3 General Characteristics

Receptivity, adaptability and heterogeneity

– Variety, heterogeneousness with foreign elements

– Simplicity of inflection:

– Old English is a synthetic language

– Modern English is a analytic language

– Relatively fixed word-order

4 Foreign Elements in the English Vocabulary

The major contributors to English are Latin, Greek, French and Scandinavian.

The students are asked to study this part by themselves and get to know the major foreign elements that contributed to the development of English.

5 Growth of Contemporary English Vocabulary

Three main sources of new words:

– Rapid development of modern science and languages

– Social, economic and political changes

– The influence of other cultures and languages

6 Modes of Vocabulary Development

Creation

The formation of new words by using the existing materials

Semantic change

An old form takes on a new meaning

Borrowing:

Borrowed words constitute six to seven percent of all new words.