Chapter1BasicConceptsofWordsandVocabulary.doc

Chapter One Basic Concepts of Words and Vocabulary
1.1 The Definition of a Word
The definition of the word has always been controversial. Experts and linguists still do not agree on all aspects of the word.
In visual terms, a word can be defined as a meaningful group of letters. In terms of spoken language, a word is viewed as a sound or combination of sounds. According to semanticists a word is a unit of meaning. To grammarians, a word is a free form that can function in a sentence.
To sum up, the definition of a word comprises the following points:
(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.
A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function.

1.2 Vocabulary
All the words in a language make up what is generally known as its vocabulary. It can refer to the total number of the words in a language, and it can stand for all the words used in the particular historical period. We can also use it to refer to all the words of a given dialect, a given book, a given discipline and the words possessed by an individual person. The general estimate of the present-day English vocabulary is over one million words.

1.3 Sound and Meaning
A word is a symbol that stands for something else in the world. There is a symbolic connection between the sound and the referent, which is always arbitrary and conventional; there is no logical relationship between the two but people of the same speech community agree to the symbolic relationship.A dog is called a dog not because the sound and the three letters that make up the word just automatically suggest the animal in question.

1.4 Sound and Form
The written form of a natural language is the written record of the oral form. Naturally the written form should agree with the oral form—the sound should be consistent with the form. This is fairly true of English in its earliest stage. In Old English, the speech of the time was represented very much more faithfully in writing than it is today. However, with the development of the language, discrepancies arose.
The internal reason for this is that the English alphabet was adopted from the Romans, which does not have a separate letter to represent each sound in the language so that some letters must do double duty or work together in combination.
Another reason is that the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling over the years, and in some cases the two have drawn far apart. 
A third reason is that some of the differences were created by the early scribes. Letters of some short vertical strokes such as “i, u, v, m, w, n” looked all alike. Consequently, their handwriting caused misunderstanding, to solve the problem in part, they changed the letter “u” to “ o ”when it came before “m, n, v”. This is how sum, cum, wuman, wunder, munk came to be written as some, come, woman, wonder, monk. Later, printing and dictionary helped to standardize and freeze the spelling of words.
Finally comes the borrowing, which is an important channel of enriching the English vocabulary. The large scale of borrowing words from different languages complicated the situation. Some borrowings stay in their former form and pronunciation; some have their pronunciation or spelling assimilated but not quite confirming to the rules of English language.
All in all, the written form of English is not a perfect representation of its spoken form.

1.5 The classification of words:
Words may fall into the basic word stock and nonbasic vocabulary by use frequency, into content words and functional words by notion, and into native words and borrowed words by origin.
1.5.1 Basic word stock and Non-basic vocabulary
Basic word stock
The basic word stock is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the language. Though words of the basic word stock constitute a small percentage of the English vocabulary, yet it is the most important part of it. These words have obvious characteristics.
1) All national character
Words of the basic word stock denote the most common things and phenomena of the world around us, which are indispensable to all the people who speak the language.
They include words relating to:
Natural phenomena：rain, snow, fire, water, sun, moon, spring, wind, hill;
Human body and relations: head, foot, hand, face, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter;
Names of plants and animals: oak, pine, grass, pear, apple, tree, horse, cow, sheep, cat, dog, chicken;
Action, size, domain, state: come, go, eat, hear, beat, carry, good, evil, old, young, hot, cold, heavy, white, black;
Numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions: one, ten, hundred, I, you, your, who, in, out, under, and, but, till, as.
2) Stability
Words of the basic word stock have been in use for centuries. As they denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged.
3) Productivity
Words of the basic word stock are mostly root words or monosyllabic words. They can each be used alone, and at the same time can form new words with other roots and affixes.
4) Polysemy
Words belonging to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have undertone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous.
5) Collocability
Many words of the basic word stock enter quite a number of set expressions, idiomatic usages, proverbial sayings and the like.
Non-basic words include:
1) Terminology consists of technical terms used in particular disciplines and academic areas . penicillin, algebra
2) Jargon refers to the specialized vocabularies by which members of particular arts, sciences, trades and professions communicate among themselves. paranoid for suspicious
3) Slang is a substandard language not acceptable in serious speech. buck for dollar
Slang is created by changing or extending the meaning of existing words though some slang words are new coinages altogether. Slang is colourful, blunt, expressive and impressive.
4) Argot generally refers to the jargon of criminals. dip for pickpocket
5) Dialectal words are words used only by speakers of the dialect in question. Beauty (Aus E for excellent)
6) Archaisms are words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use. thou for you, quoth for said
7) Neologisms are newly-created words or expressions, or words that have taken on new meanings. futurology/E-mail/internet
1.5.2 Content words and functional words
By notion, words can be grouped into content words and functional words. Content words denote clear notions and thus are known as notional words. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and numerals, which denote objects, phenomena, action, quality, state, degree, quantity.
Functional words do not have notions of their own. Therefore, they are also called empty words. As their chief function is to express the relation between notions, the relation between words as well as between sentences, they are known as form words. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and articles belong to this category.
However, functional words do far more work of expression in English on average than content words.
1.5.3 Native words and borrowed words
Native words
Native words are words brought to Britain in the fifth century by the German tribes; the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, thus known as Anglo-Saxon words.
Apart from the characteristics mentioned of the basic word stock, in contrast to borrowed words, native words have two other features:
Neutral in style--they are not stylistically specific.
Stylistically, native words are neither formal nor informal, whereas the words borrowed from French or Latin are literary and learned, thus appropriate in formal style.
Frequent in use--native words are most frequently used in everyday speech and writing.
Borrowed words
Words taken over from foreign languages are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowings in simple terms. It is estimated that English borrowings constitute 80 percent of the modem English vocabulary. The English language is noted for the remarkable complexity and heterogeneity of its vocabulary because of its extensive borrowings. Borrowed words are divided into 4 types.
1) Denizens are borrowed words early in the past and now assimilated into English words.
2) Aliens are borrowed words which have remained their original pronunciation and spelling. These words are immediately recognizable as foreign in origin.
3) Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the existing material in the English language but modeled on the patterns of another language.
4) Semantic-loans are native form with borrowed meaning. Words of this category are not borrowed with reference to the form. But their meanings are borrowed. In other words, English has borrowed a new meaning for an existing word in the language.