ELA020C112S Variety and Change in Language
Assignment 1- Data Analysis and Commentary
1. Using a good etymological dictionary (e.g. OED), find the etymology of the underlined words in the following passage:
Hint: in the case of loanwords, provide a socio-historical context for their entrance into English (i.e. during what period of English were they borrowed? In what domain? Was this type of borrowing typical of the period?). For example, xxx might have been borrowed from French during the ME period. You might have a date for this, so go ahead and give it (e.g. 1252). It might belong to the domain of government or law and you can probably now see that is was typical of the period.
Passage
There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations. There were roses; there were irises. Ah yes-so she breathed in the earthy-garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the irises and roses and nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing in, after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness. And then, opening her eyes, how fresh, like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays, the roses looked; and dark and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peas spreading in their bowls tinged violet, snow white, pale-as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb summer’s day, with its almost blue-black sky, its delphiniums, its carnations, its arum lilies, was over and it was the moment between six and seven when every flower-roses, carnations, irises, lilac-glows; white, violet, red, deep orange; every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds; and how she loved the grey white moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses!
(From Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, 1925)
2. This passage was first published in 1925 and its author, Virginia Woolf, died in 1941.
a. Give 20 words which have been borrowed into English between 1940 and the present day.
b. In each case, state in which decade the word was borrowed and which language it was borrowed from. NB American English does not count. Your borrowings must come from languages such as French, Japanese, Yoruba etc.
