词汇学知识点Chapter 1-3

Chapter 1 Basic concepts of words and vocabulary

1.1 A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function.

1.2 - Vocabulary: refers to all the words in a language, and all the words of a particular historical period, 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 1 million words.

1.3 - 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.

1.4 Sound and Form

English→ Phonetic language表音文字- Chinese→Ideographic language 表意文字The reasons for the inconsistency between sound and form

1) More sounds than form

2) 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.

3) A third reason is that some of the differences were created by the early scribes. e.g. women, luve→love

4)Finally comes the borrowing, which is an important channel of enriching the English vocabulary. e.g. cliché, debut

1.5 classifications of words

1.5.1 - The basic word stock基本词汇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.

1.5.1.1 characteristics of basic word stock

1)All national character. 全民性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. Most important of all features

Natural phenomena/Human body and relations/Names of plants and animals/Action, size, domain, state/Numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions e.g. rain, foot, hand, and

2) Stability.稳定性Words of the basic word stock have been in use for centuries.

3) Productivity . 能产性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. e.g. dog, foot

4)Polysemy. 多义性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. e.g. take, grey

5) Collocability . 搭配性Many words of the basic word stock quite a number of set expressions, idiomatic usages, proverbial sayings and the like. e.g. heart

1.5.2 Non-basic word stock非基本词汇

1) Terminology 术语consists of technical terms used in particular disciplines and academic areas . e.g. penicillin, sonata, lexicology

2) Jargon行话refers to the specialized vocabularies by which members of particular arts, sciences, trades and professions communicate among themselves such as in business.

e.g. bottom line

3) Slang俚语Common words with slang meaning(Unconventional use of the standard vocabulary) Slang is colorful, blunt, expressive and impressive. Sub-standard, popular used between friends in informal conversation. e.g. fat cats有钱人, jailbait

4) Argot 黑话暗语generally refers to the jargon of criminals. e.g. dip (pick-pocket)

5) Dialectal words方言are words used only by speakers of the dialect in question. e.g. auld lang syne (Scottish)

6)Archaisms古语are words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use., like p oetry, legal documents, religious writing, business to create Solemn, formal, accurate, authoritative effect. e.g. quoth, perchance, thee

7)Neologisms新词are newly-created words or expressions, or words that have taken on new meanings. e.g. blog, showrooming

1.5.3 Function words功能词,虚词(empty/form words): grammatical meaning (conj. prep. aux. articles); small and permanent /stable set of words(154 words); Mostly used words.

Content words: lexical meanings (n. a. adv. v.) an open list, numerous

1.5.4 Native words本族语词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. Features: Neutral in style. they are not stylistically specific. Frequent in use.

Words taken over from foreign languages are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowings借词in simple terms. It is estimated that English borrowings constitute 80 percent of the modem English vocabulary.

Four manners of borrowing

1)Denizen同化词Early; well assimilated; conform to the English way of pronunciation and spelling指早期借入其拼写和读音完全符合本族语词规范的借词.e.g. porc→pork, skipta→shift

2) Aliens are borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling. These words are immediately recognizable as foreign in origin. e.g. bazaar, Kowtow

3) translation loans译借词are borrowed words formed from the existing material in the English language but modeled on the patterns taken from another language. 是利用英语中现有的语言材料但模仿另一种语言模式而构成的词 a.. Word translated according to the meaning (literal translation) e.g. long time no see . b. Words translated according to the sound(Transliteration) e.g. ketchup, Confucius

4) Semantic-loans.语义借词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.指受另一种语言中相关词语的影响而借进新义的词。e.g. bloom: (OE) an ingot of iron→ flower (Scand.) Gift: the price of a wife (OE)→present (Scand.)

Chapter 2 The development of the English vocabulary

2.1 The Indo European Language family

1) Two approach towards language a. diachronic历时研究concerned with historical development of a language; b. synchronic共时研究describing a language as it exists at one point in time.

2) 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.

3) The Indo-European is one of them. It is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India.

4) They accordingly fall into eight principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set: Balto-Slavic波罗斯拉夫语族 , Indo-Iranian印度伊朗语族, Armenian亚美尼亚语族and Albanian阿尔巴尼亚语族; a Western set: Celtic凯尔特语族, Italic意大利语族, ellenic

希腊语族, Germanic日尔曼语族

2.2 Three Phases of the historical development

2.2.1 Old English (450-1150)

characteristics: Monogeneous 单一的; from Anglo-Saxon invasion to Norman Invasion; England=the land of Angles; English =the tongue of Angles;language: 50,000-60,000 words; 15% survive; full-ending/inflection;

Foreign elements in English: a. Dialects of Celtic; e.g. York, London, Kent, cradle;b. Latin of the Roman Legions; Place names: Doncaster,唐克斯特Manchester, castra=camp; c. Old Norse: Scandinavian language; Vikings invasion 8-11thC; d. Christianity in 597 by St. Augustine e.g. altar, creed, disciple, nun, shrine

2.2.2 Middle English (1150-1500)

Characteristics: from Norman Invasion to Caxton’s establishment of printing; Coexistence of three languages a. French(ruling class) e.g. Govern, duke, angel, bacon, grace; b. English (lower class); c. Latin (church)

Why English gradually regained social status?answer: Onset of Hundred Years War 1337- 1453; England’s French estate are lost; The reformation 宗教改革运动; Lower class’ desire for reading; sense of English national identity; Wycliff translation of Bible; writings of Chaucer

2.2.3 Modern English (1500-up to now)

1) Early (1500-1700) Modern English

Characteristics: Printing; Renaissance, (the Latin and Greek words swarmed into English) Late (1700-up to the present) Modern English

Characteristics: Mid-17th C industrial/Bourgeois Revolution; Colonization (Absorb words from the world; bazaar, kiosk, soy, paddy) ; after World War II, the world has seen breathtaking advances in science and technology(Coinage of new words)

2.3 General characteristics

1). Receptivity, adaptability and heterogeneity 接受性，适应性，多质性

2) 2. Simplicity of inflection屈折变化

3) 3. Relatively fixed word order

Inflection: An alternation of the form of a word by adding affixes, which indicates grammatical features such as number, person, mood, or tense. 通过加词缀来改变一个词的形式,这些词缀增减和词本身的变化表示了数、人称、语态或时态等语法特征

A synthetic language综合型语言is one which shows the relations of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections/word endings. e.g. old English, indo-European language

an analytic language分析型语言.is one which indicates the relations of words by means of order, prepositions or auxiliary words., e.g. Chinese, Vietnamese, Modern Enlgish

2.4 Foreign Elements in the English,

Four main contributors: Latin→earliest, religious; Greek→classic; French→ numerous; Scandinavian→ basic, like English

2.5 Growth of Contemporary English Vocabulary

science and technology; social, economic and political changes; cultures and languages 2.6 Modes of Vocabulary Development

Borrowing(By borrowing words from other languages); Creation(by word-formation); Semantic change (by adding new meaning to existing words)

Reviving archaic or obsolete words(复活古词和废弃词) also contributes to the growth of English vocabulary though quite insignificant.

Chapter 3 Morphological Structure of English Words

3.1 –morphemes词素the smallest meaningful unit of language; not divisible and analyzable into smaller forms.

modern: monomorphemic word

modernize: dimorphemic/double-morphemic word

modernization: Multimorphemic/triple-morphemic word

modernizations: Multimorphemic/four-morphemic word

3.2 morphs and allomorphs

Morphemes are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as morphs. They are actual spoken , minimal carriers of meaning. If a morphemes is realized only by one morph, the morpheme is monomorphemic words, like bird, tree, green, sad, etc.

e.g. The morpheme {in} is realized in speech by different morphs /in/, /im/, /ir/ ,/il/

A morpheme, an abstract unit, may have various forms or sounds in different sound context. Any of these forms or sounds is called an allomorph. An allomorph refers to a member of a set of morphs, which represent one morpheme. e.g. the morpheme of plurality {-s} has many allomorphs like /-s/, /-es/, /-en/, /-a/, internal vowel etc

3.3 classifying morphemes

3.3.1 free and bound morphems

1) Free Morphemes is a single word; independent of other morpheme; with a given meaning; Identical with root words=free root自由词根, like tree, nation, water

2) Bound Morphemes cannot stand by itself; its must be bound with other morphemes, free or bound; Found in derived words 派生词like pre-, ante-, -ced-, -tion

3) 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. e.g. vis, dur, viv, annu etc.

Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function.

3.3.2 derivational and inflectional morphemes

Morphemes which are used to derive new words are known as derivational morphemes. Derivatives and compounds are all formed by such morphemes.

Affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus known as inflectional morphemes. The number of inflectional affixes is small and stable. like

1). –s(--es) in plural nouns or 3rd person singular present. –en in plural forms of certain nouns;

2). –’s in possessive case of nouns;

3). –er ,--est in comparative or superlative of adjectives and adverbs;

4). –ing in present participles or gerund;

5). –ed in past tenses or past participles of the regular verbs

free morpheme = free root root

morpheme bound root

bound morpheme inflectional affix

affix prefix

derivational affix

suffix

3.3.3 Content morphemes =lexical morphemes = derivational morphemes Grammatical morphemes =inflectional morphemes + functional words

3.5 A root词根is the basic form of a word which cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. it denotes the main lexical meaning of the word. Bound or free, it carries the main component of meaning in a word.

A stem词干is any form to which an inflectional morphemes can be attached.

A base词基is a form to which affixes of any kind (both derivational and inflectional) can be added.