predicative / He is as loose as a goose/. Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. In this case it is called historical lexicology. Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.

LANGUAGE UNITS

The main unit of the lexical system of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning is a word. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest language unit which can stand alone as a complete utterance. A word, however, can be divided into smaller sense units – morphemes. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful language unit. The morpheme consists of a class of variants, allomorphs, which are either phonologically or morphologically conditioned, e.g. please, pleasant, pleasure.

Morphemes are divided into two large groups: lexical morphemes and grammatical (functional) morphemes. Both lexical and grammatical morphemes can be free and bound. Free lexical morphemes are roots of words which express the lexical meaning of the word, they coincide with the stem of simple words. Free grammatical morphemes are function words: articles, conjunctions and prepositions (the, with, and).

Bound lexical morphemes are affixes: prefixes (dis-), suffixes (-ish) and also blocked (unique) root morphemes (e.g. Fri-day, cran-berry). Bound grammatical morphemes are inflexions (endings), e.g. -s for the Plural of nouns, -ed for the Past Indefinite of regular verbs, -ing for the Present Participle, -er for the Comparative degree of adjectives.

In the second half of the twentieth century the English word-building system was enriched by creating so called splinters which scientists include in the affixation stock of the Modern English word-building system. Splinters are the result of clipping the end or the beginning of a word and producing a number of new words on the analogy with the primary word-group. For example, there are many words formed with the help of the splinter mini- (apocope produced by clipping the word «miniature»), such as «minijet», «minicycle», «minicar», «miniradio» and many others. All of these words denote objects of smaller than normal dimensions.

On the analogy with «mini-» there appeared the splinter «maxi» — (apocope produced by clipping the word «maximum»), such words as «maxi-series», «maxi-sculpture», «maxi-taxi» and many others appeared in the language.

When European economic community was organized quite a number of neologisms with the splinter Euro— (apocope produced by clipping the word «European») were coined, such as: «Euratom» «Eurocard», «Euromarket», «Eurotunnel» and many others. These splinters are treated sometimes a prefixes in Modern English. There are also splinters which are formed by means of apheresis, that is clipping the beginning of a word. The origin of such splinters can be variable, e.g. the splinter «burger» appeared in English as the result of clipping the German borrowing «Hamburger» where the morphological structure was the stem «Hamburg» and the suffix -er. However in English the beginning of the word «Hamburger» was associated with the English word «ham», and the end of the word «burger» got the meaning «a bun cut into two parts». On the analogy with the word «hamburger» quite a number of new words were coined, such as: «baconburger», «beefburger», «cheeseburger», «fishburger» etc.

The splinter «cade» developed by clipping the beginning of the word «cavalcade» which is of Latin origin. In Latin the verb with the meaning «to ride a horse» is «cabalicare» and by means of the inflexion —ata the corresponding Participle is formed. So the element «cade» is a combination of the final letter of the stem and the inflexion. The splinter «cade» serves to form nouns with the meaning «connected with the procession of vehicles denoted by the first component», e.g. «aircade» – «a group of airplanes accompanying the plane of a VIP», «autocade» – «a group of automobiles escorting the automobile of a VIP», «musicade» – «an orchestra participating in a procession».

In the seventieths of the twentieth century there was a political scandal in the hotel «Watergate» where the Democratic Party of the USA had its pre-election headquarters. Republicans managed to install bugs there and when they were discovered there was a scandal and the ruling American government had to resign. The name «Watergate» acquired the meaning «a political scandal», «corruption». On the analogy with this word quite a number of other words were formed by using the splinter «gate» (apheresis of the word «Watergate»), such as: «Irangate», «Westlandgate», «shuttlegate», «milliongate» etc. The splinter «gate» is added mainly to Proper names: names of people with whom the scandal is connected or a geographical name denoting the place where the scandal occurred.

The splinter «mobile» was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «automobile» and is used to denote special types of automobiles, such as: «artmobile», «bookmobile», «snowmobile» etc.

The splinter «napper» was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «kidnapper» and is used to denote different types of crimesters, such as: «busnapper», «babynapper», «dognapper» etc. From such nouns the corresponding verbs are formed by means of backformation, e.g. «to busnap», «to babynap», «to dognap».

The splinter «omat» was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «automat» (a cafe in which meals are provided in slot-machines). The meaning «self-service» is used in such words as «laundromat», «cashomat» etc.

Another splinter «eteria» with the meaning «self-service» was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «cafeteria». By means of the splinter «eteria» the following words were formed: «groceteria», «booketeria», «booteteria» and many others.

The splinter «quake» is used to form new words with the meaning of «shaking», «agitation». This splinter was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «earthquake». The following words were formed with the help of this splinter: «Marsquake», «Moonquake», «youthquake» etc.

The splinter «rama(ama)» is a clipping of the word «panorama» of Greek origin where «pan» means «all» and «horama» means «view». In Modern English the meaning «view» was lost and the splinter «rama» is used in advertisements to denote objects of supreme quality, e.g. «autorama» means «exhibition-sale of expensive cars», «trouserama» means «sale of trousers of supreme quality» etc.

The splinter «scape» is a clipping of the word «landscape» and it is used to form words denoting different types of landscapes, such as: «moonscape», «streetscape», «townscape», «seascape» etc.

Another case of splinters is «tel» which is the result of clipping the beginning of the word «hotel». It serves to form words denoting different types of hotels, such as: «motel» (motor-car hotel), «boatel» (boat hotel), «floatel» (a hotel on water, floating), «airtel» (airport hotel) etc.

The splinter «theque» is the result of clipping the beginning of the word «apotheque» of Greek origin which means in Greek «a store house». In Russian words: «библиотека», «картотека», «фильмотека» the element «тека» corresponding to the English «theque» preserves the meaning of storing something which is expressed by the first component of the word. In English the splinter «theque» is used to denote a place for dancing, such as: «discotheque», «jazzotheque».

The splinter «thon» is the result of clipping the beginning of the word «marathon». «Marathon» primarily was the name of a battle-field in Greece, forty miles from Athens, where there was a battle between the Greek and the Persian. When the Greek won a victory a Greek runner was sent to Athens to tell people about the victory. Later on the word «Marathon» was used to denote long-distance competitions in running. The splinter «thon(athon)» denotes «something continuing for a long time», «competition in endurance» e.g. «dancathon», «telethon», «speakathon», «readathon», «walkathon», «moviethon», «swimathon», «talkathon» etc.

Splinters can be the result of clipping adjectives or substantivized adjectives. The splinter «aholic» (holic) was formed by clipping the beginning of the word «alcoholic» of Arabian origin where «al» denoted «the», «koh’l» – «powder for staining lids». The splinter «(a)holic» means «infatuated by the object expressed by the stem of the word», e.g. «bookaholic», «computerholic», «coffeeholic», «cheesaholic», «workaholic» and many others.

The splinter «genic» formed by clipping the beginning of the word «photogenic» denotes the notion «suitable for something denoted by the stem», e.g. «allergenic», «cardiogenic», «mediagenic», «telegenic» etc.

As far as verbs are concerned it is not typical of them to be clipped that is why there is only one splinter to be used for forming new verbs in this way. It is the splinter «cast» formed by clipping the beginning of the verb «broadcast». This splinter was used to form the verbs «telecast» and «abroadcast».

Splinters can be called pseudomorphemes because they are neither roots nor affixes, they are more or less artificial. In English there are words which consist of two splinters, e.g. «telethon», therefore it is more logical to call words with splinters in their structure «compound-shortened words consisting of two clippings of words».

Splinters have only one function in English: they serve to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech, whereas prefixes and suffixes can also change the part-of-speech meaning, e.g. the prefix «en-» and its allomorph «em» can form verbs from noun and adjective stems («embody», «enable», «endanger»), «be-» can form verbs from noun and adjective stems («becloud», «benumb»), «post-» and «pre-» can form adjectives from noun stems («pre-election campaign», «post-war events»). The main function of suffixes is to form one part of speech from another part of speech, e.g. «-er», «-ing», «-ment» form nouns from verbal stems («teacher», «dancing», «movement»), «-ness», «-ity» are used to form nouns from adjective stems («clannishness», «marginality»).

According to the nature and the number of morphemes constituting a word there are different structural types of words in English: simple, derived, compound, compound-derived. Simple words consist of one root morpheme and an inflexion (in many cases the inflexion is zero), e.g. «seldom», «chairs», «longer», «asked». Derived words consist of one root morpheme, one or several affixes and an inflexion, e.g. «derestricted», «unemployed». Compound words consist of two or more root morphemes and an inflexion, e.g. «baby-moons», «wait-and-see (policy)». Compound—derived words consist of two or more root morphemes, one or more affixes and an inflexion, e.g. «middle-of-the-roaders», «job-hopper».

When speaking about the structure of words stems also should be mentioned. The stem is the part of the word which remains unchanged throughout the paradigm of the word, e.g. the stem «hop» can be found in the words: «hop», «hops», «hopped», «hopping». The stem «hippie» can be found in the words: «hippie», «hippies», «hippie’s», «hippies’». The stem «job-hop» can be found in the words: «job-hop», «job-hops», «job-hopped», «job-hopping».

So stems, the same as words, can be simple, derived, compound and compound-derived. Stems have not only the lexical meaning but also grammatical (part-of-speech) meaning, they can be noun stems («girl» in the adjective «girlish»), adjective stems («girlish» in the noun «girlishness»), verb stems («expel» in the noun «expellee») etc. They differ from words by the absence of inflexions in their structure, they can be used only in the structure of words. Sometimes it is rather difficult to distinguish between simple and derived words, especially in the cases of phonetic borrowings from other languages and of native words with blocked (unique) root morphemes, e.g. «perestroika», «cranberry», «absence» etc. As far as words with splinters are concerned it is difficult to distinguish between derived words and compound-shortened words. If a splinter is treated as an affix (or a semi-affix) the word can be called derived, e.g. — «telescreen», «maxi-taxi», «cheeseburger». But if the splinter is treated as a lexical shortening of one of the stems, the word can be called compound-shortened word formed from a word combination where one of the components was shortened, e.g. «busnapper» was formed from «bus kidnapper», «minijet» from «miniature jet».

In the English language of the second half of the twentieth century there developed so called block compounds, that is compound words which have a uniting stress but a split spelling, such as «chat show», «penguin suit» etc. Such compound words can be easily mixed up with word-groups of the type «stone wall», so called nominative binomials. Such linguistic units serve to denote a notion which is more specific than the notion expressed by the second component and consists of two nouns, the first of which is an attribute to the second one. If we compare a nominative binomial with a compound noun with the structure N+N we shall see that a nominative binomial has no unity of stress. The change of the order of its components will change its lexical meaning, e.g. «vid kid» is «a kid who is a video fan» while «kid vid» means «a video-film for kids» or else «lamp oil» means «oil for lamps» and «oil lamp» means «a lamp which uses oil for burning». Among language units we can also point out word combinations of different structural types of idiomatic and non-idiomatic character, such as «the first fiddle», «old salt» and «round table», «high road». There are also sentences which are studied by grammarians.

Thus, we can draw the conclusion that in Modern English the following language units can be mentioned: morphemes, splinters, words, nominative binomials, non-idiomatic and idiomatic word-combinations, sentences.

WORDS OF NATIVE ORIGIN AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogeneous. It consists of two layers – the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Native words comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary but the native words form the bulk of the most frequent words actually used in speech and writing. The native element in English comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.). Words belonging to the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter a number of set expressions. Furthermore, the grammatical structure is essentially Germanic having remained unaffected by foreign influence.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word, borrowed word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin i.e. of words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc., but none in Russian, Ukrainian or French. The words having the cognates (words of the same etymological root, of common origin) in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer which readily falls into definite semantic groups: Family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter (cf. Ukr. мати, брат, син.). Parts of the human body: foot (cf. Rus. пядь), nose (cf. Ukr. ніс), lip, heart. Animals: cow, swine, goose. Plants: tree, birch (cf. Rus. береза), corn (cf. Rus. зерно). Time of day: day, night. Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star. Numerous adjectives: red (cf. Ukr. рудий, Rus. рыжий), new, glad (cf. Rus. гладкий), sad (cf. Rus. сыт). The numerals from one to a hundred.

Pronouns: personal (except they which is a Scandinavian borrowing); demonstrative. Numerous verbs: be (cf. Rus. быть), stand (cf. Rus. стоять), sit (cf. Rus. сидеть), eat (cf. Rus. есть), know (cf. Rus. знать, знаю). Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear, come; sit, stand and others. The adjectives of this group denote concrete physical properties: hard, quick, slow, red, white. Most numerals also belong here.

The Germanic element represents words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the Indo-European element. Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone. Animals: bear, fox, calf. Plants: oak, fir, grass. Natural phenomena: rain, frost. Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer. Landscape features: sea, land. Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench. Sea-going vessels: boat, ship. Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.

Many adverbs and pronouns also belong to this layer. It is probably of some interest to mention that at various times purists have tried to purge the English language of foreign words, replacing them with Anglo-Saxon ones. One slogan created by these linguistic nationalists was: “Avoid Latin derivatives; use brief, terse Anglo-Saxon monosyllables”. The irony is that the only Anglo-Saxon word in the entire slogan is “Anglo-Saxon”.

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