Words in English
Linguistics/English 215
Prof. S. Kemmer

History of English

Old English (Anglo-Saxon)         
Middle English                    Norman conquest
Early Modern English              Battle of Hastings
Present Day English (PDE)         Edward the Confessor
Celts                             Harold Godwinson
Romans                            William of Normandy (William the Conqueror)
Anglo-Saxons                      Norman French   
Beowulf                           Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
King Alfred (Alfred the Great)    William Caxton, printing press
Vikings, Danes                    Great English Vowel Shift  
Ethelred the Unready              King James Bible       
Canute (Cnut)                     Shakespeare
Danelaw, Watling Street	          Samuel Johnson
Normans			          Noah Webster
         standard language, standardized spelling

native                            synonyms             
borrowed                          polysemy             
nativized, nativization	          homonyms              
loanword, borrowing               doublets              

Morphology

morpheme                          parse, parsing
root                              allomorphs, allomorphy
affix                             assimilation
prefix                            ablaut                           
suffix                            metathesis
inflection                        weakening 
derivation                        insertion
compounds, compounding            deletion
filler, linker morpheme           rhotacism
transparent, opaque

Phonetics (vanishingly little of it on final. Perhaps for parsing.)

consonants                        fricative
voicing                           affricate
larynx (voice box), vocal chords  nasal
place of articulation             liquid
lips, bilabial                    approximant
labiodental                       lateral
interdental                       voicing assimilation
alveolar, alveolar ridge          place assimilation
palatal-alveolar                  manner assimilation
  ( = alveo-palatal)              partial, total assimilation
hard palate, palatal              vowels
soft palate (velum), velar        vowel frontness: front/central/back
glottis, glottal                  vowel height: high/mid/low
manner of articulation            diphthong
stop (plosive)                    

Semantic change

etymology	                  euphemism
polysemy	                  taboo
widening (generalization)	  amelioration
narrowing (specialization)	  degeneration, pejoration
metaphor	                  synechdoche
metonymy	                  [fossilization, fossil morphemes]

Latin and Greek morphology

inflection                        nominative (subject case)
stem                              accusative (direct object case)
inflectional categories           dative (indirect object case)
grammatical gender                genitive (possessive case)
masculine, feminine, neuter       verb conjugation class  
noun declension                   principal parts
grammatical number                infinitive
singular, plural, [dual]          participles: past, present, future
case                              voice: active, passive    

The deeper roots of English

genetic relationship              Celtic
regular sound change	          Italic, Romance	                  
sound correspondence	          Hellenic, Greek
cognate	                          Baltic
reconstruction	                  Slavic
linguistic archeology             Indic
Grimm's law                       Iranian
Indo-European                     Armenian
The Indo-Europeans                Illyrian, Albanian
Proto-Indo-European	          Anatolian, Hittite
Germanic	                  Tocharian

Usage and variation

descriptivism                     stylistic variation (register)
descriptive grammar               written vs. spoken language
prescriptivism                    formal vs. informal
prescriptive grammar              slang (characteristics of)
standard, standard language       Cockney rhyming slang
language purists                  jargon
shibboleth                        colloquial language
language variation                [argot (thieves' secret language)]
geographical variation            [language games (pig latin, etc.)]
  (dialectology)                  [language play (punning, plays on words)]
social variation                  

Word formation

productive, productivity          eponym, eponymy
coining, de novo creation	  acronym
derivation	                  blend, blending
zero-derivation                   clipping
compound, compounding             back-formation	
[phrasal compound]	          sound symbolism
rhyming compound                  phonaesthemes, phonaesthesia
creativity                        onomotopeia
conventionalization               nonce words

© 2001 Suzanne Kemmer