Lecture 3-《英语词汇学》第三章教案

Lecture 3

讲授题目：Basic Concepts of Words and Vocabulary

所属章节：《现代英语词汇学概论》第1章

计划学时：2 periods

教学方法：传统讲授法

参考资料：《英语词汇学教程》、《英语词汇学》

教学目的和要求：通过本单元的学习，学生对词的定义，词汇的分类等词的基本知识有了一定的了解。

教学重点：1) What is a word?

2) The relationship between sound

and meaning.

3) Classification of English words.

教学难点：1) The definition of word.

2) Classification of words.

1. What is a word

What is a word? This question has occupied the attention of linguists for ages. Although numerous definitions have been suggested, none of them seem to be perfect. Scholars don‘t agree on the definition of the word. To sum up, the definition of a word comprises the following points:

?(1) a minimal free form of a language;

(一门语言中最小的自由形式)

? (2) a sound unity;

(一个声音统一体)

? (3) a unit of meaning;

(一个意义单位)

? (4) a form that can function alone in a sentence.

(在句子中能独立起作用的一个形式)

Therefore, we can say that a word is ―a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic

function‖.

(词是一门语言中具有一定的声音、意义和句法功能的最小的自由形式。)

※如果撇开能不能独立运用这一点，词就不是最小的有语义的单位。

语言中最小的―语音语义的结合体‖称为―词素‖(morpheme)。

2. Sound and Meaning

A word is a symbol that stands for something else in the world.

Each of t he world‘s cultures has come to agree that certain sounds will represent certain persons, things, places, properties, processes and activities outside the language system. This symbolic connection is almost arbitrary, and there is ‘no logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself’(Lodwig and Barrett 1993 ). Introduction of Naturalist（自然派）and Conventionalist

（习惯派）

? The difference between the two schools lies in the belief that sound has or hasn‘t direct or necessary connection with meaning.

? The naturalists think the sound must be an echo of the sense.（音必定成为义的回声）The conventionalists hold that there is no intrinsic logical connection or relationship between the sound and the meaning except onomatopoeia （拟声词）.

Onomatopoeia （拟声词）

●Gingle—铃声—铃pat—轻拍声—轻拍

?Ping-pong—乒乓声—乒乓球

?Cuckoo—布谷鸟叫声—布谷鸟

?Drum—鼓声—鼓bomb—爆炸声—炸弹

?Crash--轰隆声--猛撞,崩溃,破产,垮台

?E.g. The thunder crashed overhead.

?雷声在头顶隆隆作响。

?The boiling water cracked the glass.

?滚烫的开水使玻璃杯炸裂了。

?Onomatopoeia also exists in Chinese:

?请帮我―咔嚓‖一张。

两人都同时―哦‖了一声。

For example, 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. It is only symbolic. The relationship between them is conventional because people of the same speech community have agreed to refer to the animal with this cluster of sounds.

In different languages the same concept can be represented by different sounds. Woman, for example, becomes ?frau‘ in German, ?femme‘ in French and ?fùnǔ‘ in Chinese. On the other hand, the same sound [mi:t] is used to mean meet, meat, mete. Knight and night, though denoting entirely different things, yet have the same sound.

3. Sound and Form

It is generally agreed that 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. In other words, the sound should be similar to the form. This is quite true of English in its earliest stage i.e. Old English. With the development of the language, more and more differences occur between the two.

①The internal reason for this is that English alphabet was adopted from the Romans (Latin alphabet ), which does not have a separate letter to represent each sound in the language, so some letters must do double duty or work together in combination.

②Another reason is that the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling over the years, and in some cases the two have draw far apart. During the last five hundred years, though the sounds of speech have changed considerably, there have been no corresponding changes of spelling.

③ A third reason is that some of the differences were created by the early scribes. Before the printing press was brought to England, everything was written by hand. Those scribes, who made a living by writing for other people, often worked in haste to meet the needs of the King, Church, and merchants. One problem was that several letters written with short vertical strokes (短竖笔), such as i. u. v. m. w and n looked all alike. Consequently, their handwriting caused misunderstanding.

To solve the problem, they changed letter u to o when it came before m. n, or v. This is how sum, cum, wuman, wander, munk came to be written as some, come, woman, wonder, monk. At some point, too, the scribes seem to have decided that no English word should end in u or v. Thus, an e was added to such words as live, have, due and true but not pronounced.

④Finally comes the borrowing, which is an important channel of enriching the English vocabulary. When English borrowed words from other languages, it borrowed spelling as well. The early borrowings were assimilated and the later ones, however, do not conform to the rules of English pronunciation and spelling, e.g. stimulus (L), denouement (F), fiesta (Sp), eureka (Gr), kimono (Jap).

The written form of English is, therefore, an imperfect representation of the spoken form. In spite of the differences, at least 80% of the English words fit consistent spelling patterns.

由此可见，英语书面形式并不完全代表口语形式。两者虽有差异，但80%以上的拼写在书面语和口语中还是统一的。

4. Vocabulary

Broadly speaking, vocabulary can be defined as : ①?? a complete inventory of the words in a language‖.

②Vocabulary means the sum of all the words in the language. It is more or less synonymous with ?lexis‘ and ?lexicon‘, with the first more colloquial, the third more learned and technical, and the second situated half-way between the other two . The term ?vocabulary‘ is used in different senses. 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, e.g. Old English vocabulary, Middle English vocabulary and Modern English vocabulary.

5. Classification of words

The English vocabulary can be classified by different criteria and for different purposes. 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) Basic Word Stock and Nonbasic Vocabulary

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:

①All 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 the following respects:

a. Natural phenomena: rain, snow, fire, water, sun, moon;

b. Human body and relations: head, foot, hand, father, mother, sister, daughter, son;

c. Names of plants and animals: oak, pine, horse, cow, cat;

d. Action, size, domain, state: come, go, eat, good, evil, old, young, hot, cold.;

e. Numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions: one, ten, hundred, I, you, your, in, out, under, and, but, till, as.

※These words cannot be avoided by any speaker of English, irrespective of class, origin, education, profession, geographical regions, culture, etc.

②Stability. Words of the basic word stock have been in use for centuries, e.g. man, fire, mountain, water, sun, moon. As they denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged. Stability, however, is only relative. Actually, the basic word stock has been undergoing some changes.Words like arrow, bow, chariot, knight, which were common in the past, have now moved out of the word stock whereas such words as electricity, machine, car, plane, computer, television, which denote new things and modern way of life, have entered the stock. But this change is slow. There are many more words joining in than dropping out.

③Productivity. Words of the basic 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, e.g. foot: football, footpath, footer, footed, footloose, footing, footman,

etc. In the same way, dog: doglike, doghood, dog-cheap, dog-fall, dogfight, dog-paddle, dog sleep, to name just a few.

④Polysemy. Words be longing to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have undergone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous.

The verb ?cut’在《牛津英语词典》(The Oxford English Dictionary)中将近150个义项，《新英汉词典》把它产归纳为32个义项。多义词的各个词义尽管纷繁复杂，但还是构成一定的关系，主要有：原始意义与引申意义，普遍意义与特殊意义，抽象意义与具体意义，字面意义与比喻意义。

⑤Collocability. Many words of the basic word stock enter quite

a number of set expressions, idiomatic usages, proverbial sayings and the like. Instances are numerous. Take heart for example: a change of heart; after one’s heart; a heart of gold;

b reak one‘s heart; cry one’s heart out; eat one’s heart out; and take sth. to heart; heart and soul so on.

Of course, not all the words of the basic word stock have these characteristics. Pronouns and numerals enjoy nation-wide use and stability, but are semantically monosemous and have limited productivity and collocability. Therefore ?all national character‘ is the most important of all features.

Nonbasic Vocabulary

Words, void of the stated characteristics, do not belong to the common core of the language. They included the following:

①Terminology. Consists of technical terms used in particular disciplines and academic areas as in medicine: photoscanning, penicillin; in mathematics: algebra, calculus; in music: symphony, sonata (奏鸣曲); in education: audiovisual, microteaching, etc.

②Jargon. refers to the specialized vocabulary by witch members of particular arts, sciences, trades and professions communicate among themselves such as: bottom line-- inescapable implication, unavoidable result;

?bargaining chips——谈判中任何一方所拥有的优势;

?hold him back——不让某一匹马赢.

?hypo——皮下注射；

?Persona——人格面貌

?paranoid——n. adj. 患妄想狂的(者)，多疑症

者，多疑的;

?hold him in——让马在开赛初跑在后面以保持精力准备最后冲刺;

?buster for ?bomb‘ —— (炸弹) (军事行话).

Generally speaking, people outside the circle have difficulty in understanding such words.

③Slang. Belongs to the sub-standard language, a category that seems to stand between the standard general words and in-group words like cant, jargon, and argot, all of which are associated with, or most available to, specific groups of the population. Certain words are labeled ?slang‘ not because of their appearance or pronunciation but because of their usage.

In the same way, the meaning of ?drunk‘ can be expressed in as many terms as over three hundred such as: elevated, merry, jolly, comfortable, boiled, grassy, tight, knocked out, blue-eyed, fried, paralyzed, pickled, stiff, stunned, etc.

Slang enjoy popular use. Almost everyone uses some slang. Sometime, and some people use a lot of slang often. Those who don‘t go to offices or seldom find themselves in formal situations, and those who spend more time with close friend use the most slang, because slang is colorful, blunt, expressive and impressive.

④Argot—generally refers to the jargon of criminals. Its use is confined to the sub –cultural groups, and outsiders can hardly understand it. e.g. can-opener →all purpose key; dip →pick-pocket; persuader →dagger.

⑤Dialectal words——are words used only by speakers of the dialect in question. e.g. beauty (Australia English: = excellent, great);

chook (Aus E = chicken)

cocky (Aus E = small farmer)

Station (Aus E = ranch)

auld (scot E = Old);

hame (Scot E = home lough (IrE = lake) )

boy (IrE = swamp)

⑥Archaisms are words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use. They are found mainly in older poems, legal documents and religious writing or speech. e.g. thou——you; ye——①you ②the;

thee——you (objective); wilt——will; brethren——brother; quoth——said; aught——anything; troth——pledge

⑦Neologisms- are newly-created words or expressions. e.g. microelectronic——微电子学；futurology——未来学；

?AIDS = acquired immune deficiency syndrome

?(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. Functional words do not have notions of their own. There fore, 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, conjunctions, auxiliaries and articles belong to this category.

(3) Native words and Borrowed Words

As for as the origins of the words are concerned, English words can be classified into native words and borrowed 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. Words of Anglo-Saxon origin are small in number, amounting to roughly 50,000 to 60,000, but they form the mainstream of the basic word stock and stand at the core of the language.

Therefore, what is true of the basic word stock is also true of native words. Apart from the characteristics mentioned of the basic word stock, in contrast to borrowed words, native words have two other features: ①Neutral in style. Since native words denote the commonest things in human society, they are used by all people, in all places, on all occasions, and at all times. Therefore, they are not stylistically specific. This can be illustrated by a comparison between synonyms.

?Native words Borrowed words

?begin ——commence (F)

?brotherly ——fraternal (F)

?kingly ——royal (F) —— regal (L)

?Rise ——mount (F) —— ascend (L)

Stylistically, native words are neither formal nor informal whereas the words borrowed form French or Latin are literary and learned,

thus appropriate in formal style.

②Frequent in use.Native words are most frequently used in everyday speech and writing. The proportion of its use in relation to borrowings is perhaps just the opposite of its number. The percentage of native words in use runs usually as high as 70 to 90 percent.

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 modern English vocabulary.

According to the degree of assimilation and manner of borrowing, we can bring the loan-words under four classes.

.①Denizens are words borrowed early in the past and now are well assimilated into English language. Words of this group are early borrowings from Latin, Greek, French and Scandinavians.

? e.g. port from portus (L); cup form cuppa (L)

?shift from skipta (ON); shirt from skyrta (ON)

?change from changier (F); pork from porc (F)

②Aliens. Aliens are borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling.

?e.g. décor ——舞台装置(F);

?blitzkrieg ——闪电战(G)

?bazaar ——市场(Per);

?emir ——酋长(Arab)

③Translation-loans.Translation-loans are words and expressions

formed from the existing material in the English language but modeled on the patterns taken from another language.

? a. Words translated according to the meaning (根据意义译出的借词)

? e.g. mother tongue from lingua materna 母语(L);

?long time no see 好久没见(Chinese) ;surplus value from Mehrwert 剩余价值(German);

?black humour from humour noir 黑色幽默(F).

? b. Words translated according to the sound (根据声音译出事的借词)

? e.g. kulak from kyrak ——富农(Russ)

?ketchup from ke-tsiap ——番茄酱(Chinese dialect)

?lama from lama ——喇嘛(T:b)

④Semantic-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. e.g. dream ——原义―高兴‖、―音乐‖——现义―梦‖(ON) Pioneer ——原义―探索者‖——现义―少先队员‖ (Russ) 附：主要汉语借词

Silk (丝绸); li (里); litchi (荔枝); ginseng (人参); kowtow/kotow (叩头); bok choy (白菜); renminbi (人民币); cheongsam (旗袍) ; chiao (角); running dog (走狗); kungfu (功夫/武术); tung (tree) (桐油树); tofu (豆腐)；tea/chaa (茶); yamen/yanun (衙门); co-long (乌龙茶); typhoon (台风); tao (道); Boxer (义和团成员); yin (阴); yang (阳); shanghai (用酒或麻醉剂使失去知觉后) 绑架，拐骗; brainwashing (洗脑); Double Ten (双十节); Hundred Flowers (百花齐放); Red Guard (红卫兵); big lead forward (大跃进); gang of four ―四人帮‖; one country with two systems (一国两制); Big Leap Out (中国的改革开放政策);long time no see.