Types of meaning
Types of lexical changes
1.Elevation:词义升格
Definition: words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance
Some words early in their history signify something quite low or humble, but change as time goes by to designate something agreeable or pleasant.
For example: nice: ignorant---foolish---delightful, pleasant
Marshal: a keeper of horses---a high ranking army officer
So elevation refers that the meaning of word changes from the neutral/negative to positive.
2.Old English:It refers to the English starting from 450 to 1100 AD. The old
English is made up of different sources of languages spoken then –that of Anglo-Saxons, that of Celts, and that of Jutes, with a lot of Latin elements used for common peopl e’s life.
3.Bound morpheme:
It is the smallest unit of grammar, a unit which cannot occur as separate words. They have no independent semantic meaning; instead, they have:
Attached meaning E.g. un-kind, hope-ful
Grammatical meaning E.g. cat-s, slow-ly, walk-ing, call-ed
For an exact example, in the word “careful”, care is free morpheme, “-ful” is a bound morpheme.
4.Hyponymy:
Hyponymy deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion, or to say, the relationship between general lexical items and specific lexical items. That is to say, when X is a kind of Y, the lower term X is the“hyponym”, and the upper term Y is the “superordinate”. For example, “fiction”is the superordinate of “novel”, “novelette”and “short story”, which are the hyponyms of “fiction”.
Knowing the semantic features of the hyponyms and their superordinates can help us achieve vividness, exactness, and concreteness in expression.
5.Collocation:
Collocation is the habitual juxtaposition of linearly arranged words which occurs multiple times to become set expressions.Collocations have four features:
They are non-arbitrary and predictable. For example, we can say “have tea” but not “have engine oil”
They are stable and rigid. Collocations are strong enough to exclude other synonymous words. For example, we can say “strong wind and heavy rain” but not “strong rain and heavy wind”.
They are culturally-loaded. Collocation reflects the English culture and cultural heritage, such as “the Trojan horse” and “Pandora’s box”.
They are Language-specific.
Collocations can be classified into: (in terms of collocational strength.)
weak collocations, (collocations that have a wide variety of collocates. Collocational range is wide.E.g. white/red/green/long/small shirt)
strong collocations,(Collocations are strong but not unique.E.g. moved to tears) frozen collocations (Collocations that are fixed and irreplaceable, E.g. foot the bill *foot the coffee)
Collocations are non-arbitrary, which means that they are motivated. There are four kinds of motivations:
Grammatical motivation, (Collocations serve particular grammatical functions in certain grammatical structures.)
Semantic motivation, (The meaning of the collocation depends on the collocated components.)
Pragmatic motivation, (Collocations are pragmatically driven and pragmatically shaped. E.g.Buckle up, keep space, )
Cognitive motivation. (Metaphorical expression beyond literal interpretation.
E.g. red-carpet treatment, political honeymoon, bubble economy, soft landing)
Collocation is one important aspect of vocabulary development.
It offers the most natural way of language use.
It provides alternative ways of language use, which may be more colorful, expressive or precise.
It helps to improve the style in writing.
6.Morpheme:
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. Morpheme can be lexical or grammatical.
A free morpheme has complete meaning and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences.
A bound morpheme cannot occur as separate words. They are bound to other morphemes to form words.
An inflectional morpheme is a morpheme that is used to inflect a word. e.g. white can be inflected with the morphemes -r (whiter) and -est (whitest)
A derivational morpheme is a morpheme that is used to create derivations of words. e.g. white can form the derivation whiten by adding the -n morpheme.
7.Stylistic meaning:
Apart from their conceptual meanings, many words have stylistic features, which make them appropriate for different contexts. These distinctive features form stylistic meaning of words. In some dictionaries ,these stylistic features are clearly marked as “formal”, “informal”, “ literary”, “archaic”, “slang” and so on. This stylistic difference is especially true of synonyms. It is observed that there are few words which have both the same conceptual meaning and the stylistic meaning.
8.Analogy:
Analogy refers to the process by which words or phrases are created or re-formed according to the existing patterns in the language.
E.g. youthquake, airbag, earthrise
earthquake, handbag, sunrise
https://www.doczj.com/doc/186532838.html,pounding:
It is a type of word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit, a compound word. It is also a productive device at every period of the English language. Forms of compounds are solid, hyphenated, open. According to the grammatical property, there are three types of compounds: noun compounds, adjective compounds, verb compounds. For instance, sleeping-bag= sleeping + bag (the bag for sleeping).
Today the largest number of new words are formed by compounding.
10.Word:
A word is defined as a minimum free form of language with a unity of sound and meaning, capable of preforming a given syntactic function. A word contains three elements: form, structural function and meaning. Broadly speaking, all the words in a language together constitute what is known as vocabulary. It is very important to a language.Without words, nothing can be conveyed.
11.Superordinate: in the case of hyponymy, superordinate is the upper word standing for the
totality or the group. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate.
12.Subordinate: in the case of hyponymy, subordinate is the lower word standing for a
member of the group.
13.Semantic components: They are the features in a word as far as its concept is concerned.
Father –a word with the conceptual features of “adult”, “male”, “humanity”, and “animate”.
All the 4 features are its semantic components.
14.Derivation:
Derivation is the formation of word by adding word-forming or derivational affixes to stems. For example, when the verb “care”add a suffixe “-ful”, a new word ”careful” is formed.
This process is also known as affixation. New words formed in this way are called derivatives. According to the position affixes occupy in words, affixation falls into two subcategories: prefixation and suffixation.
15.Inflection:The process of changing word form for the sake of grammaticality, without
changing its meaning.
16.Back formation:
Backformation is a process of word-formation by which a word is created by the deletion of a supposed suffix from a longer form already present in the language. It is also called reverse derivation. The process of word-formation by changing from one form into another for m, as in “edit” from “editor”(initial word).
17.Connotative meaning:
For people with different cultural backgrounds, a word might evoke different associations.
It is the extended meaning of a word. When a word is enlarged in meaning, its meaning is no longe r limited to the original sense. For instance, “torch” in certain context indicates the hope or the ambition/spirit based on its original sense.
The connotative meaning of a word refers to the feeling that a word invokes. This differs from its dictionary definition, which is called its "denotative" meaning. Two words can have similar denotations but very different connotations. For example, the words "miserly" and "thrifty" are both adjectives that describe a person who goes to certain lengths to save money. However, "miserly" has strong negative connotations, while "thrifty" evokes positive feelings in a reader.
18.Affective meaning:the meaning of a word as decided by the person who uses it with
his/her personal emotion. Positive or negative sense belongs to affective meaning.
It refers to the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thing in question. You may address sb as an “idiot” to convey your despise, or describe sth as “marvelous”to express your positive evalution. This meaning can be conveyed into three types by the choice of words: commendatory, derogatory and neutral.
Extension:
It is a process by which a word which originally had a specialized meaning has now become generalized, or has extended to cover a broader and often less definite concept.
For example, the original meaning of manuscript is the handwriting( writing by hand only), but nowadays, it refers to any author’s writing whether written by hand or typed with a type-writer or a word-processor
A large proportion of polysemic words of modern English have their meanings extended in the course of development.
19.Degradation:
It is a process whereby words of good origin or affective neutrality fall into ill reputation or come to be used in a derogatory sense. It is the reverse of elevation.
For example, “sad” formerly refers to full, satisfied, but now comes to be described “sorrowful”.
20.Specialization: the meaning is limited and reduced to certain sense. It is also called
“narrowing”.
《英语词汇学教程》参考答案 Chapter 1 1. The three definitions agree that lexicology studies words. Yet, they have different focuses. Definition 1 focuses on the meaning and uses of words, while definition 2 on the overall structure and history. Definition 3 regards lexicology as a branch of linguistics and focuses on the semantic structure of the lexicon. It is interesting to note that the three definitions use different names for the object of study. For Definition 1, it is words, for Definition 2 the vocabulary of a language, and for Definition 3 the lexicon. 2. (1) They can go into the room, and if they like, shut the door. (2) You boys are required to give in your homework before 10 o’clock. (3) I watch the football match happily and find it very interesting. 3. (1) W hen it follows ‘-t’ and ‘-d’, it is pronounced as [id]; (2) When it follows voiceless consonants, it is pronounced as [t]; (3) When it follows voiced consonants and vowels, it is pronounced as [d]. 4. (1) They are words that can be included in a semantic field of “tree”. (2) They represent the forms of the verb “fly” and have a common meaning. (3) They belong to a lexical field of “telephone communication”. (4) They are synonyms, related to human visual perception. Specifically, they denote various kinds of “looking”. 5. (a) 'blackboard: a board with a dark smooth surface, used in schools for writing with chalk (the primary stress in on black); 'blackbird: a particular kind of bird, which may not necessarily be black in color (the primary stress in on black); 'greyhound: a slender, swift dog with keen sight (the primary stress in on black); 'White House: the residence of the US President in Washington (the primary stress in on black). (b) 'black 'board: any board which is black in color (both words receive primary stress); 'black 'bird: any bird which is black in color (both words receive primary stress); 'grey 'hound: any hound that is grey in color (both words receive primary stress); 'white 'house: any house that is painted white (both words receive primary stress). 6. There are 44 orthographic words, i.e. sequences of letters bounded by space. There are 24 open class words and 20 closed class words. 7. (a) The ‘bull’ is literal, referring to a male bovine animal. (b) ‘Take the bull by the horn’is an idiom, meaning (having the courage to) deal with someone or something directly. (c) ‘Like a bull in a china shop’is an idiom, meaning doing something with too much enthusiasm or too quickly or carelessly in a way that may damage things or upset someone.
《英语词汇学教程》（2004 年版）练习答案 Chapter 1 7. Choose the standard meaning from the list on the right to match each of the slang words on the left. a. tart: loose woman b. bloke: fellow c. gat: pistol d. swell: great e. chicken: coward f. blue: fight g. smoky: police h. full: drunk i. dame: woman j. beaver: girl 8. Give the modern equivalents for the following archaic words. haply = perhaps albeit = although methinks = it seems to me eke = also sooth = truth morn = morning troth = pledge ere = before quoth = said hallowed = holy billow = wave / the sea bade = bid 12. Categorize the following borrowed words into denizens, aliens, translation loans, and semantic loans. Denizens: kettle, die, wall, skirt, husband Aliens: confrere, pro patria, Wunderkind, mikado, parvenu Translation loans: chopstick, typhoon, black humour, long time no see Semantic loans: dream Chapter 2 1. Why should students of English lexicology study the Indo-European Language Family? The Indo-European Language Family is one of the most important language families in the world. It is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the Near East and India. English belongs to this family and the other members of the Indo-European have more or less influence on English vocabulary. Knowledge of the Indo-European Language Family will help us understand English words better and use them more appropriately. 2. Make a tree diagram to show the family relations of the modern languages given below.
Compounding is a process of word formation by which two independent words are put together to make one word. The word formed in this way is called compound Blending is a process of word formation by which a word is created by combining parts of other words. Words formed in this way are called blends. From morphological viewpoints, there are four types of blending: Acronymy is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names of social and political organizations or special noun phrases and technical terms. Words formed in this way are called initialisms or acronyms, depending on the pronunciation of the words. Initialisms are words formed by the initial letters of words and pronounced as lettersEEC: European Economic Community Acronyms are words formed by the initial letters of words and pronounced as words:OPEC: Organisation of Petroleum Export Countries According to Leonard Bloomfield’s point of view, a word is a minimum free form, that is to say, the smallest form that may appear in isolation. There are two types of linguistic forms: one is the bound form, the other is the free form. A bound form is one which cannot occur on its own as a separate word, e.g. the various affixes: de-, -tion, -ize, etc. A free form is one which can occur as a separate word. For example, the word lovely contains the free form love and the suffix –ly. The suffix –ly in the word lovely, of course, i s not a free for m, because it cannot stand by itself. So we call it a bound form. A word is a minimum free form The morpheme can be considered as the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words. 1)Morphemes are commonly classified into two forms according to their character: one is free form, and the other is bound form. 2)Free morphemes自由词素are morphemes which can occur as separate words. That is to say, a free morpheme can stand alone as a word. 3)Bound morphemes粘着词素are morphemes which cannot stand alone as words. They are mainly affixes. That is to say, a bound morpheme is one that must appear with at least one other morpheme, bound or free in a word. 4)2) Morphemes may be classified into two categories according to their lexical and grammatical relationships: 5)lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemesLexical morphemes are morphemes used for the construction of new words as in compound words Grammatical morphemes are morphemes used to express grammatical relationships between a word and its context, such as plurality or past tense There are three types of words according to morphology:Simple words,Compound words,Complex words Conversion Conversion is a main type of word-formation assigning the base to a different word
第一章word 1.Word --- A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic funtion. 第三章formation 1 1. Morpheme --- A morpheme is the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words. 2. Allomorph --- Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph according to their position in a word. Such alternative morphs are know as allomorphs. 3. Free morphemes (Free root) --- They are morphemes which are independent of other morphemes. 4. Bound Morphemes --- They are morphemes which cannot occur as separate words. 5. Bound root --- A bound root is that part of the word that carries the fundamental meaning just like a free root. Unlike a free root, it is a bound form and has to combine with other morphemes to make words. 6. Affixes --- Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. 7. Inflectional affixes --- Affixes attaches to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are known as inflectional morphemes. 8. Derivational affixes --- Derivational affixes are affixes added to other morphemes to create new words. 9. Prefixes --- Prefixes are affixes that come before the word. 10. Suffixes --- suffixes are affixes that come after the word. 11. Roo t --- A root is the basic form of a word which cannot be further analysed without total loss of identity. 12. Stem --- a stem can be defined as a form to which affixes of any kind can be added. 第四章formation 2 1. Affixation --- affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding word-forming or derivational affixes to stems. 2. Prefixation --- is the formation of new words by adding prefixes to stems. Suffixation--- is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to stems. 3. Compounding（Compositon）-- is the formation of new words by joining two or more stems. 4. Conversion-- is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class. 5. Blending-- is the formation of new words by combined by parts of two words or a word plus a plus a part of another word. 6. Clipping- is the formation of new words by shortening a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using what remain instead.
《英语词汇学教程》参考答案 (注：参考答案仅供参考。有些题目的答案并非是唯一的) Chapter 1 1. The three definitions agree that lexicology studies words. Yet, they have different focuses. Definition 1 focuses on the meaning and uses of words, while definition 2 on the overall structure and history. Definition 3 regards lexicology as a branch of linguistics and focuses on the semantic structure of the lexicon. It is interesting to note that the three definitions use different names for the object of study. For Definition 1, it is words, for Definition 2 the vocabulary of a language, and for Definition 3 the lexicon. 2. (1) They can go into the room, and if they like, shut the door. (2) You boys are required to give in your homework before 10 o’clock. (3) I watch the football match happily and find it very interesting. 3. (1) when it follows ‘-t’ and ‘-d’, it is pronounced as [id]; (2) when it follows voiceless consonants, it is pronounced as [t]; (3) when it follows voiced consonants and vowels, it is pronounced as [d]. 4. (1)They are words that can be included in a semantic field of “tree”.
《英语词汇学教程》（2004年版）练习答案 【Chapter 1】 7．tart: loose woman bloke: fellow gat: pistol swell: great chicken: coward blue: fight smoky: police full: drunk dame: woman beaver: girl 8. haply = perhaps albeit = although methinks = it seems to me eke = also sooth = truth morn = morning troth = pledge ere = before quoth = said hallowed = holy billow = wave/ the sea bade = bid 【Chapter 2】 Ex.1 The Indo-European Language Family is one of the most important language families in the world. It is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the Near East and India. English belongs to this family and the other members of the Indo-European have more or less influence on English vocabulary. A knowledge of the Indo-European Language Family will help us understand English words better and use them more appropriately. 2. Indo-European Language Family Balto-Slavic Indo-Iranian Celtic Italian Hellenic Germanic
试题三 第一部分选择题 I. Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement and put the letter in the bracket.(30%) 1.According to the degree of similarity, homonyms can be classified into ( ) A. perfect homonyms B. homonyms C. homophones D. all the above 2.Transfer as a mode of semantic change can be illustrated by the example ( ) A. ad for “advertisement” B. dish for “food" C. fond for “affectionate” D. an editorial for “an editorial article" 3.It is a general belief that the meaning does not exist in the word itself, but it rather spreads over ( ) A. the reader’s interpretation B. the neighbouring words C. the writer's intention D. the etymology of the word 4.Which of the following is a prefix of time and order? A. extra- B. pro- C. re- D. semi- 5.Which of the following dictionaries is not a specialized dictionary? A. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology B. Chamber's Encyclopedic English Dictionary C. Longmont Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs D. Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms 6.Which of the following statements is Not true? A. Reference is the relationship between language and the world. B. The relationship between a word and its referent is arbitrary. C. Concept is universal to all men alike. D. Sense denotes the relationships outside the language. 7.The words which occur before or after a word and may affect its meaning form ( ) A. physical context B. grammatical context C. lexical context D. linguistic context 8."Smith is an architect. He designed World Trade Center. "The clue provided in the context is ( ) A. definition B. explanation C. example D. hyponym 9.The term "vocabulary" is used in different ways because of all the following reasons EXCEPT that ( ) A. it can refer to the common core of a language B. it can refer to the total number of the words in a language C. it can represent all the words used in a certain historical period D. it can stand for words in given dialect or field 10.The idiom "a dark horse" is a ( ) A. simile B. metaphor
Types of meaning Types of lexical changes 1.Elevation:词义升格 Definition: words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance Some words early in their history signify something quite low or humble, but change as time goes by to designate something agreeable or pleasant. For example: nice: ignorant---foolish---delightful, pleasant Marshal: a keeper of horses---a high ranking army officer So elevation refers that the meaning of word changes from the neutral/negative to positive. 2.Old English:It refers to the English starting from 450 to 1100 AD. The old English is made up of different sources of languages spoken then –that of Anglo-Saxons, that of Celts, and that of Jutes, with a lot of Latin elements used for common peopl e’s life. 3.Bound morpheme: It is the smallest unit of grammar, a unit which cannot occur as separate words. They have no independent semantic meaning; instead, they have: Attached meaning E.g. un-kind, hope-ful Grammatical meaning E.g. cat-s, slow-ly, walk-ing, call-ed For an exact example, in the word “careful”, care is free morpheme, “-ful” is a bound morpheme. 4.Hyponymy: Hyponymy deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion, or to say, the relationship between general lexical items and specific lexical items. That is to say, when X is a kind of Y, the lower term X is the“hyponym”, and the upper term Y is the “superordinate”. For example, “fiction”is the superordinate of “novel”, “novelette”and “short story”, which are the hyponyms of “fiction”. Knowing the semantic features of the hyponyms and their superordinates can help us achieve vividness, exactness, and concreteness in expression.
试题二 第一部分选择题 I. Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers Choose the one that would best complete the statement and put the letter in the bracket（30％） 1. Degradation can be illustrated by the following example A. lewd → ignoran t B. silly → foolish C. last → pleasure D. knave → boy 2. Homophones are often employed to create puns for desired effects of: A. humour B. sarcasm C. ridicule D. all the above 3. The four major modes of semantic change are _____. A. extension, narrowing, elevation and degradation B. extension, generalization, elevation and degradation C. extension, narrowing, specialization and degradation D. extension, elevation, amelioration and degradation 4. The use of one name for that of another associated with it is rhetorically called _____. A. synecdoche B. metonymy C. substitution D. metaphor 5. Idioms adjectival in nature function as _____. A. adjectives B. attributes C. modifiers D. words 6. Grammatical context refers to _____ in which a word is used. A. vocabulary B. grammar C. semantic pattern D. syntactic structure 7. In the idiom 'in good feather', we change 'good' into 'high, full' without changing meaning. This change of constituent is known as _____ . A. addition B. replacement C. position-shifting D. variation 8. The word "laconic" is _____. A. onomatopoeically motivated B. morphologically motivated
《词汇学》名词解释总汇 1.Conversion（转换）is a word-formation whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another without the addition of an affix. It is also called zero derivation. 2.Neologisms（新词用法）are newly coined words or words that are given new meaning to fit new situation because of social, economic, political, cultural, scientific and technological changes in human society. 3.Lexicology（词汇学）is a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the vocabulary of a given language. It deals with words, their origin, development, structure, formation, meaning and usage. 4.the elevation of meaning（词义的升格）refers to the process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance. 5.Acronyms（首字母拼音词）words formed from the initial letters of words and pronounced as words. They differ from initialisms in that they are pronounced as words rather than as sequences of letters. 6.Hyponymy(上下义关系)deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion. It refers to the relationship which obtains between the genus (general lexical item)and the species(specific lexical items). 7.Analogy（类比）is a process by which words or phrases are created or re-formed according to the existing patterns in the language. 8.Motivation（理据）deals with the connection between name (word-symbol) and its sense (meaning). It is the relationship between the word structure and its meaning. 9.Metaphor（隐喻）is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison. It is a simile without like or as. 10.Antonymy(反义关系)is concerned with semantic opposition. It can be defined as words which are opposite in meaning. 11.Suffix（后缀）: an affix attached to the end of a base (root or stem) 12. synecdoche（提喻）means using a part for a whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or vice versa, the whole for a part. 13. prefix（前缀）: an affix attached to the beginning of a base (root or stem) 14. initialism（首字母连写词）: a type of shortening, using the first letters of words to form a proper name, a technical term, or a phrase; it is pronounced letter by letter. 15.morpheme(词素): the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language, not dividable or analyzable into smaller forms. 16.the degradation of meaning（词义的降格）: is the opposite of semantic elevation. It is a process whereby words of good origin fall into ill reputation or non-affective words come to be used in derogatory sense. 17.Derivational affixes (派生词缀)Affixes added to other morphemes to create new words. They can be further divided into prefixes and suffixes。 18. back-formation（逆成法）: is a process of word-formation by which a word is created by the deletion of a supposed suffix. It is also known as a reverse derivation. 19. derivation（派生）: the process by which noninfectional affixes are added to roots to form words. 20. compounding（复合）: the process of joining together two linguistic forms which can function independently.