2021-01

Nawroz University Journal (القضية : 1) (الحجم : 10)

There are a number of different categories of enriching English vocabulary, which are grouped into smaller methods based on the way they function. Some methods are productive, while some others are creative. Besides, some methods are more or less frequent/productive than others which may be due to a number of reasons such as the nature of the language itself and possibly the period the language is undergone on. Therefore, three different years from different centuries, precisely 1785, 1885, and 1985, are taken from Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to discover the frequency/productivity of the methods in each. The concrete results show that the language and time play a role in the frequency and productivity of each method. They also indicate that the frequency of some methods has gradually increased while of some others decreased.

2020-10

Zanco Journal of Humanity Sciences (القضية : 24) (الحجم : 3)

Language as a constantly changing aspect of life experiences different changes that include, inter alia, vocabulary, grammar, sounds. Some of the words that were used in Old English are no longer in use. This paper deals with the loss of a number of directional adverbs that were vitally in use in Old English while disappeared in Present Day English (PDE). A group of seven adverbs were selected to serve as data for this research. Each adverb is examined separately in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to find their frequency, meaning, and the context of their usage within two centuries. The results showed that there was a prominent decline in the frequency of the given adverbs. Nevertheless, the frequency rates fluctuated through decades to reach an absolute disappearance in Present Day English. Due to the lack of the scholarly work on this issue, the reason behind the loss of these adverbs is remained unclear.