英语词汇学知识点.docx

1、英语词汇学知识点English Lexicology: A CoursebookChapter 1 Lexicology and WordsKnowledge Points:1. Lexicology is the study of the vocabulary or lexicon of a given language.2. Morphology is the study of the forms of words and their components.3. The major purpose of study in morphology is to look at morphemes

2、 and their arrangements in word formation.4. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language. Morphemes may constitute words or parts of words.5. Semantics is defined as the study of meaning. 6. Generally speaking, semantics focuses on: 1) the meaning of words;2) the meaning of utterances in co

3、ntext;3) the meaning of sentences;4) meaning relations between sentences;5) meaning relations that are internal to the vocabulary of a language.7. Etymology is the study of the whole history of words.8. Word is used traditionally to refer to a sequence of letters bounded by spaces.9. The term word i

4、s also used to refer to an intermediate structure smaller than a whole phrase and yet generally larger than a single sound segment.10. Major features of Words1) A word is a sound or combination of sounds which we make voluntarily with our vocal equipment.2) A word is symbolic and is used to stand fo

5、r something else.3) The word is an uninterruptible unit.4) A word has to do with its social function.5) A word may consist of one or more morphemes.6) Words are part of the large communication system we call language.7) A word occurs typically in the structure of phrases. 11. In traditional grammar,

6、 eight parts of speech are distinguished in English: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. 12. Words can also be classified into lexical words and grammatical words.13. Generally speaking, lexical words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. 14. The

7、lexical words can be used (functions): 1) to represent our experience of the word;2) to refer to persons, places, things and concepts (e.g. the nouns Smith, London, pineapple, unity);3) to describe qualities and properties (e.g. the adjectives excellent, kind, high);4) to represent actions, processe

8、s or states (e.g. the verbs jump, bite, stay); 5) to describe circumstances like manner (e.g. the adverbs kindly, slowly, cheerfully).Furthermore, lexical words have their own content meanings and may be meaningful when used alone. E.g. book and house have their own content meanings. 15. Grammatical

9、 words are words like pronouns, prepositions, demonstrative, determiners, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and son on.16. Semantic or lexical field: A semantic field contains words that belong to defined area of meaning. Crystal (1995) defines a semantic field as a named area of meaning in which lexem

10、es interrelated and define each other in specific ways.Chapter 2 Some Basic Concepts and Word MeaningsKnowledge Points:1. Morphemes are the ultimate grammatical constituents, the smallest meaningful units of language. 2. Features of morpheme:1) A morpheme may be a complete word. E.g. the, fierce, de

11、sk, eat, boot, at, fee, mosquito cannot be divided up into smaller units that are meaningful themselves. 2) A morpheme may also be a word form such as an affix. e.g. able, in-, -hood. 3) A morpheme may be a combining form. e.g. bio-, geo, pre-. 3. Phonemes are the smallest working units of sound per

12、 se, and they build up into morphemes.4. Lexeme: Lexeme or lexical item is regarded as a unit of lexical meaning, which exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain. Lexeme is considered an abstract linguistic unit with different variants (e.g. sing

13、 as against sang, sung). 5. Morph: Any concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance is called a morph. It is a physical form representing some morphemes in a language. 6. Allomorphs: Morphs which are different representations of the same morpheme are referred to as allomorphs of that morp

14、heme.7. Morphemes can be classified into bound morphemes and free morphemes.8. Bound morphemes must be joined to other morphemes. e.g. the suffix dom, is a bound morpheme. 9. Free morphemes need not be attached to other morphemes and can occur by themselves as individual words. e.g. cat, chair, farm

15、, and bug are free morpheme. 10. Morphemes may also be classified into derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.11. Denotation: Denotation of a lexeme is the relationship that holds between that lexeme and persons, things, places, properties, processes and activities external to the languag

16、e system. 12. Reference: The relationship of reference holds between an expression and what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance.13. Sense: Sense is a relationship between the words or expressions of a single language, independently of the relationship, if any, which h

17、olds between those words or expressions and their referents.14. Leech (1981) distinguishes seven types of meaning in language: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, and thematic meaning.15. Conceptual meaning, which is som

18、etimes called denotative or cognitive meaning, refers to meanings as presented in a dictionary.16. Connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content.17. Social meaning refers to the kind of meaning a piece of

19、language conveys about the social circumstances of its use.18. Affective meaning can be used to cover the attitudinal and emotional factors expressed in a word.19. Reflected meaning is the meaning which arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our respon

20、se to another sense.20. Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. 21. Thematic meaning is what communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the massage, in terms of ordering, focus, a

21、nd emphasis.22. Stem: The word to which affixes are added and which carries the basic meaning of the resulting complex word is known as the stem.23. Root: A stem consisting of a single morpheme is labeled as root. For, example, walk is a root and it appears in the set of word-forms that instantiate

22、the lexeme walk such as walk, walks, walking and walked.24. Free morpheme: Roots which are capable of standing independently are called free morphemes. Single words like man, book, tea, sweet, cook are the smallest free morphemes capable of occurring independently.25. Bound morpheme: some roots are

23、incapable of occurring independently. They always occur with some other word-building element attached to them. Such roots are called bound morphemes, like mit in permit, remit, commit, admit, and ceive in perceive, receive, conceive.26. Base: A base is a lexical item to which affixes of any kind ca

24、n be added. The affixes attached to a base. In other words, all roots are bases.27. Affix: A root or stem can be attached with an affix. Affixes are morphemes which only occur when attached to other morphemes. By definition affixes are bound morphemes.28. Three types of affixes: prefix, suffix and i

25、nfix. 1) prefix: A prefix is an affix attached before a root (or stem or base) like re-, un- and in-, as in re-make, un-kind, in-decent. 2) suffix: A suffix is an affix attached after a root (or stem or base) like -ly, -er, -ist, and -ed, as in kind-ly, wait-er, interest-ing, interest-ed. 3) infix:

26、An infix is an affix inserted into the root itself. According to Katamba (1993), infixes are very common in semitic language like Arabic and Hebrew.29. Other types of affixes: inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. 1) Inflectional affixes are used for syntactic reasons to indicate number, te

27、nse, case, and so on. 2) derivational affixes can alter the meaning or grammatical category of the base.30. Polysemy: Polysemy refers to the situation in which a word has two or more different meanings. For instance, the noun bank is said to be polysemous because it may mean: (1) a financial institu

28、tion that people or businesses can keep their money in or borrow money from;(2) a raised area of land along the side of a river;(3) a large number of things in a row, especially pieces of equipment.31. Features of polysemy:1) The concept of polysemy is complex and involves a certain number of proble

29、ms. As mentioned by Jackson and Amvela (2000), we cannot determine exactly how many meanings a polysemous word has, as a word may have both a literal meaning and one or more transferred meanings. 2) The is no clear criterion for either difference or sameness of meaning. 3) It difficult to distinguis

30、h between polysemy (i.e. one word with several meanings) and homonymy (i. e. several words with the same shapespelling and/or pronunciation). 4) Polysemy is an essential condition for its efficiency.32. Homonymy: Homonymy refers to a situation in which there are two or more words with the same shape

31、.33. Tow types of homonyms (Jackson and Amvela, 2000): homograph and homophone 1) homograph: Homograph refers to a word which is spelt the same as another word but has a different meaning and sometimes a different pronunciation. For example, lead (metal) and lead (dogs lead) are spelt the same but p

32、ronounced differently. 2) homophone: Homophone refers to a word that sounds the same as another word but ahs its own spelling, meaning and origin. For example, right, rite and write are spelt differently but pronounced the same.34. Features of homonymy: 1) There are cases in which two homonyms with totally different meanings may both make sense in the same utterance. 2) Spelling will often help to differentiate between words with are identical in sound. 3) Writing conventions can help remove