英语词汇学

英语词汇学1 .idiom: An English idiom is a group of words with a special meaning different from the meaning of its constituent words. Idioms are usually semantically opaque, i.e. metaphorical rather than literal.2. Blending is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combing and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms: e.g. newscast (news + broadcast), brunch (breakfast + lunch).3. complementaries (互补反义词):complementaries or contradictories represent a type of binary semantic opposition. E.g. alive and dead, single and married, present and absent.4. Polysemy (一次多义): A term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. E.g. the word fair has various meanings : “(of attitude, behaviour) just and honest”; “(of result) average, quite good”; “(of the weath er)clear and sunny”; “(of the mount)satisfactory, abundant”; “(of the skin)pale; light in color”; “clean, clear; with out blemish”5.conceptual meaning(概念意义): Conceptual meaning (also known as denotative meaning) is the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning. Being constant and relatively stable, conceptual meaning forms the basis for communication as the same word has the same conceptual meaning to all the speakers of the same language. Take 'The sun rises in the east' for example. The word sun here means 'a heavenly body which gives off light, heat, and energy', a concept which is understood by anyone who speaks English.6.affixation(派生法): Derivation or affixation is generally defined as a word-formation process by which new words are created by adding a prefix, or suffix, or both, to the base. (举例)7.analogical creation a way to coin word by following an existing word already established1) Single Word; telethon/talkathon-marathon//starquake/youthquake-earthquake chairperson/woman/one-chairman//cheese/beef/shrimpburger-hamburger2) Phrase; sound/air/language/visional/cultural pollution-environment pollution swim/stay/stand in-sit in//botel/airtel/-motel选择和判断1. nonce word: (为特定场合的需要)而临时造的词: A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was a nonce word in English appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake until Murray Gell-Mann quoted it to name a new class of subatomic particle. The use of the term nonce word in this way was apparently the work of James Murray, the influential editor of the Oxford English Dictionary." Runcible spoon", from Edward Lear, which later came to describe a curved fork with a cutting edge.2. grammatical/function wordsFunction words (or grammatical words or synsemantic words or structure-class words) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Thus, they serve as important elements to the structures of sentences.e.g. articles, pronouns, conjunction3. sense and reference4. 造成歧义的原因（structural/lexical/ambiguity及其例子）5. morpheme/stem/rootMorpheme ——A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. （The smallest functional unit in the composition of words.）Root ——A root is the basic form of a word，which cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. （What remains of a word after the removal of all affixes.）.e.g. “internationalists”removing inter-，-al-，-ist，-s，leaves the root nation.Stem —— a form to which affixes of any kind can be added. E.g. “internationalists”，nation is a root and a stem as well.a stem may consist of a single root or two roots and a root plus a affix.a stem can be a root or a form bigger than a root.6. motivation 什么？有几种？Motivation refers to the connection betwween word-symbol and its sense.Phonetic Motivation (拟声词) –the words whose sounds suggest their meaning. （Indicate the relationship between sound and meaning）. Knowing the sounds of the words means understanding the meaning. These words were created by imitating the natural sounds or noises. For example，bang，ping-pang，crow by cocks，etc.Morphological Motivation ——Compounds and derived words are multi-morphemic words and the meaning of many words are the sum total of the morphemes combined. （Indicate the relationship between word meaning and each morpheme meaning）. For instance，airmail means to “mail by air”，miniskirt is “a small skirt”。