词汇学重要知识点.doc

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：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.
2.Morpheme 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 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）：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 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—thing 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 abstract.Sense 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 speaker’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.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’ , which 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) Word-meaning is not monogeneous but a composite, consisting of different parts. A word may one type of meaning or a combination of types. Some meanings are _constant__ and others may be transient, existing only in actual context.
5) Words have both grammatical meaning and __lexical_ meaning. Grammatical meaning s refer to their functions as part of speech, singular and plural form, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms, such as forget-forgot-forgotten-forgetting, which are very important in actual context. __Lexical_ meaning is constant in all the content words within or without context as it is related to the notion the word conveys. Lexical meaning it self has two components: ___conceptual__ meaning and associative meaning.
Unit 5 Word Meaning
Lexical meaning itself has two components: conceptual meaning and associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning(概念意义) (also known as denotative meaning) is the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning.
Associate meaning(关联意义) is the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning. Associative meaning comprises four types: connotative meaning, stylistic meaning, affective meaning, and collocative meaning.
connotative meaning refers to the overtones or associations which a word suggests or implies.
Affective meaning indicates the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thing in question.
Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires in its collocation.
Componential Analysis(语义成份分析), according to Leech, is the process of breaking down the word sense of a word into its minimal components. component analysis is a useful and revealing technique for demonstrating relations of meaning between words. Knowing the semantic features of a word helps one grasp exactly the coverage of its conceptual meaning.
A semantic field is a term of semantics. It refers to a meaning area where words of the same concept or the same classification congregated in one field.
Pragmatic meaning of words refers to the meaning in context. Pragmatic meaning aims at the meaning in use, so it is dynamic. The basic features of pragmatic meaning 1) Primary meaning adhesive 2）Personal experienced 3）Unstable 4）Temporary
Context refers to the condition or the back ground how a word is used. It can be divided into linguistic context and non-linguistic context.context is the necessary condition of pragmatic meaning. Its appropriateness depends on culture and social situation.
In order to suit different context. it is necessary to extend or shorten the overtone of the word conceptual meaning.
Exercises:
1) Motivation explains why a particular form has a particular meaning.( T )
2) Grammatical meaning refers to the part of speech, tenses of verbs and stylistic features of words. ( F )
3) Unlike conceptual meaning, associative meaning is unstable and indeterminate. ( T )
4) Affective meaning refers to the part of the word-meaning which indicates the attitude of the user. ( T )
5) Collocation can affect the meaning of words. ( T )
6) In the phrase ‘the tongues of fire, , the word fire is semantically motivated. ( F )
7) By etymological motivation, we mean that the meaning of a particular word is related to its origin. ( T )
8) The connotative meaning is also known as connotations , which are generally found in the dictionary ( F )
Unit Six Sense Relations of Words
1. Synonymy（同义关系）:
Types of Synonyms: Absolute synonyms ,Relative synonyms
Discrimination of Synonyms (辨析) As relative synonyms always differ in one way or another, the differences exist in denotation( 概念); emotion and style and their different collocation. .
a. Synonyms may differ in the range and intensity of meaning or different degrees of a given quality. b. Some words share the same denotation but differ in their stylistic reference. c. Many synonyms have clear affective values. Take result/ consequence ；d. Some words are collocationally restricted. For example: a flock of sheep/
Synonymy deals with words that are the _same_ or _nearly __ the same in meaning. The words which are fully __identical _in meaning are called _absolute__ synonyms and all others are _relative_ synonyms. _Absolute__ synonyms are interchangeable whereas __relative__ synonyms differ in such areas as _denotation__, __connotation_,(stylistic and affective), and __application_.
2. Antonymy: is concerned with semantic opposition.
Contraries(相对反义词/两极反义词) Complementaries (绝对反义词/互补反义词) Conversives (换位反义词/关系反义词) Semantic incompatibles(多项不相容词)
Exercises: Decide whether the following statements are true or false:
1) Word which have opposite meanings are called antonyms( T).
2) Contradictory terms don’t show degree. ( T).
3) Relatives terms are relational opposites, which include verbs reversing action of each other. T
4) Contrary terms are non-gradable and allow intermediated members in between.( F )
5) If a word has synonyms, naturally it has antonyms. ( F )
6) The unmarked terms of an antonymous pair often covers the meaning of the marked. ( T)
7) Antonyms should be opposites of similar intensity. ( T)
8) Antonymy deals with the relationship of semantic opposition. (T )
3.Polysemy多义关系: When the same symbol is used to express different phenomenon, the result is polysemy. Words have a number of different aspects according to the contexts in which they are used. Some of these aspects are purely ephemeral(短暂的) ; The various meanings of the same word developed from two different angles: diachronic（历时）and synchronic(共时).
Exercises: Fill in the blanks: .
Polysemy is the _result _ of long semantic development of a word. Diachronicallly, a polysemant was _mo