NATIVE WORDS IN ENGLISH, THEIR ROLE AND CLASSIFICATION

From the point view of their etymology all the words of the English language are subdivided into native words (исконно английские) and loan words or borrowed (заимствованные).

Among native we can distinguish those of the Common Indo-European stock and those of the Common Germanic origin. Words having cognates in various Indo-European languages present the oldest layer. They were inherited from the Indo-European parent languages (праязык)

Father (OE fasder, Gothic fadar, Icel. faoir, Swedish fader, Dutch wader, German Vater, Greek pater, Latin pater, Persian pedasr, Sanscrit pitr).

Son (OE sunu, Gothic sunus, Russian сын, Ice. Sunr, Danish sen, Swedish son, German Sohn, Lithuanian sunus, Sanscript sunu).

Indo-European words fall into several semantic groups:

- Terms of kinship

Father, mother, daughter, sister, son.

-Names of natural phenomena:

Fire, moon, hill, night, day, star, snow, sun, summer, stone, water, tree, wind, wood.

-Names ofanimals and birds

Bull, crow, cat, fish, cow, mouse, goose, wolf.

-Basic verbs:

Come, know, eat, sleep, sit, stand, bear.

-Basic physical properties and colours:

Red, hard, light, quick, thin, white, slow, cold.

-Parts of human body

Heart, eye, foot, nose, mouth, ear, arm, knee, tongue.

-Numerals

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, hundred.

Words belonging to Germanic word-stock are more numerous. We can find among them:

-Nouns

Bone, chicken, cheek, cloth, hand, hope, life, meal, ship, sea, storm, winter, house, room, rain;

- Verbs

Drink, forget, hear, follow, live, make, send, sing, shake, bum, bake, keep, learn, meet, rise, see;

-Adjectives

Dead, dear, deep, heavy, sharp, soft, broad, deaf;

-Pronouns.

All, each, he.

Hand (OE hand, hond, Gothic handus, Swedish hand, German Hand, Icelandic

hond, Danish hand).

To have (OE habban, Gothic haban, Icelandic hafa, Dutch hebben, Swedish hava, German haben).

These words are mostly simple in their structure, show great word-buildn^ power and form a number of phraseological units. They are known from tne earliest available manuscripts of the OE period and have lived a very long life in me language.

The importance of native words in the English vocabulary is often overlooked because of a multitude of foreign words in Modem English.

But the examination of actual usage as opposed to the dictionary shows how important native words are. The native words stock include auxiliary and modal verbs, most verbs of the strong conjugation, pronouns and most numerals, prepositions, articles, conjunctions. Ordinary English and the vocabulary of colloquial speech contain fewer foreign words, than, for example, the language of technical literature.

Native words in the English vocabulary are very often simple in their structure, but serve as a basis for word- formation.

Hand - handy, handle, handwork, handicraft, handful, handbook, handcuff, handbag.

They enter a number of set- expressions and proverbs:

Hand in hand, hands off, at hand, in hand, with a heavy hand, with a high hand.

The peculiar feature of native words in the language is their stability. They live for centuries. But in the course of time a certain number of old English words have fallen out of the vocabulary.

The OE verb niman (брать) - German nehmen is replaced by the Scandinavian verb taka (Modem English "take").

The OE noun Beorg (гора) - German Berg is replaced by the French "mountain" (Latin "mouns").