Branches of linguistics. Synchronic vs diachronic approaches to the language study. Lexicology – ‘the science of the word’

Words of Indo-European stock have cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages:
-terms of kinship: mother, father, son, brother, daughter etc.;
Words of Common Germanic stock have cognates only in other Germanic languages, e.g. Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc. Their areal distribution reflects the contacts between the Germanic tribes at the beginning of their migration:
-common nouns: hand, sand, earth, sheep, fox, bath, child, winter, rain, ice, house, life, bridge, rest etc.;
-common verbs: make, starve, sing, come, send, learn, can, buy, drive, burn, bake, keep, meet etc.;
-common adjectives: green, brown, cold, dead, deaf, deep, damp, thick, high, old, small etc.;
-adverbs: behind, much, still, well, yet etc.;


4. The borrowed element in the English vocabulary. The distinction between the terms origin of borrowing and source of borrowing. Translation loans. Semantic loans.
the borrowed stock of words (70-75%) – words taken over from other languages and modified in phonetic shape, spelling, paradigm or / and meaning according to the standards of the English language.
Motivation for borrowing a word:
-to fill a gap in the vocabulary, e.g. butter (Latin), yogurt (Turkish), whisky (Scottish Gaelic), tomato (Nahuatl /’na: watl/ - the Aztec language), sauna ( /’so:nə/ Finnish) etc.;
-to represent the same concept in a new aspect, supplying a new shade of meaning or a different emotional colouring, e.g. cordial (Latin), a desire (French), to admire (Latin) etc.;
-prestige, e.g. picture, courage, army, treasure, language, female, face, fool, beef (Norman French
Translation loans (calques) are compound words or expressions formed from the elements existing in the English language according to the patterns of the source language; such loans came in handy when original words were hard to reproduce.
G Umgebung – E environment
Modern English names of the days of the week were also created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations and are the earliest examples of calques
5. Types of borrowed elements in the English vocabulary. Etymological doublets, hybrids, international words, and folk etymology.