Proverbs, Sayings and Cliches

The place of proverbs, sayings and familiar quotations with respect to set expressions is a controversial issue. A proverb is a short familiar epigrammatic sayings expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson in a concise of imaginative way. Proverbs have much in common with set expressions because their lexical components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, and they are introduced into speech ready-made. Another reason why proverbs must be taken into consideration together with set expressions is that they often form the basis of set expressions. For example: the last straw breaks the camel’s back: : the last straw a drowing man will clutch at a straw: : to clutch at a straw; “take precautions when the accident they are meant to prevent has already happened”.

Both set expressions and proverb are sometimes split and changed for humorous purposes, as in the following quotation where the proverb. All is not gold that glitters combines with an allusion to the set expression golden age: :. It will be an age not perhaps of gold, but at least of glitter.

5. Lexicology does not deal more fully with the peculiarities of proverbs: created in folklore, they are studied by folklorists.

Lecture 11 Theme: 1. The Etymological Survey of Word-stock.

2. Borrowings.

3. Assimilation of Borrowings.

The most characteristic feature of English is usually said to be its mixed character. Many linguists consider foreign influence, especially that of French, to be the most important factor in the history of English. This wide-spread viewpoint is supported only by the evidence of the English word-stock, as its grammar and phonetic system are very stable and not easily influenced by other languages.

1. In linguistic literature the term native is conventionally used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5^th century by the Germanic Tribes – The Angels, the Saxons and the Jutes. The term is often applied to words whose origin cannot be traced to any other language.

2. The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself. It has already been stated that not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English as is the case with –able, -ment, -ity, etc.

(It must be mentioned that some word-groups , too, were borrowed in their foreign form (e.g. coup d’état, vis-á-vis). In its 2^nd meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in a wider sense. It is extended onto the so-called translation-loans. Translation-loans are words and expressions, formed from the material available in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e.g. mother-tongue < L.lingua-materna; wall newspaper < Russ. стенгазета).

Causes and Ways of Borrowings.

In its 15^th century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9^th, 10^th and the first half of the 11^th century.

French was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system-developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11^th century to the end of the 14^th century.

Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples) and through written speech ( by indirect contact through books, etc.).

Assimilation of Borrowings.

All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two large groups.

On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adopting words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e.g. the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology, Ptolemey of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [ps], [pt], [pn] very frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.) were never used in the initial position. For the same reason the initial [ks] was changed into [z] (as in Gr. xylophone).

The suffixes –ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced by the highly productive Old Eng. suffix –ere,as in L. Caesar >OE. Casere, L. sutor > OE. sūtere.

On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words.These changes are due to the development of the word according to the laws of the given language. When the highly inflected Old English system of declension changed into the simpler system of Middle English, early borrowings conformed with the general rule. Under the influence of the so-called inflexional levelling borrowings like lazu, (MnE law), feolaza (MnE follow), stræt (MnE. street), disc (MnE dish) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English acquired only 3 forms in Middle English common case and possessive case singular and plural (fellow, fellowes, followes).

Phonetic, Grammatical and Lexical assimilation of Borrowings.

Phonetic assimilation

Phonetic assimilation comprising changes in sound-form and stress is perhaps the most conspicuous.

Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For instance, the long [e] and [έ] in recent French borrowings, alien to English speech, are rendered with the help of [ei] (as in the words communique, chaussee, cafe).

German spitz [ pits] was furred into Eng. [spits].

as the native father, mother.

Grammatical Assimilation

Usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired new grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other Eng.words.

However, there are some words in Modern Eng. that have for centuries retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a considerable group of borrowed nouns have preserved their original plural inflexion to this day, e.g. phenomenon (L.) – phenomena; addendum (L.) – addenda; parenthesis (Gr.) – parentheses. Sometimes in borrowed words foreign affixes are replaced by those available in the English language, e.g. the inflexion –us in Latin adjectives was replaced in Eng. with the suffixes –ous or –al: L. barbarus > E. Barbarous; L. botanicus > E. botanical; L. balneus > E. balneal.

Lexical Assimilation

When a word is taken over into another language, its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes. Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their meanings. Thus the word timbre that had a number of meanings in French was borrowed into English as a musical term only. In the process of its historical development a borrowing sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its former semantic structure. For instance, the verb move in Modern English has developed the meanings of “propose”, “change one s flat”, “mix with people” and others that the French mouvoir does not possess.