词汇学复习重点

词汇学复习重点

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

2. translation 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.

3. Renaissance------ It is a European movement of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics.

4. Allomorph------ one of the variants of the same morpheme

5. inflectional affix------ an affix that indicates grammatical relationships

6. acronyms------ the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names of social and political organizations special noun phrases and technical terms

7. back-formation------ the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes

8. polygsemy------ Polysemy means that one single word has two or more senses at the same time.

9. morpheme------ It is a minimal meaningful unit of a language, or it is the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words.

10. grammatical meaning------ that part of the meaning of the word indicates grammatical concept or relationships such as part of speech of words, singular and plural meaning of nouns, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms.

11. homonym------ Homonyms are words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling.

12. reference------what a linguistic form refers to in the real word. It is the relationship between language and the world

13. semantic field------ Semantic field is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as a system of interrelated lexical networks.

14. motivation------ the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning.

15. conceptual meaning------ the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word-meaning.

16. amelioration------ or elevation, a process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance.

17. transfer------ a process whereby words which were used to designate one thing have changed to mean something else.

1.Discuss the major characteristics of Basic word stock with examples.

Basic word stock contains the following characteristics:

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.

Stability: As they denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged. Stability, however, is only relative.

Productivity: Words of the basic word stock are most root words or monosyllabic words; They can form new words with other roots and affixes

Polysemy: Words belonging 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.

Collocability: Many words of the basic word stock have strong collocability.

2.What are the major modes of modern vocabulary expansion and give your

examples.

The major modes are creation, semantic change and borrowing.

Creation refers to the formation of new words by using existing materials, namely roots, affixes, and other elements. Semantic change means an old form, which takes on a new meaning to meet the new , such as mouse and web. Borrowing has played a vital role in the development of vocabulary, particularly in earlier times. Borrowed words constitute merely six to seven percent of all new words. Creation:词根词缀构成新词

semantic change: the word angel is an example. The word is the name of a spiritual being, now, it has a new meaning used to refer to a radar echo caused by something not visually discernible.

Borrowing:From French language, English has taken such words as: auteur, black humor, limo

From German language, English has taken such words as: humoresque

From Chinese language, English has taken such words as: Kung fu, wok 3.What are the inflectional affixes frequently used in English? Discuss the

meaning each of them indicates.

-(e)s— plural number

-(e)s—third- person singular present tense

-(e)d— past tense -ing— progressive aspect

-er— comparative degree

-est— superlative degree

-'s— possessive case

4.How compounds differ from free phrases? Give examples to dwell on this point. phonetic features. In compounds the 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 true of free phrases, e.g. “a ′green room”is a compound, while “a green ′room”