TESL 2200 Lecture 3
Sources of the lexicon
2009-2010 Semester 2
Content
1. Native Vocabulary
2. Foreign borrowings
3. Lexical structure
4. Unusual structures
5. Neologisms
1. Native Vocabulary
• Many English words arrived with the Germanic invaders,
and have never fallen out of use.
• The anglo-saxon words continues to dominate everyday
conversation, whether it be grammatical words( in, on, be,
that) lexical words (father, love, name), or affixes (mis,un-,-ness-,less).
• In the million-word Brown University corpus of
written American English, the 100 most
frequently used items are almost all Anglo
Saxon.
• The fact that most of these words are short
and concrete has often been noted as a major
stylistic feature of the Anglo-Saxon lexicon
The Common Core
• Part of the body: hand,foot,arm, eye, heart, chin,
bone
• Natural Landscape: land, field, meadow,hedge, hill,
wood, oak
• Domestic life: house, home, stool, door, floor,
weave, knit
• Calendar: sun, moon, day, month,year.
• Animal: horse, cow, sleep, dog, hen, goat,
swine,fish.
• Common adjectives: black, white, wide, long,
good, dark.
• Common verbs: fly, drink, swim, help, come, see,
eat, sit, send, sell, think, love, say, be, do, do, go,
shove, kiss, have, live.
Old English
French
guts
courage
clothes
attire
climb
Latin
ascent
Old English
French
sweat
perspire
happiness
house
Latin
felicity
mansion
Old English
French
wish
desire
weariness
Latin
lassitude
Old English
French
Latin
rise
mount
ascend
ask
question
fast
firm
interrogate
secure
Old English
French
Latin
kingly
royal
regal
holy
sacred
fire
flame
consecrate
conflagration
2. Foreign Borrowings
• When one language takes words from another, the new
items are usually called loan words or borrowings.
• English is an insatiable borrower. Some languages take
pains to refuse foreign words, but English seems always
to have welcomed them.
• English has borrowed from a total of 120 languages all
over the world.
Attitudes toward foreign borrowing
• I returned, and saw under the sun, that the
race is not to the swift, nor the battle to
the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor
yet favour to men of skill; but time and
chance happenth to them all.
•Objective consideration of contemporary
phenomena compels the conclusion that success
or failure in competitive activities exhibits no
tendency to be commensurate with innate
capacity, but that a considerable element of the
unpredictable must inevitably be taken into
account.
• Bad writers, and especially scientific, political
and sociological writers, are nearly always
haunted by the notion that Latin and Greek
words are grander than Saxon ones, and
unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate,
predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine,
subaqueous and hundreds of others constantly
gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite
numbers…(George Orwell 1946)
3. Lexical Structure
• Most English vocabulary arises by making new
words out of old ones—either by adding an affix
to previously existing forms, altering their
word class, or combining them to produce
compounds.
• Almost any word, whether Anglo-Saxon or foreign,
can be given an affix, change its word class, or
help make a compound. Alongside the Anglo-Saxon
root in kingly, for example, we have the French
root in royally and the Latin root in regally.
3.1 Affixation
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Three types of affixes: prefixes,suffixes and
infixes.
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English has only about 50 common prefixes,
somewhat fewer common suffixes, and no clear
instances of infixes.
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These limited resources are used in a complex
and productive way. e.g.
antidiseastablishmentarianism
English prefixes
1. Negation
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A- theist,-moral
Dis- -obey,-believe
In- -complete,-decisive
Non- -smoke,-medical
Un- -wise,-helpful
2. Reversal
• De- -frost, -fraud
• Dis- -connect, -infect
• Un- -do, -mask
3. Disparaging
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Mal- -treat, -function
Mis- -hear, -lead
Pseudo- -intellectual
4. Size or degree
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Arch- -duke, -enemy
Co- -habit, -pilot
Hyper- -market, -card
Mega- -loan, -merger
Mini- -skirt, -bus
Out- - class, -run
Over- -worked, -flow
5. Size and degree (continued)
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Sub- -normal,-conscious,
Super- -market, -man
Sur- -tax, -charge
Ultra- -modern,-sound
Under- -charge,-play
Vice- -chair, -president
6. Orientation
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Anti- -clockwise, -social
Auto- -suggestion, -biography
Contra- -indicate, -flow
Counter- -clockwise, -act
Pro- -socialist,-consul
7. Location and distance
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Extra- -terrestrial, -mural
Fore- -shore, -leg
Inter- -marry, -play
Intra- -venous,-national
Pan- -African, -American
Super- -script, -structure
Tele- -scope, -phone
Trans- -plant, -atlantic
8. Time and order
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Ex- -husband, -president
Fore- -warn, -shadow
Neo- -Gothic,-classical
Paleo –lithic, -botany
Post- -war, -modern
Pre- -school, -marital
Proto- -type, -european
Re- -cyle, -new
9. Number
Bi- -cycle, -lingual
Demi- -god, -taste
Di- -oxide, -graph
Mono- -rail, -plane
Multi- -racial, -purpose
Poly- -technic, -gamy
Semi- -circle, -detached
Tri- -maran, -pod
Uni- -sex, -cycle
10. Grammatical conversion
Verb to adjective
A- -stride, -board
Noun to verb
Be- -friend, -witch
En- -flame, -danger
A sampling of suffixes
• Commonly occurring English suffixes
-tion, -ship,-ness, -able,-ery, -ese, -ling, -like, -let, esque, ette, -ess, -ism, -ite, -ish
• Some have a meaning which is fairly easy to state: ess, for example, means ‘the female of’(lioness).
• Some have several meanings: -ette can mean
‘the female of (usherette), ‘small version
of’(kitchenette), or ‘substitute for’
(leatherette).
• Some have a highly abstract meaning,
difficult to define precisely: one of the
meaning of -ery is ‘the quality or state of
having a particular trait’ (snobbery)
• Suffixes also change the grammatical status, for
example, the –ify ending turns the noun beauty into
the verb beautify, and the –ing ending turns the
concrete noun farm into the abstract one farming.
• Will it burn?
There are several words beginning with in- where
the prefix has a locative or intensifying meaning,
such as inflate and ingredient.
Because in- also has a negative meaning, however, as
with infrequent and ingratitude, ambiguity is
sometimes possible. The famous case is inflammable
vs nonflammmable.
3.2 Conversion
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Words can be made to change their word class
without adding an affix—process known as
conversion.
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The items chiefly produced this way are nouns,
adjective, and verbs—especially the verbs
which come from nouns(e.g. to bottle) and the
nouns which come from verbs(e.g. a doubt).
• The converted
Verb to noun
A swim/hit/cheat/bore/show-off/drive-in
Noun to verb
To bottle/catalogue/oil/brake/referee/bicycle
Adjective to verb
To dirty/empty/dry/calm down/sober up
Noun to adjective
It’s cotton/brick/reproduction
Grammatical word to noun
Too many ifs and buts
That’s a must
The how and why
Affix to noun
ologies and isms
Phrase to noun
a has-been. Free-for-all/also-ran/ down-and out
Grammatical word to verb
to down tools/to up and do it
3.3 Compounds
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A compound is a unit of vocabulary which
consists of more than one lexical stem.

Compounds are functioning as a single item,
which has its own meaning and grammar.
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So flower-pot does not refer to a flower and a
pot, but to a single object. For example, its
plural form is flowerpots and not flowers-pots.
 Compounds can be classified into types based on the
kind of grammatical meaning they represent.
Earthquake, for example, can be paraphrased as ‘the
earth quakes’, and the relation of earth to quake is
that of subject to verb.
 Similarly, a crybaby is also subject +verb (‘the baby
cries’), despite its back-to- front appearance.
 Some involve slightly trickier grammatical relations,
such as playgoer, windmill, goldfish, and homesick.
4.Unusual structures
• Back-formations
• Blends (Portmanteau)
• Reduplicative
Back-formations
• A shorter word is derived from a longer one by
deleting an imagined affix.
• For example, editor then edit; television then
televise; double-glazing then double-glaze; and
baby-sitter then baby-sit.
Blends (Portmanteau)
• It takes two words which overlap in form, and
welds them together to make one.
• Motor+hotel=motel;
• breakfast+lunch=brunch;
• helicopter+airport=heliport;
• smoke+fog=smog;
• advertisement+editorial=advertorial;
• Channel+tunnel=Chunnel;
• Oxford+cambridge=Oxbridge;
• Yale+harvard=Yarvard
• slang+language=slanguage;
• guess+estimate=guesstimate;
• information+commerical=infomerical.
Reduplicative
 An interesting type of word is one which contains two
identical or very similar parts: a reduplicative.
 Items with identical spoken parts, such as goodygoody (a good man) and din-din (dinner), are rare.
 What is normal is for a single vowel or consonant to
change between the first constituent and the second,
such as see-saw and walkie-talkie.
• Some imitate sounds e.g. ding-dong,bow-vow,
• Some suggest alternative movement: flip-flop,pingpong.
• Some are disparaging: dilly-dally; wishy-washy.
• And some intensify meaning: teeny-weeny, tip-top.
Neologism
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Definition
How are neologisms created
Sources of neologism: Science
Science fiction
Politics
Corporate branding
Neologism: definition
• A neologism (from Greek, neo 'new' + logos
'word') is a newly coined word that may be in
the process of entering common use, but has not
yet been accepted into mainstream language.
• Neologisms tend to occur more often in cultures
that are changing rapidly and also in situations
where there is easy and fast propagation of
information.
• According to OED the term neologism was first
used in print in 1772.
How are neologisms created
• Neologisms can be created by combining existing
words (e.g. facebook).
• Words combined also can be shortened or
lengthened, such as "smoke" and "fog" becoming
smog (1905). Words coined in such a way are called
portmanteaus.
• Neologisms can also be created by giving words new
and unique suffixes or prefixes (e.g. cyberspace).
• Neologisms also can be created through
abbreviation or acronym (e.g., laser),
• They also can be created by intentionally
rhyming with existing words or simply through
playing with sounds (e.g. bebop).
• Neologisms often become popular through
cultural exchanges, by way of mass media, the
Internet, and word of mouth, including
academic discourse in many fields.
• Recent coinages such as Fordism,
Disneyfication, and McDonaldization are now in
everyday use.
• Every word in a language was, at some time, a
neologism, ceasing to be such through time and
acceptance.
• Neologisms often become accepted parts of the
language.
• Other times, however, they disappear from common
use just as readily as they appeared.
"Yesterday's neologisms, like yesterday's jargon,
are often today's essential vocabulary."
– Academic Instincts, 2001[7]
Sources of neologism: Science
• Words or phrases created to describe new
scientific hypotheses, discoveries, or inventions
include:
x-ray, or röntgenograph (November 8, 1895, by
Röntgen)
radar (1941) from Radio Detection And Ranging
laser (1960) from Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation
black hole (1968)
Science fiction
• Concepts created to describe new, futuristic
ideas include,
hyperspace (1934)
robotics (1941)
warp speed (1966)
ringworld (1971)
cyberspace (1984)
Xenocide (1991)
alien space bats (1998)
Politics
• Words or phrases created to make some kind of
political or rhetorical point, sometimes perhaps
with an eye to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
include:
genocide (1943)
meritocracy (1958)
pro-life (1961)
homophobia (1969)
political correctness (1970)
pro-choice (1975)
glocalisation (1980s)
Islamofascism (2001)
Saddlebacking (2009)
Corporate branding
• Words coined to name or re-brand corporations
and signifying new meaning include:
Accenture (2001), derived from "accent on the
future"
Acette (2002), derived from "ace", meaning
expertise, and the encapsulating suffix "ette";
when read together as aye~set signifying
"expertise encapsulated".
Protivit (2002), derived from professionalism and
proactivity as well as independence and integrity.
Neologisms in literature
• Many neologisms have come from popular literature
and tend to appear in different forms. Most
commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in
the narrative of a book;
• A few representative examples are: “grok" (to
achieve complete intuitive understanding), from
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein;
"McJob", from Generation X: Tales for an
Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland;
"cyberspace", from Neuromancer by William Gibson.
• Sometimes the title of a book becomes the
neologism, for instance, Catch-22 (from the title of
Joseph Heller's novel).
• Alternately, the author's name may become the
neologism. This includes such words as "Orwellian"
(from George Orwell, referring to his novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four)
• Another category is words derived from famous
characters in literature, such as quixotic (referring
to the titular character in Don Quixote de la Mancha
by Cervates), a scrooge (from the main character in
Dickens's A Christmas Carol)
• Lewis Carroll has been called "the king of
neologistic poems" because of his poem,
"Jabberwocky", which incorporated dozens of
invented words.
• 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
• "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
• …
Keep your English up to date
• Netizen
• Google
• Facebook
• Hole-in the-wall
Review Questions
• What is neologism?
• Please illustrate how neologisms are created.
• When a word or phrase is no longer new?
• What are the factors that are likely to affect
its acceptance into the language?