English Words
History and Structure
Published on 5. July 2001
Book
Hardback
220 pages
978-0-521-79012-3 (ISBN)
Description
English Words: History and Structure is concerned primarily with the learned vocabulary of English, the words borrowed from the classical languages. It surveys the historical events that define the layers of vocabulary in English, introduces some of the basic principles of linguistic analysis, and is a helpful manual for vocabulary discernment and enrichment. Exercises accompanying each chapter and further readings on recent loans and the legal and medical vocabulary of English will be available online in the near future. * Introduces students to some basic linguistic terms needed for the discussion of phonological and morphological changes accompanying word formation * Designed to lead students to a finer appreciation of their language and greater ability to recognize relationships between words and discriminate between meanings * An informative appendix discusses the history and usefulness of the best known British and American dictionaries * Online readings and exercises to deepen and strengthen knowledge acquired in the classroom
Reviews / Votes
'... read this book and recommend it to your sceptical colleagues ... it will certainly enhance the language awareness of already proficient English speakers ... attention to the history of words can illuminate the complex relationships between meaning, spelling and pronunciation in English, and can reveal the English lexicon as much more systematic than it appears.' ATEFL Issues Stockwell and Minkova cover a large amount of material in this work. Yet despite the abundance of sophisticated linguistic terminology, it is in fact a book which is very easy to understand. Anyone studying the history of the English language ... will benefit from it.' fun-with-words.comMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
11 Tables, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 180 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
585 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-79012-3 (9780521790123)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Book
03/2009
2nd Edition
Cambridge University Press
€111.50
No shipping information available
Additional editions
E-Book
12/2004
Cambridge University Press
€23.49
Available for download
Persons
Content
An introduction to the textbook; 1. Word origins; 2. The background of English; 3. Composition of the early modern and modern English vocabulary; 4. Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes; 5. Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation; 6. Replacement rules; 7. Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy; 8. Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates, and other etymological pitfalls; 9. Semantic change and semantic guesswork; 10. The pronunciation of classical words in English; Appendix I. An introduction to dictionaries; Appendix II. Master root list.