英語詞匯學(xué)筆記

1、Chapter 1 Basic concepts of words and vocabulary 1 - 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 so

2、und and meaning and syntactic function. 2- Sound and Meaning:  symbolic connection is almost always arbitrary and conventional.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.3- Old English, the speec

3、h of the time was represented very much more faithfully in writing than it is today. 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 t

4、ogether 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.Finally comes the borrowing, which is an

5、 important channel of enriching the English vocabulary.5 - Vocabulary: All the words in a language make up its vocabulary.  Not only can it refer to the total number of the words in a language, but it can stand for all the words used in a particular historical period. We also use it to ref

6、er 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 million words. 6 - Words may fall into the basic word stock and nonbasic vocabulary by use frequency, into cont

7、ent words and functional words by notion, and into native words and borrowed words by origin.7 - 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 En

8、glish vocabulary, yet it is the most important part of it. These words have obvious characteristics.8 - 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 languageNatural ph

9、enomena/Human body and relations/Names of plants and animals/Action, size, domain, state/Numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions 9 - Stability. Words of the basic word stock have been in use for centuries.10 - Productivity . Words of the basic word stock are mostly root words or monosyllabic

10、words. They can each be used alone, and at the same time can form new words with other roots and affixes.11 - 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. 12 - Co

11、llocability . Many words of the basic word stock quite a number of set expressions, idiomatic usages, proverbial sayings and the like.13 - Terminology consists of technical terms used in particular disciplines and academic areas .14 - Jargon refers to the specialized vocabularies by which members of

12、 particular arts, sciences, trades and professions communicate among themselves such as in business.15 - Slang belongs to the sub-standard language, a category that seems to stand between the standard general words including informal ones available to everyone and in-group words like cant, jargon, a

13、nd argot, all of which are associated with, or most available to, specific groups of the population.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. 16 - Argot generally

14、refers to the jargon of criminals. 17 - Dialectal words are words used only by speakers of the dialect in question. 18 - Archaisms are words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use.19 - Neologisms are newly-created words or expressions, or word

15、s that have taken on new meanings.20 - 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, stat

16、e, degree, quantity.21 - 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. Prepositions, conjunctio

17、ns, auxiliaries and articles belong to this category. 22 - However, functional words do far more work of expression in English on average than content words. 23 - 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

18、 Anglo-Saxon words.24 - 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, natives words are neither formal nor informal whereas the words borrowed

19、from French or Latin are literary and learned, thus appropiate in formal style.Frequent in use. Native words are most frequently used in everyday speech and writing.25 - Words taken over from foreign languages are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowings in simple terms. It is estimated t

20、hat 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 borrowings26 - Aliens are borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spellin

21、g. These words are immediately recognizable as foreign in origin.27 - Semantic-loans. 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. Chapter 2 The developmen

22、t of the English vocabulary 1 - It is assumed that the world has approximately 3, 000 (some put it 5, 000 ) languages, which can be grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities in their basic word stock and grammar.2 - The Indo-European is one of them. It is made up of mos

23、t of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India. 3 -  They accordingly fall into eight principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set: Balto-Slavic , Indo-Iranian , Armenian and Albanian ; a Western set: Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Germanic.4 - In the Eastern set, Armenian

24、 and Albanian are each the only modern language respectively. The Balto-Slavic comprises such modern languages as Prussian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Russian. 5 - In the Indo-Iranian we have Persian. Bengali, Hindi, Romany, the last three of which are derived from the dead

25、language Sanskrit. 6 - In the Western set, Greek is the modern language derived from Hellenic.7 - The Germanic family consists of the four Northern European Languages: Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and Swedish, which are generally known as Scandinavian languages. Then there is German, Dutch, Flemish

26、and English. 8 - Old English (450-1150) Anglo-Saxon as Old English. Old English has a vocabulary of about 50, 000 to 60, 000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like moderm German. Anglo-Saxon as Old English. Old English has a vocabulary of about 50, 000 to 60, 000 words. It was a highly

27、inflected language just like moderm German. 9 - Middle English (1150-1500) Although there were borrowings from Latin, the influence on English was mainly Germanic.Between 1250 and 1500 about 9000 words of French origin poured into English. Seventy-five percent of them are still in use today.If we sa

28、y that Old English was a language of full endings. Middle English was one of leveled endings. 10 - Modern English (1500-up to now)Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. Early (1500-1700) and Late (1700-up to the present) Modern EnglishIn the early period of Modern Englis

29、h, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the Renaissance. Latin and Greek were recognized as the languages of the Western worlds great literary heritage and of great scholarshipIn fact, more than twenty-five per cent of modern English word

30、s come almost directly from classical languages.It can be concluded that English has evolved from a synthetic language (Old English) to the present analytic language. 11 - Three main sources of new words: the rapid development of modern science and technology(45%); social, economic and politicalchan

31、ges(24%); the influence of other cultures and languages(11%). 12 - Modern English vocabulary develops through three channels: creation, semantic change, borrowing. Creation refers to the formation of new words by using the existing materials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. In modern times

32、, this is the most important way of vocabulary expansion.Semantic change means an old form which takes on a new meaning to meet the new need. This does not increase the number of word forms but create many more new usages of the words, thus enriching the vocabulary. Borrowing has played a vital role

33、 in the development of vocabulary, particularly in earlier times. Borrowed words constitute merely six to seven percent of all new worlds. In earlier stages of English, french, Greek and Scandinavian were the major contributiors.Reviving archaic or obsolete words(復(fù)活古詞和廢棄詞) also contributes to the gr

34、owth of English vocabulary though quite insignificant. Chapter 3 Word fomation 1 - These different forms occur owing to different sound environment. These minimal meaningful units are known as morphemes. In other words, the morpheme is "the amallest functioning unit in the composition of w

35、ords"2 - Morphemes are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as morphs. They are actual spoken , minimal carriers of meaning. The morpheme is to the morph what a phoneme is to a phone.3 - These morphemes coincide with words as they can stand by themselves and func

36、tion freely in a sentence. Words of this kind are called monomorphemic words. 4 - Some morphemes, however, are realized by more than one morph according to their position in a word. Such alternative morphs are known as allomorphs.5 - There are cases where the allomorphs of the plural morpheme are re

37、alized by the change of an internal vowel or by zero morph. 6 - Free Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free. These morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. They are identical with root words, as each

38、of them consists of a single free root, we might as well say that free morphemes are free roots.7 - Bound Morphemes which cannot occur as separate words are bound. They are so named because they are bound to other morphemes to form words.  Bound morphemes are chiefly found in derived words

39、.8 - Bound morphemes include two types: bound root and affix. Bound root is that part of the word that carries the fundamental meaning just like a free root. Unlike a tree root, it is a bound form and has to combine with other morphemes to make words. In English, bound roots are either Latin or Gree

40、k. Although they are limited in number, their productive power is amazing. Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. According to the functions of affixes, we can put them into two groups; inflectional and derivational affixes. Affixes attached to t

41、he end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus known as inflectional morphemes. The number of inflectional affixes is small and stable.Derivational affixes. As the term indicates, derivational affixes are affixes added to other morphemes to create new words. Derivationa

42、l affixes can be further divided into prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes come before the ward and the suffixes after the word.9 - A root is the basic form of a word which cannot be further analysed without total loss of identity. The root, whether free or bound, generally carries the main component of

43、meaning in a word. Root is that part of a wordform that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. 10 - A stem may consist of a single root morpheme as in iron or of two root morphemes as in a compound like handcuff. It can be a root morpheme plus one or more affixatio

44、nal morphemes as in mouthful. A stem can be defined as a form to which affixes of any kind can be added. Chapter 4 Word Formation 1 - Word-formation: affixation(30%-40%), companding(28%-30%), conversion(26%), shortening(8%-10%), blending(1%) 2 - Affixation is generally defined as the formation of wo

45、rds by adding word-forming or derivational affixes to stems. This process is also known as derivation, for new words created in this way are derived from old forms. The words formed in this way are called derivatives. Prefixation is the formation of new words by adding prefixes to stems. Prefixes do

46、 not generally change the word-class of the stem but only modify its meaning. Nine groups: Negative prefixes, Reversative prefixes, Pejorative prefixes, Prefixes of degree or size, Prefixes of orientation and attitude, Locative prefixes, Prefixes of time and order, Number prefixes, Miscellaneous pre

47、fixes. Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to stems. Suffixes have only a small semantic role, their primary function being to change the grammatical function of stems. In other words, they mainly change the word class. When the suffix under discussion is added to the stem,

48、whatever class it belongs to, the result will be a noun or an adjective. Noun suffixes 1) Denominal nouns: a. Concrete, b. Abstract.2) Deverbal nouns: a. The following suffixes combine with verb stems to create largely nouns denoting people, b. Suffixes of this group added to verb stems to produce l

49、argely abstract nouns, denoting action, result, process, state, etc3) De-adjective nouns4) Noun and adjective suffixes Adjective suffixes 1) Denominal suffixes2) Deverbal suffixesAdverb suffixesVerb suffixes3 - Compounding, also called composition, is the formation of new words by joining two or mor

50、e stems. Words formed in this way are called compounds. So a compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one stem and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word. 4 - Compounds differ from free phrases in the following three aspects: 1). Phonetic features In compounds the

51、 word stress usually occurs on the first element whereas in noun phrases the second element is generally stressed if there is only one stress. In cases of two stresses, the compound has the primary stress on the first element and the secondary stress, if any, on the second whereas the opposite is tr

52、ue of free phrases 2). Semantic features Compounds are different from free phrases in semantic unity. Every compound should express a single idea just as one word. 3). Grammatical features A compound tends to play a single grammatical role in a sentence, for example, a verb, a noun, or an adjective.

53、 In adjective-noun compounds, the adjective element cannot take inflectional suffixes. 5 - Conversion is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class. Since the words do not change in morphological structure but in function, this process is also known as functional sh

54、ift. Conversion is generally considered to be a derivational process whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class, without the addition of an affix. Hence the name zero-derivation. 6 - Many simple nouns convened from verbs can be used with have, take, make, give etc. to form phrases t

55、o replace the verb or denote a brief action. Words like hand-out, stand-by, lay-by, teach-in, shut-down are all converted from phrasal verbs. 7 - Unlike verbs, not all adjectives which are converted can achieve a full noun status. Some are completely converted, thus known as full conversion, others

56、are only partially converted, hence partial conversion. Words fully converted. A noun fully converted from an adjective has all the characteristics of nouns. It can take an indefinite article or - (e)s to indicate singular or plural number. Words partially converted. Nouns partially converted from a

57、djectives do not possess all the qualities a noun does. They must be used together with definite articles. 8 - Blending is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. Words formed in this way are called blends or pormanteau words. The overwhelmin

58、g majority of blends are nouns; very few are verbs and adjectives are even fewer. Blends are mostly used in writing related to science and technology, and to newspapers and magazines. 9 - Another common way of making a word is to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using wha

59、t remains instead. This is called clipping. 10 - 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. Words formed in this way are called initialisms or acronyms, depending on the pronunciation of the words. Initialisms are words pronounced letter by letter. Letters represent full words: VOA  -  Voice of America Letters represent constituents in