词汇学重要知识点

Unit One

What is Lexicology?

Lexicology

It

is

a

branch

of

linguistics

dealing

with

the

vocabulary

of

a

language

and

the

properties of words as the main units of language.

Word

It is the basic unit of speech and minimal free form which has a given sound and meaning

and

grammatical function.

The

relationship

between

sound

and

meaning

is

conventional

because

people

of

the

same

speech community

have agreed to this cluster of sounds for such an animal.

分类

Words may fall into basic word stock and non-basic by use frequency; content words and

functional words by notion, native words or borrowed words by origin.

Basic words

stable and indispensable

characteristics

1 All national character:.2 Stability: 3 Productivity. 4 Polysemy: 5 collocability .

Non-basic

words

：< /p>

Terminology

术语

Slang

俚语

Jargon

行话

Argot

隐语

Dialectal

words

方言

Archaisms

古词

Neologisms

新词

functional words ,

like :

prep. conj. Auxilaries and articles

… They don‘t have notion of their own.

Content (notional) words

constitute the main body of English vocabulary. They are nouns, verbs,

adjectives, adverbs and numerals.

Native words

: Anglo-Saxon words, small in number, the core of the language, neutral in style,

frequent in use.

Borrowed words

: are words taken over from other languages

e.g. chaos, dogma, drama, pneumonia

---Greek.

hymn, pope, martyr, monk, anthem, shrine,

creed

–

old E

Cradle, bald, slogan, flannel, down

---- Celtic

Balcony, corridor, attack, cannon,

opera---Italy

vocabulary

---all the words in a language together, all items in a dictionary.

5. Exercises:

1) Which of the following is not true? A

a

. A word is the smallest form of a language.

b. A word is a sound unity.

c. A word has a given meaning.

d. A word can be used freely in a sentence.

2) The differences between sound and form are due to D

a. the fact of more phonemes than letters in English

b. stabilization of spelling by printing

c. influence of the work of scribes

d.

innovations made by linguists

3) Complete the following sentences:

a. There is no intrinsic relationship between sound and meaning, The connection between them is

___arbitrary__ and conventional.

b.

Content

words

are

changing

all

the

time

whereas

functional

words

are

more

___stable__.

Functional words enjoy a higher frequency in use than content words.

Unit Two Word Formation

1.

The expansion of vocabulary in modern English depends chiefly on word-formation

。

The most

productive ways of word-formation are

affixation, compounding

and

conversion.

me

is

the

smallest

component

of

a

word

which

contributes

to

its

meaning.

Take

―read

-

er‖for example.

–

er

is attached to a word

read . Read

cannot be separated any more. Thus it

is called a free morpheme;

–

er

cannot stand alone, thus is called bound morpheme.

bound root

is

1

a bound form that has to combine with other morphemes to make words.

An allomorph

refers to a member of

a set of morphs,

which represent one morpheme

Affixation

（词缀法）

：< /p>

is generally defined as the formation of words by adding word-forming or

derivational affixes to stems.

( This process is also known as derivation).

Prefixation

is the formation of new words by adding to prefixes to stems. Prefixes do not generally

change the word-class of stem but only modify (change) its meaning.

Suffixation

is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to stem. Suffixation have only a small

semantic role, their primary function being to change the grammatical function of stems( the word

class).

exercises:

1) a minimal meaningful unit of a language

(

morpheme )

2) one of the variants that realize a morpheme

( allomorph)

同位语素

3) a morpheme that occurs with at least one other morpheme( bound morpheme)

粘着语素

4) a morpheme that can stand alone ( free morpheme )

5) a morpheme attached to a stem or root

（

affix

）

6

）

an affix that indicates grammatical relationships ( inflectional affix )

7) an affix that forms new words with a stem or a root. ( derivational affix )

派生词缀

8) what remains of a word after the removal of all affixes ( root )

词根

Unit Three

Basic Formation of Words and Others

Compounding (Composition)

The formation of new words by joining two or more stems is called

compounds There are

different ways to compound English words:

(three major ways)

1. Noun compounds:

N+n:

chairperson,

prep+n:

byproduct

A.+ n

: deadline

,

N+v:

toothache,

N+v+ing:

air- conditioning,

V+ing +n

: walking stick

Adv+ v

: outbreak,

V+adv

.:sit-in,

2. Adjective compounds:

N+v-ing

: record-breaking ,

A+v+ing:

easy-going,

Adv+v+ing:

out-going,

N+v+ed:

poverty- stricken

N(a)+n+ed

:

short- sighted

Num+n+ed:

four- legged;

N+a

:

duty-

free…

3. Verb compounds:

lip- reading, mass-

production→to lip read, mass

-produce. As is shown by

the examples, back-formed verbs are formed by dropping the suffixes.

III. Conversion:

Conversion is the formation of new words by converting words from one class to another class.

These words are new only in a grammatical sense, with no morphological structure or meaning

change but functional change

IV

．

Other

ways.

The most productive way of forming English words are affixation, compounding and conversion,

however, there are still some other ways like shortening, clipping, acronymy and blending, etc at

work in the expansion of vocabulary in modern English. P35

1

. Clipping

（缩略法）

is a common way of making a word by cutting a part off a longer word and

using

what

remains

instead.

1)

Front

clipping:

areoplane--- plane;2)

Back

clipping:

photograph---photo,; 3) Front and back clipping: refrigerator

—

fridge;

2.

Acronyms

（首字母拼音词）

are words formed in the process of joining the initial letters of names

of social and political organizations or special noun phrases and technical terms, which are widely

used

in

science

and

modern

computerized

world.

They

can

be

pronounced

as

a

normal

word.

Radar: radio detecting and ranging; NATO: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

3.

Blending(

拼缀法

): is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus

2

a part of another word,etc. There are many ways of blending: For example: smog

—

smoke +fog;

motel---motor+hotel, comsat--- communications+ satellite; telecast---television+ broadcast.

4.

Back-formation(

逆生法

)

：

As we know, suffixes is the formation of new words by adding suffixes

to base, while back-formation is the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes.

5

．

Exercises:

1) Compounds are words formed by combing suffixes and stems. ( F )

2) As a rule, the stress of compounds falls on the first element. ( T )

3) The meaning of a compound is usually the combination of the stems. ( F )

4)

A

compound

functions

as

a

single

grammatical

unit,

so

the

internal

structure

can

not

be

changed. ( T )

5) Conversion refers to the use of words of one class as that of a different class. ( T)

6) Words mainly involved in conversion are nouns, verbs and adverbs. ( F)

7) An alternative for conversion is functional shift. ( T)

Unit Four

Word

Meaning

We know that a word is the combination of

form and meaning.

Meaning is what the

form stands

for.

‘triangle

of

word

sense’

(word

concept

—

th ing

triangle)

(

词义三 角

)

denies

a

direct

relationship between a word and the concrete object in the world. Words have no meaning, people

have meaning for them.

sense:

Every word that has meaning has sense, but not every word has reference.

Meaning is concrete, sense is denotes the relationships inside the language.

It refers to its place in a system of semantic relationships.

Reference

is the relationship between language and the world. So the reference of a word to a

thing outside the language is

arbitrary and conventional

. But ?meaning‖ is not as simple as it

seems to be.

Concept

In many cases, meaning is used in the sense of concept

，

which is beyond the symbol , is

the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the human mind. So a concept can

have

many

referring

expressions

in

different

languages

and

cultures

and

stylistics

.

Only

through a

spe

aker’s mind can concrete relationship be established.

4.

What is motivation

? (

理据

)

Motivation

refers

to

the

internal

connection

between

the

linguistic

symbol

(or

sign)

and

its

meaning.< /p>

Onomatopoeic

motivation

（拟声理据）

suggests the meanings of certain words by there

sounds;

Morphological

motivation(

形态理据

) refers to the compound or the derived words when

the

meaning

of

the

word

can

be

figured

out

since

many

of

them

are

the

sum

total

of

the

multi-morphemic words.

Semantic

motivation refers to the mental associations suggested by the

conceptual

meaning

of

a

word.

It

explains

the

connection

between

the

literal

sense

and

the

figurative sense of the word.

.

Etymological

Motivation may relate us directly to the history of

the word. ?Pen‘ may suggests ?feather‘ , whi

ch we used as a tool to write.

5

．

Exercises:

1

) ―He is fond of the bottle.‖ is based on

_semantic

motivation

and the word ―airmail‖

is based

on _morphological_ motivation.

2

）

_

Meaning_

is what the form of the word stands for. A word is the combination of

form_ and

meaning. Words are but __symbols_, many of which have meaning only when they have acquired

__reference__ , that is the relationship between language and the world.

3