English Lexicology期末考试复习笔记.docx

English Lexicology期末考试复习笔记English Lexicology(英语词汇学) Lexicology: is a branch of linguistics, inquiring into the origins and meanings of words. The Nature and Scope of English lexicology： English lexicology aims at investigating and studying the morphological structures of English words and word equivalents, their semantic structures, relations, historical development, formation and usages. The subjects that English Lexicology correlated with and extent to： English Lexicology is correlated with such linguistic disciplines as morphology(形态学), semantics(语义学), etymology(词源学),stylistics and lexicography(词典学) The reason for a student to study English lexicology： According to the textbook, English Lexicology will definitely be beneficial for students of English. A good knowledge of morphological structures of English words and rules of word-formation will help learners develop their personal vocabulary and consciously increase their word power. The information of the historical development and the principles of classification will give them a deeper understanding of word-meaning and enable them to organize, classify and store words more effectively. The understanding and their sense relations will gradually raise their awareness of meaning and usage, and enable them use words more accurately and appropriately. A working knowledge of dictionaries will improve their skills of using reference books and raise their problem-solving ability and efficiency of individual study. Chapter 1-Basic concepts of words and vocabulary Word: A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. (1)a minimal free form of a language (2)a sound unity (3)a unit of meaning (4)a form that can function alone in a sentence sound and meaning: almost arbitrary, “no logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself” sound and form: the sound should be similar to the form Vocabulary: all the words in a language make up its vocabulary The 3 Stages of Development of E Vocabulary: Old English vocabulary, Middle EV, Modern EV Classification of English Words According to Different Criteria The basic word stock: is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the language. Though it constitute a small percentage of the EV, it is the most important part of vocabulary. The Fundamental Features of the Basic Word Stock: 1)All-National character 2)Stability 3)Productivity 4)Polysemy 5)Collocability words:(1)Terminology(术语) (2)Jargon (3)slang (4)Argot Dialectal words(方言) (6) Archaisms (7) Neologisms:Neologisms means newly-created words or expressions, or words that have taken on new meanings.(email) Content words (cloud, run walk, never, five, frequently) and functional words (on, of, and, be, but) Native Words and Loan Words Native words: known as Anglo-Saxon words (50,000-60,000), are words brought to Britain in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes. (mainstream of the basic word-stocks) Loan words: words taken over from foreign languages.(80% of modern EV) 4 Types of loan words: 1) denizens(同化词) (shirt from skyrta(ON) 2) aliens:are borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling (kowtow (CH)磕头) 3) translation loans(译借词):按其他语言方式组成英语 long time no see from China 4) semantic loans：their meanings are borrowed Chapter 2 the development of the English Vocabulary The Indo-European Language Family The Eight Groups in Indo-European Family of Languages The Balto-slavic Group：Latvian,Russian,Bugarian,Polish,Czech etc. The Indo-Iranian Group：Sanskrit,Hindi,Urdu,Bengali,Persian etc. The Armenian Group：Armenian. The Albanian Group：Albanian. The Hellenic Group：Greek. The Italian Group： Latin,Romance languages(French,Italian,Spanish, portuguess,Romanian) etc. The Celtic Group：Gaelic,Welsh,Breton etc. The Germanic Group： Englsih,German,Dutch,Scandinavian(Norweigian, Swedish,Danish,Icelandic) etc. The Three Stages of Development of the English Vocabulary 1 Old English Period or The Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1100) (vocabulary 50,000 to 60,000) 2 Middle English Period (1150-1500) 3 Modern English Period (1500-now): in fact more than 25% of modern E words come almost directly from classical languages. In Modern E, words endings were mostly lost Modes of V Development(Modern E): 1)creation 2)semantic change 3) borrowing Chapter 3 Word Formation I Morpheme(语素):the minimal meaningful unit(the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words) Allomorph(语素变体): is a different variant form of a morpheme，differ in phonological and spelling form, but at the same in function and meaning Type of Morpheme Free Morpheme: A free morpheme is one that can stand by itself. (independent) Bound Morpheme(粘着语素): A bound morpheme is one that cannot stand by itself. Bound Morpheme includes two types: (1) bound root (2)Affix(词缀) 1)Inflectional affixes (屈折词缀)(inflectional morphemes): affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional 2)Derivational affixes(派生词缀) A) prefix: A prefix comes before words. B)suffix An adjective suffix that is added to the stem, whatever classis belongs to , the result will be an adjective. Morpheme词素free、bound） Root and stem 1) Root 2) Stem The differences between root and stem: A root is the basic form of a word which cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. A stem is the surplus part after the cutting of inflectional morpheme in a word with inflectional morphemes,can be further analyzed, it sometimes could be a root. Individualistic Undesirables Individualist (stem) undesirable (stem) Individual (stem) desirable (stem) dividual (stem) desire (root, stem) divide(root, stem) Chapter 4 Word-Formation II Affixation词缀法：adding word-formation or derivational affixes to stem. Prefixation前缀：It's the formation of new words by adding a prefixes to stems. 1)'表示否定'nagative prefixes: un-,non,in-,dis,a- etc. 2)''reversative or privative prefixes: un-,de-dis etc. 3)'表示贬义'pejorative prefixes: mis-, mal-, pseudo- etc. 4)'表示程度'degree or size prefixes: arch-, super-,out-,sub-,over-,under-,hyper-,ultra-,mini- etc. 5)'表示方向、态度'orientation & attitude prefixes:counter-,contra-,anti-,pro- etc. 6)locative prefixes:super-,sub-,inter-,trans- etc. 7)'表示时间、次序'time and order prefixes:fore-,pre-,post-,ex-,re- etc. 8)'表示数量'number prefixes:uni-/mono-,bi-/di-,tri-,multi-/poly- etc. 9)'混杂'miscellaneous prefixes：auto-, neo-, pan-, vice- Suffixation后缀: It's the formation of a new word by adding suffixes to stems. 1)noun suffixes 2)adjective suffixes 3)Adverb suffixes 4)verb suffixes Compounding复合法 Compounding: is the formation of new words by joining two or more stems Compounds are written in three ways: solid(airmail) hyphenated(air-conditioning) open(air force, air raid) Formation of compounds noun compounds e.g. : air + plane = airplane,flower + pot = flower pot adjective compounds e.g. acid + head = acid-head verb compounds e.g. house + keep = housekeep Conversion转类法 Conversion: is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class. Blending混成法 Blending is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word e.g: motor + hotel = motel, smoke + fog = smog, formula + translation = FORTRAN Clipping截缩法 Clipping: to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using what remains instead. e.g. plane from airplane, phone from telephone. 1).Front clippings (phone from telephone) 2).Back clippings (dorm from dormitory) 3).Front and back clippings (flu from influenza) 4).Phrase clippings (pop from popular music) Acronymy首字母缩写法 Acronymy:is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names of social and political organizations or special noun phrases and technical terms. Initialism首字母缩写词法: initialisms are pronounced letter by letter. e.g.: BBC(for British Broadcasting corporation) Acronym首字母拼读词法:Acronyms are words formed from initial letters but pronounced as a normal word. Back-formation Back-formation is considered to be the opposite process of suffixation.(greed from greedy) Words From Proper Name专有名词转成法 Names of people, places, book, and trade names (e.g.: sir watt siemens(人名) - watt Chapter 5 Word Meaning The meanings of “Meaning” Reference(所指): It is the relationship between language and the word. It is the arbitrary and conventional. It is a kind of abstraction, yet with the help of context, it can refer to something specific. Concept:It is beyond language is the result of human cognition(认识),reflecting the objective world in the human mind. Sense:It denotes the relationship inside the language. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language. Motivation(理据)：It accounts for the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning. 1) Onomatopoeic motivation 2)Morphological motivation 3)Semantic motivation 4)Etymological motivation Types of meaning Grammatical Meaning:indicate the grammatical concept(become important only in actual context) Lexical Meaning Lexical meaning and grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning Lexical meaning has 2 components: Conceptual meaning(概念意义) and associative meaning(关联意义) Conceptual meaning(概念意义): also known as denotative meaning(外延意义) Associative meaning(关联意义):connotative隐含意义,Stylistic风格意义,Affective感情意义, Collocative搭配意义 Chapter 6 -Sense relation and semantic field Polysemy Two approached to polysemy: diachronic approach(历时方法) synchronic approach (共时方法) Two processed of development: radiation and concatenation Homonymy It refers words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling. Types of homonyms 1）Perfect homonyms2）Homophones3)Homographs Origins of homonyms 1）change in sound and spelling 2）borrowing 3）Shortening(缩略) The differences between polysemes and homonyms ). 1)Homonymy refer to different words which happen to share the same form and polysemy are the one and same word which has sevral distinguishable meaning. 2)Homonymy are from different sources. Polysemy are from the same source. 3)The various meanings of polysemy are correlated and connected to one central meaning.Meanings of different homonymy have nothing to do with one another. values: Polysemic and homonymous word are stlyistically useful to achieve humour or irony,or to heighten dramatic effect. Synonymy (同义关系):one of two or more words in the English language which have the same or very nearly the same essential meaning : absolute synonyms and relative synonyms Sources of synonyms(同义词) are : 1)Borrowing 2)Dialects and regional English 3)Figurative and euphemistic use of words 4)Coincidence with idiomatic expressions Antonymy (反义关系) It is concerned with semantic opposition. Antonyms can be defined as words which are opposite in meaning. 1)contradictory terms (矛盾反义词):these antonyms truly represent oppositeness of meaning, such antonyms are non-gradable. They cannot be used in comparative degrees. (single/married) 2)contrary terms :antonyms of this type are best viewed in terms of a scale running between two poles or extremes.(old/young) 3)relative terms：sell/buy Some of the characteristics of antonyms反义关系的特点 1)antonyms are classified on the basis of semantic opposition 2)a word which has more than one meaning can have more than one antonym 3)antonyms differ in semantic inclusion 4)contrary terms are gradable antonyms The uses of antonyms To express economically the opposite of a particular thought for the sake of contrast.(idiom:now and never) To form anithesis(对比法) to achieve emphasis by putting contrasting idea together.(proverbs and sayings:easy come , easy go) Hyponymy(上下义关系) Hyponymy deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion. The meaning of a more specific word is included in that of another more general word. For example, a cat is hyponym of animal Superordinate and Subordinate (118) Semantic Field(词义场) Viewing the total meaning in this way is the basis of field theory e.g.(apple, pear, peach,date,mango,orange,lemon, etc. make up the semantic field of fruits) The semantic field of the same concept may not have the same members in different language. e.g.(aunt in English, may means “父亲的姐姐， 妈妈的姐姐，父亲哥哥的妻子” in Chinese.(122)