词汇学知识点总结

词汇学期末复习

1.In brief, a word may be defined as a fundamental unit of speech and minimum free form; with a unity of sound and meaning (both lexical and grammatical meaning), capable of performing a given syntactic function.

2.The morpheme (词素) is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.

Example:

One morpheme: nation

Two morphemes: nation-al

Three morphemes: nation-al-ize

Four morphemes: de-nation-al-ize

3. An allomorph (词素变体) is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

For example:

go: went, gone

-ion/-tion/-sion/-ation are the positional variants of the same suffix.

4.Inflectional affixes (曲折词缀)

Affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus known as inflectional morphemes. For example: cats, walked, walking, John’s book…

5.Derivational affixes (派生词缀)

Affixes added to other morphemes to create new words. They can be further divided into prefixes and suffixes.

For example:

re＋write, mini＋car,

work＋er

6.Connotative meaning (内涵意义)

In contrast to denotative meaning, connotative meaning refers to the overtones or associations which a word suggests or implies.

Mother (a female parent) is often associated with ‘love’, ‘care’, ‘tenderness’, ‘forgiving’, etc.

Home (a dwelling place) may suggest ‘family, warmth, safety, love, convenience’, etc

7.Stylistic meaning (文体意义)

Words may have stylistic features, which make them appropriate for different contexts. Examples: male parent, father, daddy ；residence, home, pad

8.Affective meaning (情感意义)

Affective meaning indicates the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thing in question. Words that have emotive values may fall into two categories:

Appreciative or commendatory (褒义): words of positive overtones used to show appreciation or approval. eg: love, cherish, prize, admire, worship, charm .

Pejorative or derogatory (贬义): words of negative connotations imply disapproval, contempt or criticism. eg : hate, vicious .

9.Collocative meaning (搭配意义)

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires in its collocation. In other

words, it is that part of the word meaning suggested by the words before or after the word in discussion.

eg:pretty: girl, woman, flower, etc. handsome: boy, man, car, etc.

10.a) Radiation辐射型：

It is the semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the centre and the secondary meaning radiates out of it.

Though all the secondary meanings are independent of one another, they can all be traced back to the primary meaning.

face head

11.b) Concatenation 连锁型:

It is the semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its primary meaning in succession so that the present meaning seems to have no connection to the primary meaning.

E.g.

candidate：

1) white-roped

2) office seeker in white gowns

3) a person who seeks an office

4) a person proposed for a place, award, etc.

12.Linguistic context can be subdivided into lexical context and grammatical context.

a) lexical context: refers to the lexemes that co-occur with the word in question. The meaning of the word is often affected and defined by the neighbouring lexemes.

E.g“paper”: a term paper ，today’s paper ；"do " : do one’s teeth: brush ，do fish: cook.

13.b) grammatical context: In some cases, the meanings of a polysemant may be influenced by the structure in which it occurs.

E.g.“become”

become + adj./n. , means‘begin to be’

become + pron./n. , means ‘suit, befit’

become + of, means ‘happen to, often in a bad way’

1.Causes of changes in word meaning

1)historical cause :It often happens that though a word retain its original form, its meaning has changed because the object it denotes has changed, this is the historical cause of semantic change.

eg.pencil (from Latin word meaning)—a little tail or a fine brush, like our Chinese pen

when it was made of wood and graphite石墨，it was still called a “pencil”

2)Social cause : Change in word meaning results from a constant verbal traffic between common

words and various technical words .

eg. hot and cold have changed their meaning in the field of politics, as in “cold war”,”hot war”and “hot line”

3) Foreign influences : The influence of foreign words is a particularly important cause.

eg. stool: any kind of seat for one person including a king’s seat

The French word chair was adopted to denote a more comfortable piece of furniture.

4) Linguistic cause

Towards ellipsis 省略

a general---a general officer ; uniform—uniform dress

Towards analogy 类推

Energetic(精力旺盛)—formerly meant “to operate, effect”as in “the most energetic chemicals”, now energetic means “of , having or showing energy, vigorous, forceful”as if it had been derived from energy

5)Psychological cause

1）Euphemism（委婉词）：

It refers that the word changed after people use mild, agreeable language when speaking of an unpleasant or embarrassing fact and of taboo subjects as sex and the excretive processes of the body such as death can be used as '' go west''.

2）Grandiloquence（夸张）：

It refers to the use of long, important-sounding words for effect. The desire to upgrade or raise the social status of a position, occupation, or institution by changing its common name to one felt to confer greater dignity or importance is another psychological factor in the change of word meaning. In a sense, it is a form of euphemism. e.g. ''hair stylist'' was upgraded as ''hairologist'' for barbers.

3）Cynicism（挖苦语）：

It refers that the desire to sneer (冷笑) and to be sarcastic (讽刺) cause the semantic change. e.g. sanctimonious (假装神圣) means ''devoted, holy or scared'' and now means ''pretending to be very holy or pious''.

2.The difference between suffixation and conversion

The difference between suffixation and conversion is whether the addition of an affix is needed. Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to stems , and mainly change the word class. They may also add attached meaning to the stem. eg: hard harden,attract attractive. Conversion is a word-formation whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another without the addition of an affix. It is also called zero derivation(零位派生).

eg:Verb-noun conversion : a three-year wait. It is a good buy.

3.The fundamental features / the character of the basic word stock基本词汇

All national character 全民性: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.eg: rain, head,brother.

Stability稳定性: They are likely to remain relatively unchanged.

Productivity 能产性:They are mostly root words, means they can form new words with other roots and affixes. eg. postman, chairman, workman.

Polysemy : They often possess more than one meaning.

Collocability 搭配性: many of them have many set expressions, proverbial sayings and so on.

eg,heart: a heart of gold, learn by heart.

4.. The characteristics /features of compounds

1) Phonological features

e.g. Compound Free phrase

a ’fat cat a fat ’cat

’greenhouse green ’house

a ’dark horse a dark ’horse

2) Semantic features : ‘one-wordness’: every compound should express a single idea just as one word; the elements are inseparable and the change of the element would result in the loss of the original identity.

3) Grammatical features :Tend to fill a single grammatical slot in a sentence.

e.g. He bad-mouthed me.

In adjective-plus-noun compounds, the adjective element cannot take inflectional suffixes.

e.g. hot line, red tape

5.homonymy