Erik Smitterberg ([email protected])
Dept. of English, Uppsala University
Master’s Programme: OE and ME
Autumn/Fall Term 2010
Assignment: Word-formation and Loanwords
The main aim of this assignment is to give you a chance to apply some of the knowledge you
have acquired by studying Chapter 5 in Horobin and Smith (2002). You will do this by
looking closely at what types of word-formation processes and what foreign languages have
contributed to the expansion of the English lexicon at a specific point in time. A secondary
aim is to acquaint you with one of the most important sources of data for historical
linguists: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online, available via the Uppsala University
library. On 9 November, you will account briefly for your findings in class; on the same day,
a written version of the assignment is to be handed in.
1 The OED Online
The OED is the biggest dictionary project ever undertaken, and it is still being developed and
added to. The full version, with the history, first attestations, spellings, pronunciations,
meanings etc. of every word is available online at for subscribers.1 It gives linguists an
unprecedented opportunity to study the history of the English lexicon.
The easiest way to use the OED online is to go to its website, enter the
dictionary, and key in the word you wish to search for in the “Find word” box. You will then
be taken to a results window, where you can either choose between several words that
(nearly) matched your query or, if there was only one match, look at the result directly.
Clicking on buttons will provide information on pronunciation, etymology, spellings, etc.
Feel free to carry out a couple of searches along these lines to familiarize yourself with the
interface. However, for the assignment, you will need to use the “Advanced Search” button
on the screen.
When you click on the “Advanced Search” button, you are taken to a new
window, where you can specify several options. You will use this window to search for
nouns, verbs, and adjectives that entered the English language during a particular year.2
2 The Search Procedure
You will have been assigned a year and four letters (e.g. “1150, a through d”). You will need
that information when you carry out the search. When you have reached the “Advanced
Search” window, begin by tick-marking “noun”, “verb”, and “adjective” in the “Part of
speech filter” box. Then type in the year you have been assigned in the first window to the
left below the text “Search for entries/quotations containing” (make sure that “entries”
and not “quotations” is marked red in this text). Then click on the arrow in the window to
1
The OED Online can be accessed via the Uppsala University Library site: click on “Databaser A–Ö”, then “O”,
then “Oxford English Dictionary”. Depending on whether you are using a computer at the university or your
own computer, you may be required to log in before you reach the dictionary homepage.
2
Claiming that a word entered the English language during a particular year just because that year is the first
in which it has been attested in the OED is of course an oversimplification. First, many new words must have
been around in speech for some time before they were written down, but the OED is based on written sources
only. Secondly, although the OED is based on an immense quotation database, there are also a large number of
documents, manuscripts etc. that have not been considered by the dictionary-makers, so the word may have
existed in written documents before it was used in one consulted for the OED. These caveats notwithstanding,
we will use the first attestation in the OED as a rough guide to when a word entered the English language.
1
Erik Smitterberg ([email protected])
Dept. of English, Uppsala University
Master’s Programme: OE and ME
Autumn/Fall Term 2010
the right of the window where you keyed in the year (this window probably says “full text”
at present). From the scroll-down menu that opens, select “first cited date”. By way of
exemplification, if you have been assigned the year 1150, the entire line should read, “1150
IN first cited date”. After these operations, you are ready to click the “Start search” button.
The search will take a few seconds because the OED has to go through its entire
database, but when it is done, you will see the beginning of an alphabetical list of words that
were first attested in the year you have specified. 3 This alphabetical list is what you will use
to reach your results. A few hints on navigation: you increase the number of words listed
per page by selecting a number from the top-right-hand window; you go to the next page
by clicking the “NEXT” button at the bottom of the page; you can also navigate through a
long list fast by keying in a higher number in the dialogue box and clicking on “ MORE
BEGINNING AT” (all of the entries for a given year are numbered in alphabetical order).
To keep the search within reasonable limits, for each of the four letters you
have been assigned, select the first five words beginning with that letter, i.e. 20 words
altogether;4 for instance, if you have been assigned the letters a through d, look at the first
five words beginning with a, the first five beginning with b, the first five beginning with c,
and the first five beginning with d.5 The easiest way to do this is probably to do everything
in one single session: if you do not have time to do so, write the relevant 20 words down and
then search for them separately at a later stage using the “Simple search” or “Find word”
option.6
3 Analysing the Results
For each of your 20 words, go through the steps below. Note that you need to go through all
of steps (1)–(3) for each word in turn, and then go on to the next word, etc. Step (4)
summarizes your results. After completing steps (1)–(3) for a word, if you carry out the
entire investigation in one session, you can click on the “Results” button in the top-lefthand corner of the screen to get back to the long list of entries by year from which you
started out.
1. Search for each word, either by clicking directly on it in the long list of words that
entered English during “your” year, or, if you are returning to a previously acquired
3
You may see some modifications to the year in the “Date” column, such as “a” (= ante) and “c” (= circa). Such
modifications concern the certainty of the dating of the attestation; however, in this assignment we will treat
the datings as if they were exact, so you can ignore such modifications and use the word in question as if the
dating was not open to doubt.
4
In the event that there are fewer than five words that begin with one of the letters you have been assigned,
select extra words beginning with the preceding and/or following letters to compensate for this, so that you
still analyse a total of 20 words. However, do this only if it proves necessary.
5
Note that the words are listed according to their present-day spelling. We will use present-day spelling
conventions in all words for this assignment, so you can follow the spelling in the “Entry” column even if the
first attestation has a different spelling.
6
Since the list is alphabetical, it should be the same every time you go through the above steps. Thus you do
not need to carry out the entire assignment in one session. However, if you choose to write the words down
and return to the process later, make sure that you also write down the word class of the word, if it is given in
the list (e.g. “n.” for “noun”). Some words can belong to more than one word class, and the different wordclass variants may have entered English at different times. For instance, the word skirt is first attested as a
noun before 1300, but not until 1602 as a verb (the origin would also be different if these words were included
in your analysis: the noun is an Old Norse loanword, but the verb is not – it is formed from the noun by means
of zero derivation). In addition, it is necessary to write down any superscript numbers that are adjacent to the
word. For instance, the word leadsman exists as leadsman1 and leadsman2 in OED; these two have different
meanings, and while the first is attested in 1510, the second is not attested until 1857.
2
Erik Smitterberg ([email protected])
Dept. of English, Uppsala University
Master’s Programme: OE and ME
Autumn/Fall Term 2010
list, by looking it up using the “Search” function. Note that, in the latter case, you
may need to choose the right entry by using information you have taken down on
word classes and superscript numbers (see note 6).
2. When you have reached the entry window for the right word, if the “ ETYMOLOGY”
button is not coloured red, click on it to colour it red: the etymology of the word will
appear. Look at what the OED says about the etymology of each word, and write
down its immediate source. (The immediate source is usually given first in the
etymology section.) If the source is given as “OE”, “Common Teutonic” etc., or if no
source language at all is given but a word formation process is shown instead (e.g.
capsulize below), simply write “native English” as the source language; otherwise,
write down the name of the language that English borrowed the word from. 7 There
is no need to write down the period, i.e. both “F.” and “OF.” can be registered as
“French”. For instance, the entry for beef states that this word comes originally from
Old French boef, which in turn comes from Latin bovem, the accusative form of bos
‘ox’. As we are not interested in periods, and only in the immediate source, we
simply write “French” and then move on to the next word.8 Two pointers:
a. A word is only classified as a loanword if the word in itself is borrowed from
another language. To take an example of a non-loanword from 1950: as
indicated by the etymology description “[f. CAPSUL(E + -IZE.]”, capsulize is
formed by adding the suffix -ize to the word capsule. Capsule is a French
(originally Latin) loanword, and -ize is a French (originally Greek) suffix (see
capsule and -ize in OED online). But capsule and -ize were already part of the
English language in 1950: capsulize is thus made up of two English elements.
Thus we do not consider capsulize a loanword, but a native English word, and
proceed to step 3. (In contrast, if we had been looking at words from 1652,
the noun capsule would have been a French loanword.)
b. Conversely, a word is only classified as a native English word if the process of
word formation by which it came about took place in English. For instance,
the word nanism (from 1857) is made up of nano- + -ism, but this wordformation process took place in French, and the word nanisme was then
borrowed as a whole into English as nanism (see nanism in OED online). Thus
we consider nanism a French loanword, and do not have to say anything
about the word-formation process.
3. For each word that is not a loanword: deduce how it has been formed using the
information in OED online. Again, we are only interested in the immediate source.
For instance, since capsulize is formed by adding an affix (-ize) to an independent
word (capsule), we classify it as a case of “Affixation”. The main processes involved
are compounding (combining free morphemes) and affixation (adding a bound
morpheme to an existing word). For the purpose of this assignment, treat so-called
zero derivation (i.e. when a word changes its word class without any morphological
change taking place, e.g. ship [verb] from ship [noun]) as a form of affixation (we
assume that a zero affix has been added). Label sources that match neither
compounding nor affixation “Other”.
7
The source languages are typically given as abbreviations, and you may need to consult the Help section of
OED online for some abbreviations. Do this by clicking the “HELP” button, then scroll down and click on
“abbreviations”.
8
You may come across some borderline cases regarding periods, e.g. “Old Norse”, the ancestor of the
Scandinavian languages. I suggest that you lump “Old Norse”, “Swedish”, etc. together as “Scandinavian”.
3
Erik Smitterberg ([email protected])
Dept. of English, Uppsala University
Master’s Programme: OE and ME
Autumn/Fall Term 2010
4. Now it is time to summarize your results. Do this in two tables, one for loanwords
and one for native English words, which you can easily reproduce on the whiteboard
or put on a transparency. For your brief oral presentation (count on c. 2 minutes),
only those two tables are needed. For the written version you hand in, however,
information on each word you have investigated is needed. A sample answer is given
below.
If you encounter any problems while working on the assignment, please
contact me over e-mail. It is advisable to start working on this assignment fairly soon, so
that any problems as regards accessing the OED online can be solved in time.
Sample answer for 1857, “l” through “o”
I provide an example of an answer for a completely different period below. Note that this is
based on a search carried out in 2006; as the OED online is added to several times a year, it is
not certain that a search carried out in 2010 would yield exactly the same result.
Native English Words
labret: affixation; lacunary (a.)9: affixation; Lancaster (1): other;10 leadsman (2): compounding;
macrocosmology (n.): affixation; macrognathous (a.): affixation; macrosomia (n.): affixation;
magazinedom (n.): affixation; nabobish (a.): affixation; Nabothian (a.): affixation;11 nanoid (a.):
affixation; obcordiform (a.): affixation; obimbricate (a.): affixation; obligulate (a.): affixation;
oboval (a.): affixation
Word formation process
#
Affixation
13
Compounding
1
Other
1
Total
15
Loanwords
lanx: Latin; Maatschappij (n.): Dutch; nanism (n.): French; napifolious (a.): Latin; objet de luxe
(n.): French
Language
#
French
2
Latin
2
Dutch
1
Total
5
If the above lists are representative (a very big if, considering the small sample), 75% of all
new words in 1857 were formed using elements already present in English, while 25% were
loanwords. In the native English group, affixation was clearly the dominant word formation
9
In this sample answer, superscript numbers and word classes are only given where these are specified by the
OED online; superscript numbers are presented within parentheses so that they will not be mistaken for
footnote references.
10
Lancaster (in full, Lancaster gun) is an eponym, i.e. a proper noun that comes to be used as a common noun.
11
This would have been an eponym if it had been Naboth only, but the suffix -ian makes it an affixation.
4
Erik Smitterberg ([email protected])
Dept. of English, Uppsala University
Master’s Programme: OE and ME
Autumn/Fall Term 2010
process; in the loanword group, French and Latin accounted for the largest number of
words.
The above figures are of course too low to form the basis of safe conclusions.
However, it is hoped that we will reach reliable figures by lumping together several
students’ results for the same year, so that 80–100 words will give us more reliable figures.
5