词汇学

Chapter 1

1. How did the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance infulence the English vocabulary?

The transitional period from Old English to Modern English is known as Middle English , which is characterized by the strong infulence of French following the Norman Conquest in 1066. French was used for all state affairs and for most social and culture matters.(生活)

In the early stages of this period the Renaissance brought great changes to vocabulary. In this period , the study of classics were stressed and the result was the wholesale borrowing from Latin. The Latin loan words were now mostly connected with science and sbstract ideas, and many of them have become part of everyday speech of the English people.

2. What are the fundamental feature of the basoc word stock of the English vocabulary?

(1). National character: Words of the basic word stock belong to the people as a whole, not to a limited group.

(2). Stability: As words in the basic word stock denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged.

(3). Word-forming ability: Basic words are very active in forming new words.

(4). Ability to form collocations: Basic words combine readily with other words to form habitual expressions and phrases.

3. What are characteristics of the English vocabulary as a result of its historical development?

本族语 法语 拉丁语 现代英语

Old English (from life syllable is short) Middle English Modern English

4. Why do we say that native words are the core of the English vocabulary?

Words of Angol-Saxon origin or of Old English are native words.

It should be mentioned that most native words in Modern English are monosyllabic. They form the great majority of basic word stock of English language. The basic word stock is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over a number of epochs. It also includes the most frequently used words that are essential to life.

5. What do you mean by literary and common words?

By level usage

(1) Common Words: Common or popular words are words connected with the ordinary things or activities necessary to everyday life. The great majority of English words are common words. The core od the common words is the basic word stock. They are stylistically neutral, and hence they are appropriate in both formal and informal writing and speech.

(2) Literary words: Literary words are chiefly used in writing, especially in books written in a more elevated style, in official documents, or in formal speeches. They are comparatively seldom used in ordinary conversation.

Chapter 2

1. Explain the following terms and provide example:

a. Morpheme

The smallest meaning linguistic unite of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.

b. Allomorph

An allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

c. Free and bound morphemes

A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning. It can exist on its own without a bound morpheme. A free morpheme is a word, in the traditional sense.

A bound morpheme cannot stand by itself as a complete ytterence; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound.

d. hybrid

A hybrid is a word made up od elements from two or more different language.

2. What are the differences between inflectional and derivational affixes?

Inflectional affixs( inflectional morphemes)

It doesnot form a new with lexical meaning when it is added to another word. Nor does change the word-class of athe word to which it is affixed. They have only their particular grammatical meaning, only be affixed to words of the same word-class.

Derivational affixes

They are so called because when they are added to another morphemes, they “derive” a new word. Many derivational affixes have a specific (independent ) lexical meaning, and also have affective meaning. Quite a number of other have more than one meaning.

3. In what two ways are derivational affixes classified?

4. How are words classified on the morphemic level?

(1) Simple words: those consisting of single morpheme,, such as man, work, kind.

(2) Derived words: those which are the result of a derivational process. Such words usually consist of a free morpheme and one bound morpheme, such as fruitless, fruitful.

(3) Compound words: those which are composed of two or more free morphemes, e.g.. :deep structure, spacesuit, forget-me-not, maid-of-all-work, and jack of all trades.

Chapter 3

1. Word-formation rules(造字规则)

The rules of word- information define the scope and methods whereby speakers of a language may creat new words; not all words which result from the application of the rule are acceptable; they are freely acceptable only when they have gained an institutional currency in the language.

2. Root, stem and base. Analyze the word denationalized into root, base and stem.

Root: A root is the basic unchangeable part of a word, and it can convey the main lexical meaning of the word.

Base: any form which affixes of any kind can be added (若是不能再加词缀就为root)

Stem: is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology, is the part of the word- form which remains when the inflectional affixes have been removed.

denotionalized→denational (stem, base) →nationalize(base) →national (root)

3. What are the relative criteria of a compound?

The relative criteria of a compound word suggested by linguists are as follow:

1) Orthographic criterion: Compound are written in various ways.(拼写标准)

Solid: airmail Hyphennated: air-conditioning Open: air force

2) Phonological criterion: Some linguists regard stress as the best criterion. （语音标准）

Single stress on the first element.

Main stress on the first element, secondary stress on the second element.

3) Semantic criterion: Many linguists have advocated a semantic criterion of a compound status.(语义标准)

Compounds can be said to have a meaning which may be related to but can not always be inferred from the meaning of its component parts.

4. What is derivation(派生)?

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. This definition does not consider combining forms, which are also indispensable to derivation. To be more exect, derivation may be defined as a process of forming new words by the addition of a word element, such as a prefix, suffix or combining form, to an already existing word.

5. What is the difference between prefixation and suffixation?

Prefixation: is the formation of new words by adding a prefix or combining form to the base. Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the base. They do not generally alter the word-class of the base; fair-unfair is a typical example.

Suffixation: is the formation of a new word by adding a suffix or a combining form to the base, and ususally changing the word-class of the base; for example, boy-boyish(adj.).

6. How can you form deverbal nouns, denominal nouns, deadjective verbs, and denominal adjectives by suffixation?

7. What is the difference between conversion and suffixation?

Suffixation: is the formation of a new word by adding a suffix or a combining form to the base, and ususally changing the word-class of the base; invade (v.) – invasion (n.)

Conversion: is a wordd-formation process whereby a word of a certain word-class in shifted into a word of another woerd-class without adding of an affix. Attrack (v.) – attrack (n.)

8. Why is the conversion from noun to verb the most productive process of conversion?

First, in contemporary English, there is a tendency of “ a preponderance of nouns over verbs”. This phenomenon can be shown by the large number of nouns among the new coinages.

Second, there are only a few verb-forming affixes in English. They are be-, en-, -ify, -ize and –en.

We might therefore expect more and more new verbs to be coined by means of conversion.

9. Why is the poor an example of partial conversion?

Partial conversion: Some adjectives are used as nouns when preceded by the definite article such as the poor, the wounded; yet these converted nouns take on only some of the features of the noun; i. e. they do not take plural and genitive inflections, nor can they be preceded by determiners like a , this, my, etc. Therefore, such adjective-noun conversion is partial.

Chapter 4

1. Explain the following terms and provide example:

1）Initialism(首字母缩略法)

Initialism is a type of shortening, using the first letters of words to form a proper name, a technical term, or a phase; an initialiam is pronounced letter by letter.

2）Acronym

Acronyms are words formed from the initial letter of the name of an organization or a scientific term, etc. acronyms differ from initialism inthat they are pronounced as words rather than as sequences of letters.

3) Blend

Blending is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining te meaning 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. news + broadcast (newsbroadcast)

4) Front and back clipping

The process of clipping involves the deletion of one or more syllables from a word (usually a noun) , which is also available in its full form.

The deletion may occur at the end of the word. This is the common type of clipping.(back clipping)example: dorm-dormitory

Front clipping occurs at the beginning of the word, bus-omnibus.

5) Back-formation

Back –formation is a term used to refer to a type of word-formation by which a shorter word is coined by the deletion of a supposed affix from a longer form already present in the language.

6）Reduplication

Reduplication is a minor type of word-formation by which a compound word is created by the repetion(1) of one word like go-go; (2) of two almost identical words with a change in the vowel’s such as ping-pong; (3) of two almost identical words with a change in the initial consonants, as in teenyweeny. Most reduplicatives are informal.

Chapter 5

1. How are the sound and meaning of most words related? Give examples to illustrate you point.

Most English words are conventional, arbitrary symbols; consequently, there is no intrinsic relation between the sound-symbol and its sence. There is no way to explain why this or that sound –symbol has this or that meaning beyong the fact that the people of a given community have agreed to use one to designate the other. House (English) maison (French) fangzi (China)

2. What do we mean by phonetic motivation? (the relationship between pronouncation and meaning)

Words motivated phonetically are called echoic words or onomatopoeic words, whose pronunciation suggests the meaning. They show a close relation of sound to sence, wherras non-echoic words do not show any such relationship.

3. What is meant by grammatical meaning?

Grammatical meaning consists of word-class and inflectional paradigm.

1) Word -classs

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