MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY of EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature
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MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Lexical Sources in the English Vocabulary of Fashion and Clothing Bachelor thesis Brno 2013 Written by: Supervisor: Sylva Peléšková Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D. I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, and that I used only the sources cited in the bibliography. I give my permission to store this thesis at the library of the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University of Brno, and make it available for study purposes. 19 April 2013, Brno Sylva Peléšková 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank Mgr Radek Vogel, PhD, for his kind and patient supervision, and professional advice. 3 Table of contents I INTRODUCTION 5 II THEORETICAL PART 7 1 The history of the English language 7 1.1 Proto-Indo-European 7 1.2 Celtic and Roman period 7 1.3 Old English 8 1.4 Middle English 10 1.5 Early Modern English 11 1.6 Modern English 12 2 Lexical changes in English 15 2.1 Word-formation processes 16 2.1.1 Compounding 16 2.1.2 Derivation 16 2.1.3 Conversion 17 2.1.4 Other word-formation processes 18 2.1.5 Multiple processes 20 2.2 Borrowing from other languages 20 2.3 Semantic changes 22 3 A brief outline of the history of fashion in Europe 23 III PRACTICAL PART 26 1 An introduction to the practical part 26 1.1 List of abbreviations and sources for the tables of analyses 28 2 The analyses 30 2.1 General and abstract words 30 2.2 Materials 33 2.3 Patterns, decorations and needlework 39 2.4 Beachwear, nightwear, swimwear and underwear 41 2.5 Outerwear 47 2.6 Parts of clothes 55 2.7 Footwear 59 2.8 Headgear 62 2.9 Accessories 64 3 A conclusion to the practical part 70 IV CONCLUSION 71 VI BIBLIOGRAPHY 73 4 Introduction Thinking about the topic of my thesis, I originally wanted to write about French loan words in English as French is my other foreign language. However, seeing the topic as too broad, I decided to limit it to an area that would be typically French. That is why I voted for fashion and clothing: on talking about fashion, many think of French names like Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton (and possibly followed by Italian brands such as Armani, Valentino, Versace, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada). In fact, as we will see in chapter 3, France was indeed the cradle of modern fashion design industry, and it has been one of the leading trend-setters. In the course of time, Great Britain has established its position as a fashion superpower, too. Names like Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood are surely well-known in most of the world. So are some British clothing luxury stores, such as Burberry, or chain stores like Top Shop, Marks & Spencer or Debenhams (which have made their way even to the Czech Republic, a country with a rather relaxed attitude to fashion and clothing). The extent of the English vocabulary of fashion and clothing reflects this strong position. For example, it is certainly richer than the Czech one: for instance, the Czech word svetr (itself coming beyond any doubt from English) can indicate a jumper or a cardigan (no distinction in Czech, apart from random occurrence of the borrowing kardigan), there is no short Czech equivalent to racer-back T-shirt, and so on. However, a close look at the large English lexis of fashion and clothing made me think that it would be almost a pity to limit my thesis to French loans only, for some words sound so interesting that they literarily make wander about their origins. So I decided to take the topic more globally and look into various sources of the corpus. Another reason for such an extension of the topic is that I would like my thesis to serve as a helping tool for vocabulary study and teaching. It does help to learn a new word if we can make a link to a similar word from another language we can speak, or if its history tells us about places or people that it was named after. Nonetheless, the main purpose of the thesis is to examine lexical sources in the category of fashion of clothes, aiming at the study of the volume of foreign influences and word-formation processes that have helped establish the current lexical corpus in this field. After choosing the topic, I proceeded by making a preliminary list of possible words based on sources like fashion magazines, clothes glossaries for advanced English learners and 5 clothes-selling e-shops (e.g. ebay.co.uk). The ultimate choice, however, belonged to the study of the corpus described in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Too specific or extremely rare words were thus excluded, and the emphasis was put on the contemporary vocabulary (although many “modern” items took inspiration, and name, in the past), and on British English with no local variations. The reason for British English is obvious: this variety of English is in Europe largely preferred for learning and teaching. The last step of this preparatory phase was the division of the words into several categories. In structure, the thesis consists of two main parts – a theoretical one and a practical one. The theoretical part gives a study necessary for the analyses of the etymologies of the words and better understanding of the conclusions. The history of the English language described in the first chapter of the theoretical part takes a special regard to the influences of other languages. It outlines the main historical events of each period (the choice of the periods copies the common description of the history of the language), grammatical, spelling and pronunciation developments and focuses on the changes to the vocabulary. The last chapter offers also an overview of English varieties as well as its current position in the world. The second chapter is dedicated to the lexical influences in English. It presents a study of the main word-formation processes in English and the problematic of lexical borrowing in English, especially the reasons for it and its terminology. Finally, a short chapter deals with the history of fashion. This overview helps explain some tendencies found in the practical part. The practical part offers the etymological analyses of the collected words. As said before, these are divided into nine categories, which are at the same time chapters of the practical part. Each word is accompanied with the period of its first occurrence (in the defined sense), its meaning, etymology, the language(s) it comes from and the way it entered the English lexical corpus (loanword, compound, etc.). The analyses are concluded in Chapter 3, giving the totals of the loanwords of the languages in question. The final conclusion puts into relation the findings from the theoretical and the practical part. 6 Theoretical part 1 The history of the English language 1.1 Proto-Indo-European The first known ancestor of the English language is called Proto-Indo-European. It dates back to the times about 6000 years ago and it was spoken by a group of people probably somewhere in the European part of southern Russia. From its vocabulary it can be deduced that they knew agriculture and bred animals. Other decoded words indicate that the people were familiar with tools, weapons and even wheeled vehicles (Trask 116). Viney supposes that probably about 3500 BC the group, possibly called the Kurgans, began to move across Europe (westward) and Asia (eastward). Written records from about 2000 to 1000 BC show that the original common language had already developed into distinct languages by then, after separating into dialects as the Kurgan tribes spread apart from each other (Viney 4-6). One of these dialects was labeled as Proto-Germanic and it was probably used by the people in the south of Scandinavia in around 500 BC until its speakers finally reached Britain a thousand years later (Trask 114). It is evident that Proto-Indo-European must have issued from another, even remoter ancestor, but traces of it are still subject of many studies and no clear consensus has been reached yet. Nevertheless, as the name Proto-Indo-European suggests, it was the common source for the development of the Indo-European languages, just as Proto-Germanic splintered into Germanic languages (Trask 116). 1.2 Celtic and Roman period Before describing the beginnings of Old English, it is useful to look at the very first settlements in the British Isles, because they had a little impact on English, too. At about the end of the 5th century BC, the Celts, speakers of Indo-European, began to spread across Europe. Some of the tribes settled in the whole area Britain and Ireland and later emerged two main Celtic dialects emerged: Brythonic, spoken in southern England and Wales, and Goidelic (Gaelic), developing in Scotland and Ireland (Viney 6). In 43 BC Britain was attacked by the Romans, who seized it for almost four hundred years. They imposed a new way of life, and a new language - Latin (Viney 7). New words from this language were soon adopted. They mainly concerned plants, animals, food, drink 7 and household: plante „plant‟, cyse „cheese‟, catte „cat‟, candel „candle‟ or disc „dish‟. Other semantic fields included clothing, building and settlements, military and legal institutions, commerce, and religion (Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia 2003: 8). Nevertheless, the number of words of Latin origin at the dawn of the Anglo-Saxon period is estimated to fewer than 200, unlike Present-Day English.