Letting in Latin loanwords
You
can review general concepts about borrowing
English
was relatively receptive to Latin loanwords because it had already received
many in ME (directly or via French)
§
sometimes
hard to tell: both the French and the English rendered Latin nouns in –atio
as –ation
o so, I have to look it up to
discover that affirmation was borrowed in the 16th from
French
Many
words (especially nouns) adopted (i.e. no morphological change)
o automaton
§
exterior
§
climax
§
medium
§
radius
o we even adopt their plurals:
media, radii
o inflexional morphemes rarer
than derivational ones, though
o and ‘productive’ only with
other learned words (e.g. hippopotamus)
Others
adapted (removing or altering inflections)
o automate an early adaptation
(<Fr, C17th) of Lat. automaton
§
conjectural(is)
§
conspicuus -> conspicuous
§
veritas -> verity
Some
Latin forms could be adapted in more than one way, especially Latin verbs: do
you use the infinitive or the past participle?
§
For
Latin aestimare ‘appraise monetary value’, ‘weigh moral worth’
§
aestimare (infinitive) -> esteem
§
aestimatus (past participle) -> estimate
Other
examples of variation between infinitive and past participle
§
convincere, convictum -> convince, convict
§
currere, cursum -> current, currency; precursor, cursory
o Notice that if both forms
have survived, they’ve differentiated semantically
Examples
of now obsolete forms
§
from
Chaucer
§
from
the infinitive: calcule, confeder, dissimule, encorpore
§
from
the past participle: determinate, exaltate, preparate
§
from
Milton
o “what is dark in me illumine”
§
had been in the language since the 14th;
illuminate is later
Sometimes
a word had been borrowed earlier (e.g. in ME from French), then got borrowed
later (e.g. in EmodE from Latin)
§
the
forms would be different because French had changed
§
examples
include: round and rotund, poor and pauper, frail
and fragile, and aim and esteem!
o aim is from Old French esmer
(from Latin aestimare!)
§
aim
had entered ME with all the Latin meanings in the 1300s
·
‘esteem’:
“Thou eymest the son of man”
·
‘estimate’,
‘calculate’: “no mon mi3t ayme þe noumber
§
but
what survived was the (also 14th) meaning that had narrowed via
‘calculate’ to mean
·
“to
calculate one’s course with a view to arriving at a point”, “to calculate the
direciton of anything about to be launched”
If
a Latin word had been borrowed via French in ME, in EmodE sometimes it was
etymologically respelled
o e.g. Latin adventura
(future participle ‘that which is about to happen’) -> aventure ->
adventure
o e.g. perfectum (past
participle) -> parfit -> perfect
o e.g. Latin debitum
-> dette -> debt
o might not affect
pronunciation
Sometimes
‘etymological’ spelling is wrong!
o Latin scindere ‘to
cut’ assumed to be the ancestor of
o scythe (no: OE síð)
o scissors (no: ME < Ofr cisoirs,
related to chisel)
o PDE island is from OE
ea-land, which became ME i-land and thus got wrongly associated
with French ile (from Latin insula). Once isle got an
etymological and silent <s> so did island...
o aisle (OFr ele < Latin ala
‘wing’) also got associated with isle and acquired an unetymological
<s> (thanks, AZ)
Along
with new words, English borrowed new affixes
§
-ate
originally the past participle inflexion: creare, creatus ‘was
created’
o adjectival use of past
participle: “the illuminate doctor”
o verbal use of past
participle: e.g. separate, illuminate
§
eventually
–ate added to bases that weren’t verbs,
o e.g. paginate (Latin pagina)
§
but
there is a med. Latin paginare
o e.g. scientific terms, e.g. chlorinate,
dehydrate
§
or
back-formed from nouns in –ation (analogy with create, creation)
o donate, orate, automate?
§
however,
there are Latin verbs donare and orare
§
origins
not always certain
Romance
and native affixes can compete (c16th-17th exx)
o e.g. frequency and frequentness
o e.g. immaturity and immatureness
o e.g. immediacy and immediateness
o the productivity of native –ness
with a Latin base is less exciting than a Latin affix would be with a less
learned base
§
e.g.
Shakespeare’s discandy in Antony and Cleopatra
And
along with new affixes, a new graph or two (or at least <ae> and
<oe>, the Latin spelling of Greek <oi>)
o lost in aesteem, aedify;
economics
o recessive in mediaeval
and encyclopaedia (a test of character!) and perhaps even archaeology;
diarrhoea
o still around in amoeba
o more likely to be kept in
proper names: Aeneas, Oedipus
And
even a few phonological rules (palatalization in French)
o electric and edification but electricity
and edifice
o elongate and allegation but longitude
and allege