English Lexicology期末考试复习笔记

English Lexicology(英语词汇学)

Lexicology: is a branch of linguistics, inquiring into the origins and meanings of words.

The Nature and Scope of English lexicology：

English lexicology aims at investigating and studying the morphological structures of English words and word equivalents, their semantic structures, relations, historical development, formation and usages. The subjects that English Lexicology correlated with and extent to：

English Lexicology is correlated with such linguistic disciplines as morphology(形态学), semantics(语义学), etymology(词源学),stylistics（文体论）and lexicography(词典学)

The reason for a student to study English lexicology：

According to the textbook, English Lexicology will definitely be beneficial for students of English.

A good knowledge of morphological structures of English words and rules of word-formation will help learners develop their personal vocabulary and consciously increase their word power. The information of the historical development and the principles of classification will give them a deeper understanding of word-meaning and enable them to organize, classify and store words more effectively. The understanding and their sense relations will gradually raise their awareness of meaning and usage, and enable them use words more accurately and appropriately. A working knowledge of dictionaries will improve their skills of using reference books and raise their problem-solving ability and efficiency of individual study.

Chapter 1--Basic concepts of words and vocabulary

Word: A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. (1)a minimal free form of a language (2)a sound unity (3)a unit of meaning (4)a form that can function alone in a sentence

sound and meaning: almost arbitrary, “n o logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself”

sound and form: the sound should be similar to the form

Vocabulary: all the words in a language make up its vocabulary

The 3 Stages of Development of E Vocabulary: Old English vocabulary, Middle EV, Modern EV Classification of English Words According to Different Criteria

The basic word stock: is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the language.

Though it constitute a small percentage of the EV, it is the most important part of vocabulary.

The Fundamental Features of the Basic Word Stock:

1)All-National character（全民通用性most important）2)Stability（相对稳定性）

3)Productivity（多产性）4)Polysemy（多义性）5)Collocability（可搭配性）

words:(1)Terminology(术语) (2)Jargon（行话）(3)slang（俚语）(4)Argot（暗语）（5）Dialectal words(方言) (6) Archaisms（古语）(7) Neologisms（新词语）:Neologisms means newly-created words or expressions, or words that have taken on new meanings.(email)

Content words (cloud, run walk, never, five, frequently) and functional words (on, of, and, be, but)