Romanization of Lexical Composition of English Gospel Idioms

The article is focused on the diachronic study of romanization occurring to the lexical composition of Gospel phrases which have evolved into idioms existing in Modern English. A new meaning of the term romanization is introduced. The latter is understood as replacement of original Germanic lexical components by Romance ones in the “proto-phraseology” of English. To address the tasks of the present study there has been compiled a representative inventory of 110 structurally varied Gospel idioms in Modern English. There have also been analyzed identical heterochronic contexts which became a basis for the modern Gospel idioms under study. With recurrence to the methods of contextual and component analysis, the lexical composition of the 110 chosen contexts is compared in the three versions of Gospels: the Wessex Gospels, the Gospels in Wycliff’s Bible and the Gospels in the Tyndale Bible, all of which cover a chronological period of 530 years. It is noted that the replacement of Germanic lexical components by the Romance ones took place in most (59%) word-combinations in question, with the romanization process hitting its peak in Middle English. Within the time span adopted for the present research as many as almost a hundred of Romance lexemes originating mostly from Old French ousted their Germanic lexical counterparts in the word-combinations under analysis. The article offers a complete list of the Romance lexemes, which are largely nouns and verbs. Etymologically the entirety of the Romance lexemes are provided by two sources: Latin and Old French. The words of Latin origin are scarce enough and found predominantly in the Old English versions of the contexts studied. A vast majority of Romance lexemes come from Old French and are found in Gospel contexts of the Middle and Early New English versions. The research also provides the data concerning the proportion of the romanized phrases in the aggregate of contexts in each of the historical periods of the English language. There is clearly manifested dynamics of romanization as of the late Middle English period, which translates in a sharp increase in the number of word-combinations with Romance lexical components. On the other hand, almost null dynamics is detected in the Early New English and subsequently to the present day.

romanization, phraseology, diachrony, etymology, Gospel, lexical component, Old English, Middle English, Modern English, Latin, Old French

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