词汇学复习重点.doc

3 Word-formation:Addition of prefix or suffix to a given word;Provide full forms and Chinese equivalent for some acronyms and initialism:BBC: British Broadcasting CorporationVIP: a very important personNATO: North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationOPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting CountriesUNESCO: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationSALT: Strategic Arms Limitation TalksTEFL: teaching English as a foreign languageSHAPE: Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in EuropeGMT: Greenwich Mean TimePOW: Prisoner of WarASEAN: Association of South-east Asia NationsEEC: European Economic CommunityEPA: Environmental Protection AgencyCIA: the Central Intelligence Agency of the USIOC: International Olympic CommitteeUN: the United Nations6 Term definition:Aliens: referring to words borrowed from a foreign language without any change of the foreign sound and spelling, which are easily recognizable as foreign in origin. E.g. French borrowing: resume.Denizens: referring to foreign words which have been conformed to native English in accent, spelling and even in adoption of an English affix. E.g. French borrowing: uncertain, faultless.Radiation: is a semantic process leading to polysemy in which the primary or central meaning stands at the center while secondary meanings radiate from it in every direction like ray. E.g. “power” has the meaning (1)ability to do or act (2)energy (3)influential person, body, or thing(4)governmentConcatenation: is a semantic process leading to polysemy in which the meaning of the word moves gradually away from its first sense by successive shifts, like the links of a chain, until there is no connection between the sense that is finally developed and the primary meaning. E.g. “board” originally means a piece of timber, but after shifts it has a meaning of ”company”, which has no connection with “a piece of timber”.Homonymy: In English, many pairs or groups of words, though different in meaning, are pronounced alike (homophone), or spelled alike (homograph), or both (perfect homonyms).Morpheme: the smallest meaningful linguistics unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms. E.g. nation Allomorph: any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds. E.g. ion/-tion/-sion/-ation are the variant forms of the same suffix.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. E.g. unexpectedComposition (compounding): is a word-formation consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit. E.g. flashlight, sunriseBlend: is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings 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. brunch, newscast.Root: that part of a word structure which is left when all the affixes have been removed. A root is the basic unchangeable part of a word, and it conveys the main lexical meaning of a word. E.g. in the word undesirable, the root is desire.Stem: it is the part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed. E.g. in the word undesirable, the stem is undesirable; in the word desired, the stem is desire.Hybrid: referring to words formed from elements of two or more different language.Complementaries: a type of binary semantic opposition. “The assertion of one of the items implies the denial of the other”. The complementary pair is actually an either/or contrast. E.g. alive-dead, single-marriedConversives: a type of binary opposition. “There is an interdependence of meaning, such that one member of the pair presupposes the other member”. E.g. lend-borrow, husband-wifeRestriction (narrowing of meaning): it means a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower sense, in which it is applicable only to some of the objects it had previously denoted, or a word of wide usage is restricted in its application and comes to be used in a specialized sense. E.g. stink-stenchElevation: the opposite of degeneration, it is a process in which a word meaning takes a turn for the better in the course of the time, and has either risen from a “snarl” word to a “purr” word, or from a slang word to a common term. E.g. pioneerSemantic field: it took the view that the vocabulary of a language is not simply a listing of independent items, but is organized into areas of fields, within which words interrelate and define each other in various ways. And the members within the field are joined together by some common semantic component. And the members are not synonymous. E.g. the concept of colorSnarl words: some words (like scholar, masterpiece and generous)are used not as a mere statement of fact, but to express the speakers approval of the person or thing he is talking about. They are purr words.Purr words: words like gang, niggardly, and to boast show disapproval or contempt on the part of the speaker. They are snarl words.7 Question-answering:1. Explain the different types of sense relations of the English words in terms of Componential Analysis;(1) synonymy refers to different lexical items having the same meaning.Two words are synonymous if they contain all the semantic features.E.g. mother and female parent:+Human+Adult-Male+Married(2) polysemy refers to the sense relation in which one lexical item has more than one definition. E.g. “man”Man differs from animals in that he can speak and think.+HumanGenerally, a man is taller than a woman.+Human +Male+AdultThey are declared man and wife.+Human+Male+Adult+Married(3) antonymy stands for “oppositeness of meaning”.Two words are antonymous if the two semantic formulae of the two words contain a pair of contrasting semantic features.E.g. father ,mother:+Human+Adult+Male+Married+Parent +Human+Adult-Male+Married+Parent(4) hyponymy refers to the relationship which obtain between general and specific lexical items(between the genus and the species).This relationship exists between two meanings if one componential formula contains all the features present in the other formula.E.g.+Human+Adult-Male+Married+ParentHuman beings ,adult human beings ,woman, wife ,mother2. The main types of the lexical meanings of English words; denotative meaning(认知意义): also called conceptual/cognitive meaning, involving the relationship between a linguistic unit and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers. E.g. “woman”: its denotative meaning is “female adult human being” connotative meaning (内涵意义): referring to the emotional association which a word or a phrase suggests in ones mind, and it is the supplementary value to the denotative meaning of a word E.g. Tom is a pig stylistic meaning(文体意义): Anyone should adjust his language so as to make it appropriate in various situations in terms of the four aspects:1 the social relationship; 2 the occasion; 3 the subject matter; 4 the mode of discourse. affective meaning(情感意义): shows the speakers feeling and attitudes, using some interjections. Bias words include Purr words and Snarl words. E.g. Jane is an angel of a girl. reflected meaning(联想意义): when we hear or read a word, we may at once think of or reflect some other things. collocative meaning(搭配意义) : is shown by the words collocation with other words, esp. for the polysemic words. E.g. John is a man of sense. thematic meaning(主题意义): is expressed by word order and different kinds of emphatic ways. E.g. Mr. Smith donated the first prize.(the theme is what didi Mr. Smith donate?)3. Generalize the four tendencies in semantic change:A. wife, starve, success, stenchThis column is specialization(restriction/narrowing of meaning). a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower sense, or a word of wide usage is restricted in its application and comes to be used only in a specialized sense. (stinkstench (臭); wife)B. salary, bird, plant, thingThis column is generalization(extension of meaning). - the opposite of restriction, the widening of a words sense until it covers much more than what it originally conveyed. (bird, holiday)C. lovely, accident, silly, knaveThis column is pejoration(degeneration/degradation of meaning). a. the falling of a word meaning into disrepute for one reason or another. Words once respectable or neutral may shift to a less respectable, or even derogatory meaning. (accident, silly, villain) b. the gradual extension to so many senses that any particular meaning which a word may have had is completely lost. (lovely)D. marshal, minister, job, fondThis column is amelioration(elevation of meaning). the opposite of degeneration, it is a process in which a word meaning takes a turn for the better in the course of time, and has either risen from a “snarl” word to a “purr” word, or from a slang word to a common term. (pioneer, marshal, minister, job)4. What roles can context play in the determination of the exact meaning of English words?1. Context: In its narrowest sense, context consists of the lexical items that come immediately before and after any word in an act of communication. Context may cover the whole passage and sometimes the whole book in which a word occurs. In some cases, context even covers the entire social or cultural setting.2. 2 Types: 1 linguistic contexts: 1) lexical contexts. referring to the lexical items combined with a given polysemic word. 2) syntactic/grammatical context. The syntactic structure of the context determines various individual meanings of a polysemic word. “get” (Textbook).And the meaning of a word often has to be determined by the lexical and the grammatical contexts combined 3) Verbal context. It covers an entire passage, or even an entire book. 2 extra-linguistic context/context of situation. 1) the actual speech situation in which a word (or an utterance, or a speech event) occurs. 2) The entire cultural background against which a word, an utterance or a speech event has to be set. 3. Roles: 1. Eliminating ambiguities 1). Lexical ambiguity due to polysemy 2). Syntactic/Grammatical/Structural ambiguity-arising from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase. 3). Phonological ambiguity 2. Conveying emotional overtones 3. Indicating referents and the range of the meaning of a word5. Classify English words by different criteria; By origin: native word and loan words By level of usage: 1).common words 2).literary words 3).colloquial words 4).slang words 5).technical wordsBy notion: 1).Function words 2).Content wordsBy morphemic level: 1). Simple words 2).Derived words 3).Compound words6. Explain the relationship between the word forms /sounds and its meaning;Two schools:(1) the conventionalists:the relations between sound and meaning are conventional and arbitrary. They are well-established in peoples linguistic communication. Its a kind of linguistic social contract.the naturalists:there exists an intrinsic correspondence(a natural connection) between sound and sense.They have argued that the origin of language lies in onomatopoeia, that people began talking by creating iconic sighs to imitate the sounds heard around them in