The losses among old native words in the English language

1. Different factors wich had the influence on the English language

History of the English language is one of the fundamental courses forming linguistic background of a specialist in philology.

Many factors influenced this language, converting it into the prevalently analytical language of today, with scarcity of nominal forms and a verbal system that much outweights the systems of many other European languages in its segmentation of the verbal component. It has many more borrowings than the majority of tongues and is magnificently flexible in adjusting to any need to express a new notion.Without knowing the language we just feel that some words in English are borrowed, some have very close meanings, some form their paradigmatic forms regularly and some have irregular forms.

The inclusion of such high-frequency elements as articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and numerals, or, at least, the majority of them, in the body of inherited lexical items, underlines their centrality in function and explains the completely different proportion of native words to borrowed words in actual language use.

However, a lot of element,important for future development for English, had been lost during the different periods and process. The locess among some words has changed not only their stryctyre, but also their meanings.

The passing out of use of large numbers of Old English words and their displacement, in a great many cases, by lexical items from other, especially Romance, languages did, among other things, notably diminish the original similarities in lexis between English and German. At the present unsatisfactory state of Old English lexicography and of the historical study of lexis in general, the reasons for the disappearance of particular individual words are difficult to give.

Obviously, the potential conditioning factors underlying lexical changes of the kind under consideration are manifold and include pressure from outside the system as well as pressures which result from changes within the system (or 'intrasystemic changes). Among the factors of the latter kind which have been assigned a more or less important role in the process, there are for example avoidance of am-biguity which may arise from either insufficient phonetic distinctiveness or complete loss of such phonetic distinctiveness of two or more words due to phonetic changes (also described as 'conflict of homonyms' or 'homonymic clash') or, much less frequently, from the representation of a diversity of meanings by a single word(‘polysemy’).

The possibility of reduction of, or deficiency in, phonetic substance as s cause (or one of the causes) of the loss of words has been pointed out , for example, in connection with Old English lexical items like (w)(>ME) `law, marriage, etc.` (cogn w G Ehe), `(>ME ) (cogn w OHG aha, preserved in place names in –ach or –a)`a body of water , river, stream, `and others. `Greater phonetic suitability`, or `greater expressiveness`, may have been one of the reasons, for example, for the falling into disuse of EmodE nim (>OE niman (cogn w HG nehmen)) and its replacement by take (>ON), but does , on the whole, represent a factor difficult to objectify. Sound-changes brought about coalescene of form, or phonetic similarity, or , in other words, homonymy or near – homonymy, in case like the tollowing: OE br d(e) (cogn w OHG brato Braten) > ME brede, (varr breden, bread, etc.) and OE bread (cogn w OHG brot) > ME bred, varr brede2 (and breed, bread). Compare:

l)swines brede is swl e swete, swa is of wilde dere {a 1225)

2)spare nother mete nor drynke, and spare for no dyrthe of wyne nor of brede (roasted meat) (a 1475)

3)he shal renne to toune and brynge vs breed (bread) and wyn (c 1390)

4)pe more plente рои hast of flesche, pe lasse the nedep to spende of brede (bread) (a 1450)

The group is enlarged by OE bred(u) (cogn w OHG breiti`breadth') > ME brede, and OE bred(pl bredu) (cogn w OHG bret `board') > ME bred/brede. Compare:

Coalescence of form also occurred in the case of OE h Ian (cogn w OHG heilen) > ME helen(n), and OE helan (also forhelan) (cogn w OHG helan in ModHG (verhelen) > ME hele(n), and in many other cases.

It cannot be entirely ruled out, at least, that the pressure of homonymy either caused, or contributed to, the passing out of use of words such as ME brede, (roast (ed) meat) or hele(n) (conceal, hide, etc.) and also played a part in other cases. however, the role of homonymic pressure as a cause of the dying out of words must not be overestimated. Identity in sound has, because