Chapter 2 the development of the English Vocabulary

The Indo-European Language Family

The Eight Groups in Indo-European Family of Languages

The Balto-slavic Group（波罗的-斯拉夫语族）：Latvian,Russian,Bugarian,Polish,Czech etc.

The Indo-Iranian Group（印度-伊朗语族）：Sanskrit,Hindi,Urdu,Bengali,Persian etc.

The Armenian Group（亚美尼亚语族）：Armenian.

The Albanian Group（阿尔巴尼亚语族）：Albanian.

The Hellenic Group（古希腊语族）：Greek.

The Italian Group（意大利语族）：

Latin,Romance languages(French,Italian,Spanish, portuguess,Romanian) etc.

The Celtic Group（凯尔特语族）：Gaelic,Welsh,Breton etc.

The Germanic Group（日耳曼语族）：

Englsih,German,Dutch,Scandinavian(Norweigian, Swedish,Danish,Icelandic) etc.

The Three Stages of Development of the English Vocabulary@

1 Old English Period or The Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1100) (vocabulary 50,000 to 60,000)

2 Middle English Period (1150-1500)

3 Modern English Period (1500-now): in fact more than 25% of modern E words come almost directly from classical languages. In Modern E, words endings were mostly lost

Modes of V Development(Modern E): 1)creation 2)semantic change 3) borrowing