Chapter One Social Changes and the Word Development 1
1.1 English and Indo-European Languages 1
1.1.1 Indo-European and Five Important Branches 4
1.1.2 Germanic Branch and the Birth of English 8
1.2 British English and Spread of Englishes 14
1.2.1 British English 14
1.2.2 Spread of Englishes 20
Chapter Two Historical Factors for the Development of English Words 25
2.1 Old English Words 26
2.1.1 Indigenous Words of Old English 26
2.1.2 Celtic Source 27
2.1.3 Latin Source 30
2.1.4 Scandinavian Source 31
2.2 Middle English Words 34
2.2.1 Norman Conquest and French English Words 34
2.2.2 English-French Mixture and the Independent Status of English Words 36
2.3 Early Modern English Words 40
2.3.1 Words Enrichment during the Renaissance 44
2.3.2 Some Typical Loanwords from Latin and Greek 51
2.4 Modern English Words 53
2.4.1 Industrial Revolution and New Words 53
2.4.2 Old Words and the Changing of Meanings 55
Chapter Three Word Origins and Creation within Words 59
3.1 Neologisms 61
3.2 Shortening 66
3.2.1 Aphaeresis 66
3.2.2 Apocope 67
3.2.3 Front and Back Clipping 68
3.2.4 Syncope 68
3.2.5 Phrase Clipping 68
3.3 Eponyms 69
3.4 Echoism 74
3.5 Conversion 76
3.5.1 Conversion to Verbs 77
3.5.2 Conversion to Nouns 79
3.5.3 Conversion to Adjectives 81
Chapter Four Word Creation with Morphemes 83
4.1 Derivation 83
4.1.1 Prefixes 85
4.1.2 Suffixes 89
4.2 Acronyms 93
4.2.1 Initialisms 94
4.2.2 Reverse acronyms 96
4.3 Blending 98
4.4 Compounding 100
4.4.1 Semantic Compounding 101
4.4.2 Lexical Compounding 102
4.4.3 Word Class Compounding 103
Chapter Five Word Structure and Changing Pronunciation 110
5.1 Word Structure and Letter-sound Combinations 110
5.2 Word Structure and Shift of Word Stress 111
5.2.1 Word Stress and Prefixes 111
5.2.2 Word Stress and Suffixes 112
5.2.3 Shift of Word Stress and Conversion 114
5.3 Homonym 117
5.3.1 Perfect Homophony 117
5.3.2 Homophones 118
5.4 Heteronym 120
Chapter Six Word Development and Changing of Meaning 123
6.1 General Reasons for the Changing of Word Meaning 124
6.1.1 Social Motivations 125
6.1.2 Accidental Associations 127
6.1.3 Analogy 129
6.1.4 Hyponymy 130
6.2 Semantic Change and Social Status 133
6.2.1 Word Meaning Status Change 135
6.2.2 Narrowing Word Meaning 136
6.3 Semantic Change and Changing Culture 137
Chapter Seven English Word Varieties 139
7.1 American English Words 140
7.1.1 Main Features of American English Words 140
7.1.2 One Word but Different Spellings 143
7.1.3 Different Words but the Same Meaning 145
7.2 Canadian English Words 147
7.2.1 General Rules for Spelling 149
7.2.2 Some Typical Canadian Words 151
7.3 Australian English Words 155
7.3.1 Main Features of Australian English Words 155
7.3.2 Some Typical Words and Expressions 157
7.3.3 Comparison with Australian and British English Words 161
7.4 New Zealand English Words 162
7.4.1 Main Features of New Zealand English Words 163
7.4.2 Comparison with New Zealand English and American English Words 164
7.4.3 Comparison with New Zealand English and British English Words 165
7.5 Indian English Words 165
7.5.1 Main Features of Indian English Words 166
7.5.2 Distinct Terms 167
7.5.3 Hindi-influenced Words 168
7.6 Chinese English Words 170
7.6.1 Spread of English in China 171
7.6.2 Classification of Chinese English Words 173
Chapter Eight Lexical Words and Dictionary Structures 177
8.1 Dictionary Structures 177
8.2 Unabridged Dictionaries 179
8.2.1 Oxford English Dictionary 180
8.2.2 Webster's New International Dictionary 182
8.3 Desktop Dictionaries 184
8.3.1 British Desktop Dictionary 184
8.3.2 American Desktop Dictionary 186
8.3.3 English-Chinese Desktop Dictionary 188
8.4 Differences between Dictionary Structures 189
8.4.1 Etymologies in Dictionary 190
8.4.2 Specialized Dictionaries 191
8.4.3 Thesaurus 193
References 194
Appendix 1 197
Appendix 2 198