Directions: You are expected to study this section in class. Don’t preview.

Word Pretest

For each italicized word or expression, choose the best meaning below.

1. Wearing cosmetics does harm to the skin.
A. tight clothes B. long hair C. makeup
2. We can’t afford to spend money on luxuries.
A. expensive and unnecessary goods
B. cheap but unnecessary goods
C. expensive and necessary goods
3. Tea originated in China; it was once an exotic drink in Europe.
A. popular B. native C. foreign
4. Even saints have been known to resort to violence.
A. resource
B. use
C. resist
5. The bank arranged a loan of $500 for home improvements.
A. sum of money lent
B. sum of money earned
C. sum of money spent
6. You must exploit every opportunity to learn new things.
A. achieve B. utilize C. abuse
7. America has assimilated many people from Europe.
A. absorbed B. introduced C. attracted
8. Are you familiar with the phonological rules of the English language?
A. syllabic B. grammatical C. pronunciation
9. The flower looks like a species of rose.
A. kind B. period C. place
10. Orange trees are alien to Canada.
A. native B. foreign C. away
11. Sensitive people are quickly touched by something beautiful or sad.
A. delicate B. irritable C. sharp
12. The old woman turned hysterical at the loss of her dog.
A. embarrassed B. wildly emotional C angry

Key: 1. C 2. A 3.C 4. B 5. A 6. B 7. A 8. C 9. A 10. B 11. A 12. B

Text A

1. Background Information
2. Text: Vocabulary Change

Borrowing
　　Borrowing is a way of adding new vocabulary items to a language. Speakers of a language often have contact with speakers of other language. If a speaker of one of these languages does not have a readily available word for something in the world and a speaker of the other language does, the first speaker often borrows the word from the second speaker. The first settles in North America had contact with the Indians who had already developed names for places and things peculiar to the North American continent. Consequently, the settles borrowed such words as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Chicago, and Mississippi, to mention a few place-names only.
　　Another large group of words came into English as a result of contact through invasion, in this case the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. various kinds of words were borrowed into English: for matters of government like crown, country, duke, court, and prince; for matters of law like judge, jury, crime, accuse, marry, and prove; for matters of war like battle, arms, soldier, siege, danger, and march; and for matters of religion like angel, saint, pray, save, blame, virtue, and vice. Then, too, today we find interesting pairs of words such as cow and beef, sleep and mutton, calf and veal, and pig and pork in which the first item, the name of the animal, is Germanic in origin and the second item, the meat of the animal, is a borrowing from French. Perhaps the occurrence of such pairs reflects a society in which the conquered Englishman raised the animals for the table of the conquering Norman.
　　Several points can be made about the Norman Conquest. First, the borrowings from French do not show much, if any, cultural superiority in the invaders. Secondly, although the Normans were conquerors, they eventually gave up their French to become speakers of English, just as their ancestors had eventually given up their Germanic language when they invaded France. Thirdly, the borrowings do not show the same intimate relationships between conquered and conqueror as the borrowings that resulted from the earlier Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries, when “everyday” words such as egg, sky, gate, skin, skirt, skill, skull., scatter, sister, law, weak, give, take, call, and hit, and particularly the pronouns they, them, and their, and the verb are were borrowed form the Danish invaders.
　　The kinds of contact speakers have with each other may often be judged from the particular items that are borrowed. For example, English has borrowed numerous words from French having to do with clothing, cosmetics, and luxury goods, like ensemble, lingerie, suede, perfume, rouge, champagne, and deluxe. Form German have come words associated with food like hamburger and delicatessen. From Italian have come musical words like piano, opera, solo, sonata, soprano, trombone, and serenade. Form various Indian languages have come words for once exotic dress items like bandanna, sari, bangle, and pajamas. And from Arabic have come some interesting words beginning, with al- (the Arabic determiner): alcohol, alchemy, almanac, and algebra.
　　Of course, Latin and Greek have provided English with the richest resource for borrowing more formal learned items. Large numbers of words have been borrowed into English from both languages, particularly learned polysyllabic words. Numerous doublets also exist in English, that is, worlds that have been borrowed twice, once directly from Latin, and the second time through another language, most often French:
　　　　　　Latin　　　 English 　　　　French 　　English
　　　　　　magister 　　magistrate　　 maitre　　　 master
　　　　　　securus　　 secure 　　　　sur 　　　　sure
　　North American English shows a wide contact with other languages in its borrowings: French (levee, prairie); Spanish (mesa, patio); German (fatcakes, smearcase); Dutch (coleslaw, cooky, stoop); American Indian (squash, moccasin, squaw, wigwam); and various African languages (banjo, gumbo, voodoo).
At different times speakers of certain languages have shown noticeable resistance to borrowing words, and they have preferred either to exploit native resources or to resort to loan translations instead. Such an English word as superman is a loan translation of the Ubermensch just as marriage of convenience is a loan translation of the French marriage de convenience and it goes without saying of the French ca va sans dire.
　　Borrowings are also assimilated to different degrees. Sometimes a borrowing is pronounced in a decidedly foreign way for a while, but it is usually soon treated according to native sound patterns if it occurs frequently. In English, words such as garage, salon, masseur, ghoul, and hickory, borrowed from a verity of foreign languages, are pronounced according to the sound system of English and not according to the phonological rules of the source language.

Narrowing and widening
　　One process involves narrowing the meaning of a word so that the word achieves a more restricted meaning over the course of time. Meat now means a particular kind of food, not food in general, as it does in the following quotations from the King James version of “Genesis”: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Likewise, deer now refers to a particular kind of animal, not animal in general, as it did in Shakespeare’s words “But mice and rats and such small deer have been Tom’s food for seven long year.” Worm now refers to a particular kind of crawling creature, not any crawling creature, although some of the original more general meaning is contained still in slowworm, blindworm, and glowworm. Fowl and hound refer to particular kinds of bird and dog and wife, to a particular kind of woman. However, in the case of the last word we can note a more general meaning in midwife, wife of Bath, and perhaps housewife. Finally, North Americans use the word corn in a narrow meaning to refer to maize, whereas the British use it to refer to grain in general. Keat’s Ruth standing “amid the alien corn” is not standing in a field of maize.
　　The opposite process is widening of meaning. In this process a word achieves a more general meaning. The words bird and dog once referred to specific types of birds and dogs, not to the species in general. The word virtue described a characteristic associated with men, but not with women, just as only women could be said to be hysterical, since men were not possessed of wombs (hystera being the Greek word for “uterus”). The word sensible once meant “sensitive”, as it still does in French, and alibi referred to the fact that a person was elsewhere when something happened, not that he had some kind of excuse for something.

Total Words: 1230
Total Reading Time ________
________
The text is based on “Introduction to Linguistics by Ronald Wardhaugh. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977.

Detailed Study of Text A

◆ Reading Skill ─ Skimming
Skim the text and then answer the following questions.

1. What is the title of this article?
2. What are the subheadings of this article?
3. Paragraph 1 is mainly about _______.
A. the Indians’ contribution to American English
B. cross-cultural contact
C. the conditions under which borrowing occurs
4. Paragraph 2 focuses primarily on _______.
A. the impact of the Norman conquest on the English conquest
B. the social structure of England after the Norman conquest
C. the origin of those English words related to government
5. In paragraph 4, the author’s main concern is to point out that _______.
A. different kinds of contact bring different types of news words
B. most of the musical terms in English came form Italian
C. before the contract with the Arab, there were no such words as alcohol in the English language
6. Most of the learned words in English were borrowed _______.
A. from the Normans
B. through loan translation
C. from Greek or Latin
7. It is apparent that _______.
A. it takes time for people to accept borrowed words.
B. Borrowing is considered the best way to add new words to a language whenever people do not have a readily available word for something in the world.
C. People would rather borrow words than exploit native resources
8. Once a word is borrowed, it _______.
A. will immediately be treated according to new sound patterns
B. will have two acceptable pronunciations at the same time
C. will be pronounced in the old way for some time before it takes on new sound patterns.
9. In the “widening” and “narrowing” processes, the _______ of a word changes.
A. pronunciation B. spelling C. meaning
10. The change in meaning of the word dog form “a specific kind of dogs” to “dogs in general” is an example of _______.
A. widening B. narrowing C. borrowing

Key: 1.Vocabulary Change
2. 1>. Borrowing 2>. Narrowing and widening
3. C 4. A 5. A 6. C 7. B 8.C 9. C 10. A

Vocabulary Building

I. Give the other parts of speech of each given word.

Key:

II. Fill in the blanks with words that are often confused.

1.peculiar, particular
a. This food has a _______ taste, do you think it’s all right?
b. Is there any _______ color you would prefer?
c. Is there anything in _______ you’d like for dinner?
2. access, assess
a. It is difficult to _______ the impact of the president’s speech.
b. The only _______ to the farmhouse is across the fields.
c. Students must have _______ to a good library.
3.source, resource
a. China is rich in natural _______.
b. Is the water polluted at the _______ or further downstream?
c. He cited many _______ for his book.

Key: 1.a. peculiar b. particular c. particular
2.a. access b. access c. access
3.a. resource b. source c. sources

Ⅲ. Glossary
mother tongue 　　　spoken language 　　　　written language
living language　　　 artificial language　　　　 Queen’s English
standard English　　 received pronunciation　　 cockney
pidgin English　　　　 dialect　　　　　　　　　vernacular
etymology　　　　　　 semantics 　　　　　　　linguistics
bilingual 　　　　　　　Anglicism 　　　　　　　Americanism
slang　　　　　　　　 vulgarism 　　　　　　　colloquialism
Euphemism　　　　　 byword　　　　　　　　　 jargon
language acquisition　 lexicographer 　　　　　　OED

4. Cloze
Fill in each blank with one suitable word.

Language varies according to _______ and occupation. The language of men differs subtle from that of women. _______ do not usually use expressions such as “It’s darling,” and women tend not to swear as extensively as men. Likewise, the language used in addressing men and women _______ subtly: we can compliment a man on a new necktie with the _______ “What a pretty tie that is!” but not with “How pretty you look today!” an expression reserved for _______ a woman. The occupation of a person _______ his language to vary, particularly in the use he _______ of technical terms, that is, in the use he makes of the jargon of his vocation. Soldiers, dentists, hairdressers, mechanics, yachtsmen, and skiers all have their particular special _______. Sometimes the consequence is that such persons _______ difficulty in communicating with people _______ the vocation on professional matters because the technical vocabulary is not _______ by all. Although we can relate certain kinds of jargon to levels of education and professional training, we must also note that all occupations _______ some jargon, even those of the criminal underworld. There may well be a more highly developed use of jargon in occupations that require considerable education, in which words, and the concepts they _______, are manipulated rather than objects, for example in the legal and teaching _______ and in the world of finance.

Key: 1. sex 2. Men 3. differs 4. expression 5. complimenting
6. causes 7. makes 8. jargon 9. have 10. outside
11. understood 12. use 13. express/interpret 14. world/field