-
Chapter 1 Lexicology and Words
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What is
lexicology?
Lexicology
= study of words
/ the lexicon
It is closely related to
morphology, semantics, etymology and lexicography.
Morphology: the study of the forms of
words and their components.
Semantics:
the study of meaning.
Etymology: the study of the whole
history of words.
Lexicography: the
writing and compilation of dictionaries
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What is a word?
A
Word
is
an
uninterruptible
unit
of
structure
consisting
of
one
or
more
morphemes;
a
unit
of
sound and meaning.
The total stock of English words is
structured and organized in a systematic
way.
→
word
class; semantic field.
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Word
class
:
closed
class
(grammatical
or
function
words):preposition,
pronoun,
determiner
（限定词
:
the, every..
）
, conjunction,
auxiliary verb(
助动词
)
；
open class(lexical
words): noun, adjective, verb, adverb.
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Lexical words
and grammatical words
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Semantic (or lexical) field:
semantic field of color terms, kinship
terms, military ranks
and vehicles;
semantic field analysis used in the descriptions
of vocabulary in dictionaries
like
Roget?
s
Thesaurus
&
Longman
Lexicon
of
Contemporary
English(McArthur)
&
Longman dictionary of Scientific Usage
& Longman Language Activator
.
Componential
analysis:
a
method
for
establishing
semantic
field(e.g.
the
meaning
of
woman:
[+human],[+adult],[+female]
Chapter
2
—
Some basic concepts and
Word Meanings
?
Morpheme
:
the
smallest
meaningful
unit
in
a
language;(e.g.
moralizers
is
composed
of
4
morphemes:
moral+lize+er+s.)
A morpheme may be: A
complete word; a word form such as an
affix(e
–
able); a combining
form(bio-, geo-)
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Free morpheme:
lexical morpheme: ordinary
nouns, adjectives and verbs, the words which carry
the
“
content
”
of messages we convey, e.g.
boy, house, tiger, sad, long, sincere,
open, look, follow, bread.
functional
morpheme:
consists
largely
of
the
functional
words
in
the
language
such
as
conjunctions, prepositions, articles
and pronouns, e.g.
and, but, when,
because, on, near, in,
the, that, it.
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Bound
morpheme(prefix or suffix):
Derivational morpheme: used to make new
words in the language. e.g. (
-ness,
-ly, -ish, ment,
re-, pre-, ex-, pre-,
dis-, co-, un-
);
good
—
goodness,
fool
—
foolish,
bad
—
badly,
pay
—
payment
Inflectional morpheme: indicate aspects
of the grammatical function of a word. e.g.
–
ed, -s,
-ing,
-er, -est, -
?
s
.
In English, all inflectional morphemes are
suffixes.
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Morph/allomorph
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Lexeme(lexical item):
The
base form of a word;
A unit
of lexical meaning (Crystal, 1995)
;
An abstract vocabulary item;
The headwords in a
dictionary;
May consist of
one word or more
than one
word;
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Stem
: the word to which
inflectional affixes are added and which carries
the basic meaning
of the resulting
complex word; e.g.
work,
worker
.
A stem
may consist of one or more morphemes;
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Root
: A stem consisting of a
single morpheme is labeled as
root
; e.g.
work
.
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Roots which are
capable of standing independently are called free
morphemes/roots;
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Roots
which
are
incapable
of
occurring
independently
are
called
bound
morphemes/roots.
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7 types of Word
Meaning
?
Conceptual
meaning
概念义
(or
denotative
meaning,
cognitive
meaning)
[meanings
in
dictionaries]
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Connotative
meaning
隐含义
:
the
communicative
value
of
an
expression
by
virtue
of
what
is
refers
to,
over
and
above
its
purely
conceptual
content.
Politician&statesman,
colors, kitty&cat.
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Social
meaning:
Information
about
the
speaker,
such
as
their
background
or
their
relationship to the hearer.
E.g., if Jo says
wee
instead of
little
, it may communicate
to you that she
’
s Scottish;
AmE /
BrE
differences
and
other
dialectal
or
accent
differences;
terms
of
address
etc;
Mummy,
dogie
—
child.
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Affective
meaning: Information
about the
speaker
’
s
attitude
toward the subject
that
’
s
communicated by the words
s/he
’
s chosen or the way
s/he says them
e.g.
strong-
willed
vs.
pig-headed; slim
vs. skinny; Bob vs. Bobby
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Reflective
meaning: the meaning which arises in cases of
multiple conceptual meaning,
when one
sense of a word forms part of our response to
another sense.
E.g. words
which have a taboo meaning(intercourse)
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Collocative
meaning:
consists
of
the
associations
a
word
acquires
on
account
of
the
meanings of words which tend to occur
in its environment.
Pretty+woman,
flower,
garden,
village
vs
handsome+man,
car,
vessel,
overcoat,
typewriter; cow+wander vs man+stroll;
tremble with fear vs quiver with excitement;
highly: important, intelligent,
profitable, recommended, sensitive;
a
bit, a little: drunk, jealous, unkind;
wide awake, fully awake, sound asleep,
far apart
?
Thematic meaning: mainly a matter of
choice btw alternative grammatical constructions
Mrs Bessie Smith donated the first
prize.
The first prize was donated by
Mrs Bessie Smith.
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Polysemy
一词多义
: One
lexical item that has more than one
sense.
Bank, eat, court, watch,
dart, stuff.
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Homonymy
同形异义
:
More
than
one
lexical
item
that
just
coincidentally
sound/look
the
same.
?
Complete
homonymy
(
bat, pupil, ,
firm, bear, grave, stick, jam, steep, fleet, pad,
stem
)
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Homophone =
same
sound
(
to/ two,
right/rite/write, root/route, knows/nose )
?
Homograph
= same spelling (
wind,
lead,
)
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How to distinguish
polysemy
and
homonymy
?
Whether the senses are related;
Whether they come from the same source;
Whether under one headword in a
dictionary;
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Ambiguity & Vagueness
Chapter 3 The origin of English Words
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English belongs
to West Germanic branch of Indo-European family.
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Historical
development of English vocabulary and
characteristics of each period.
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The Old English
period (450 -1066)
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OE: the speech of the earliest Germanic
inhabitants of Britain;
The
first OE manuscripts (around 700): glossaries of
Latin words translated into OE, and a
few early inscriptions and poems;
Most important literary work: the
heroic poem
Beowulf
(written
around 1000);
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1.
A frequent use of coinages
known as
?kennings‘[
古英语中的隐喻语
] (vivid
figurative
descriptions often involving
compounds);
2. Preference
for expressions that are synonymous;
3.
The absence of a wide-ranging vocabulary of
loanwords force people to rely more on
word-formation process based on native
elements
4.
The introduction
of a number of ?loan translation‘;
5.
Grammatical
relationships
in
OE
were
expressed
mainly
by
the
use
of
inflectional
endings;
6. OE is believed to contain about
24,000 different lexical items.
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The Middle
English period (1066 -1500)
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Norman
Conquest;
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Extensive changes:
In grammar, Eng. changed from a highly
inflected language to an analytical one.
In vocabulary, Eng. was characterized
by the loss of a large part of the OE word-stock
and the addition of thousands of words
from French and Latin.
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The Early Modern English period (1500
-1800)
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Transitional period from Middle Eng. to
Modern English;
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Printing revolution marked its
beginning;
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Eng.
vocabulary
grew
very
fast
through
extensive
borrowing
and
expansion
of
word-formation patterns;
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A great many
semantic changes, as old words acquire new
meanings.
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Two
most important influences
William
Shakespeare;
James Bible
of
1611
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Two
dictionaries
Dictionary of
Hard Words
(1604),
Dictionary of the English Language
(1775)
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The Modern English period
(1800-present)
?
The unprecedented growth of scientific
vocabulary;
The assertion of American
Eng. as a dominant variety of the lang.;
The emergence of other varieties known
as ?New Englishes‘.
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Types of
meaning change(7)
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Metaphor
隐喻
: using
a word to refer to sthng
it doesn‘t
literally denote, but that has
some
kind of similarity to the literal meaning
Head--
?body part above the
neck?
> ?a person in charge?
baby --
?infant?
> ?loved one?
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Metonymy
转喻
: using
a word to refer to something
that is
associated with its
literal
denotation.
Downing Street
?place where the PM lives‘ > ?the
PM‘
crown
?an
item of headwear worn by a monarch‘ > ?the
monarch‘, ?the sovereignty of the
monarch‘
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Synecdoche
提喻
:
using a part to refer to the whole (or vice
versa):
All hands on deck! -
?man, sailor‘
I
got a new motor -
?car‘
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Broadening
(/generalisation)
扩大
: a word
refers to a more inclusive category:
manage
?to handle a horse‘ >
?to handle anything‘
bullish
?causing or associated with a rise in
prices‘ > ?optimistic‘
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Narrowing
(/specialisation)
缩小
: a word
refers to a less inclusive category:
accident
?an event‘ >
?unintended/injurious event‘
undertaker
?someone who
undertakes‘ > ?mortician‘
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Amelioration
(/elevation)
升格
:
the mng of a word becomes more positive
nice
?ignorant,
stupid‘ > ?pleasant‘
fond
?foolish‘ > ?appreciative‘
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Pejoration
(/degradation)
降格
:
the mng of a word becomes more negative
sinister
<
?left(
-
handed)‘
mistress <
?a woman in a
position of power‘
--
an adulterous woman
Chapter 4 Word Formation
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Inflection and
derivation
Inflection refers to a
general grammatical process which combines words
and affixes to
produce alternative
grammatical forms of words.
Derivation refers to the
creation of a
new word by means of the
addition of an affix to a stem. lexical process.
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Inflectional
affixes and derivational affixes p58
Inflectional affixes: (only suffixes:
plural marker
–
s, possessive
marker
?
s, comparative
and superlative markers
–
er and
–
est, tense markers
–
s and
–
ed, present participle
–
ing
…
)
(regular and irregular)
Derivational affixes: (class-changing
slow-ly
and class-
maintaining
child-hood
)
prefix: re-, de-, in-, im-, un-, pre-,
dis-
suffix: -ish, -ous, -ary, -ful,
-er, -ence, -y, -ly, -ate, -able, -ation, -ure,
-dom, -ful, -ment,
-en,
I doesn
‘
t change
the word class and grammatical category while d
changes.
Prefixes and suffixes
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Types of Word
Formation (6)
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D
erivation
派生法
:
using derivational affixes:
final+ize
,
teach+er, sex+ism
,
eco+tourism, trans+atlantic
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Compounding
复合法
:
putting existing
wds together:
couch+potato,
lap+top
Compounds: stems
consisting of more than one root
Orthographic treatment of compounds:
bedside, black market, car-wash
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Three features
of compound: