《英语词汇学》笔记

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, “no 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

The Indo-European Language

Family

The Eight Groups in

Indo-European Family of

Languages

The Balto-slavic Group（波罗

的-斯拉夫语族）：

Latvian,Russian,Bugarian,Pol

ish,Czech etc.

The Indo-Iranian Group（印度-

伊朗语族）：

Sanskrit,Hindi,Urdu,Bengali,

Persian etc.

The Armenian Group（亚美尼亚

语族）：Armenian.

The Albanian Group（阿尔巴尼

亚语族）：Albanian.

The Hellenic Group（古希腊语

族）：Greek.

The Italian Group（意大利语

族）：

Latin,Romance

languages(French,Italian,Spa

nish, portuguess,Romanian)

etc.

The Celtic Group（凯尔特语族）：

Gaelic,Welsh,Breton etc.

The Germanic Group（日耳曼语

族）：

Englsih,German,Dutch,Scandin

avian(Norweigian,

Swedish,Danish,Icelandic)

etc.

The Three Stages of

Development of the English

Vocabulary@

1 Old English Period or The

Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1100)

(vocabulary 50,000 to 60,000)

2 Middle English Period

(1150-1500)

3 Modern English Period

(1500-now): in fact more than

25% of modern E words come

almost directly from

classical languages. In

Modern E, words endings were

mostly lost

Modes of V Development(Modern

E): 1)creation 2)semantic

change 3) borrowing

Morpheme(语素):the minimal

meaningful unit(the smallest

functioning unit in the

composition of words)

Allomorph(语素变体): is a

different variant form of a

morpheme，differ in

phonological and spelling

form, but at the same in

function and meaning

Type of Morpheme

Free Morpheme: A free morpheme

is one that can stand by itself.

(independent)

Bound Morpheme(粘着语素): A

bound morpheme is one that

cannot stand by itself.

Bound Morpheme includes two

types: (1) bound root

(2)Affix(词缀)

1)Inflectional affixes (屈折

词缀)(inflectional

morphemes):

affixes attached to the end of

words to indicate grammatical

relationships are

inflectional

2)Derivational affixes(派生

词缀) A) prefix: A prefix

comes before words. B)suffix

An adjective suffix（形容词后

缀） that is added to the stem,

whatever classis belongs to ,

the result will be an

adjective.

free=free root（自由词根）

Morpheme(词素)

Bound root prefix

bound

derivational

affix suffix

inflectional

Root and stem（词根和词干）

1) Root 2) Stem

The differences between root

and stem:

A root is the basic form of a

word which cannot be further

analyzed without total loss of

identity.

A stem is the surplus part

after the cutting of

inflectional morpheme in a

word with inflectional

morphemes,can be further

analyzed, it sometimes could

be a root.

Individualistic

Undesirables

Individualist (stem)

undesirable (stem)

Individual (stem)

desirable (stem)

dividual (stem)

desire (root, stem)

divide(root, stem)

Affixation词缀法（Derivation

派生法）：adding

word-formation or

derivational affixes to stem.

Prefixation前缀@：It's the

formation of new words by

adding a prefixes to stems.

1)'表示否定'nagative

prefixes: un-,non,in-,dis,a-

etc.

2)''reversative or privative

prefixes: un-,de-dis etc.

3)'表示贬义'pejorative

prefixes: mis-, mal-, pseudo-

etc.

4)'表示程度'degree or size

prefixes: arch-,

super-,out-,sub-,over-,under

-,hyper-,ultra-,mini- etc.

5)'表示方向、态度'orientation

& attitude

prefixes:counter-,contra-,an

ti-,pro- etc.

6)locative

prefixes:super-,sub-,inter-,

trans- etc.