Basic Concepts of Words and VocabularyWhat is lexicology?☐Lexicology 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. In short, it is the study of the signification and application of words.What Is a Word?A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function.词是具有一定的声音、意义和语法功能，能独立运用的最小的语言单位。
What is vocabulary?➢The total number of the words in a language.➢All the words used in a particular historical period.➢All the words of a given dialect, a given book, a given discipline and the words possessed by an individual person.Vocabulary Size⏹Speaking vocabulary----active vocabulary⏹writing vocabulary------active vocabulary⏹reading vocabulary------passive vocabulary⏹guess vocabulary--------passive vocabulary⏹Language can be defined as “an arbitrary vocal system used for human communication”. By system we mean that the elements in a language are arranged according to certain rules, but not at random. Elements at a lower level are combined according to certain rules to form elements at a higher level.⏹Specially, Language presents itself as a hierarchy in different aspects. As is shown in the following hierarchical rank scale, language rises form morpheme at the bottom up to the sentence at the top in terms of lexicography. (词典编纂)2.1 Morpheme⏹1.What is a morpheme(词素)?The morpheme is the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.⏹What is usually considered a single word in English may be composed of one or more morphemes:⏹One morpheme---nation⏹Two morphemes---nation-al⏹Three morphemes---nation-al-ize⏹Four morphemes---de-nation-al-ize（使…非国有化）⏹More than four morphemes---de-nation-al-iz-ation⏹So we can define morpheme in this way:the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression andcontent, a unit which can not be divided without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. ■A morpheme is a two-facet language unit in that it possesses both sound and meaning.A morpheme vs. A wordMorphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words. They can not be used independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are morphemes divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.2. Allomorph (形位变体，词[语]素变体）⏹Sometimes a morpheme may have two or more different morphological forms or phonetic forms, depending on the context in which it occurs.⏹For example, the prefix sub can be realized as sub as in subway, sup as in support and suppress, suc as in succeed, and sus as in sustain. That is, when sub occurs before a root beginning with the sound /p/ it is realized as sup and when it is added a root with a beginning sound /k/ and a beginning letter c it is realized as suc.⏹These different morphological or phonetic forms of a morpheme are allomorphs of the morpheme.Allomorphs（词素变体）:⏹An allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds. For example☐ion/-tion/-sion/-ation are the positional variants of the same suffix.☐Verbs ending with the sound /t/usually take –ion (as in invent, invention);☐verds ending with consonants other than /t/ take –tion (as in describe, description);☐verbs ending in –ify and –ize take –ation(as in justify, justification; modernize, modernization);☐verbs ending in –d, -de, or –mit, take –sion (as in expansion, decision, omission); there are exceptions: attend, attention; convert, conversion, etc.Allomorphs also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the first letter of the verb to which they will be added.e.g.im- before p,b, or m, imperfect, imbalance, immobile;ir- before r, irresponsible, irregular;il- before l, illegal, illogical;in- before all other consonants and vowels, inflexible, inexcusable; im-,ir-, and il- are thus allomorphs of the morpheme, in-.2.2 Classification of Morpheme1.Free morphemes and bound morphemesFree morphemes(自由词素）：Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free. Free morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. A free morpheme is one that may constitute a word (free form) by itself, in the traditional sense.e.g. man, faith, read, write, redBound morphemes(粘附词素): morphemes that can not occur as separate words. It can not stand by itself as a complete utterance; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound. Unlike free morphemes, they do not have independent semantic meaning; instead, they have attached meaning or grammatical meaning.e .g. -ly , re- , -ed, -sBound morpheme can change the meaning or word class of a word, e.g. fit and unfit, broad and braoden;It can also have grammatical function, e.g. book and books.2. Root and affix⏹Alternatively, morphemes may be divided into roots (or root morphemes) and affixes (or affixational morphemes).⏹a. Free root: In English many roots are free morphemes, such as boy, moon, walk, black ( i.e. they can stand alone as words).⏹⏹ A word consisting of one free root (or one morpheme) is a simple words. Free roots, just like simple words, belong to the basic word-stock, and have the fundamental features of the basic word-stock . Free roots provide the English language with basis for the formation of new words.b. Bound roots: Quite a number of roots derived from foreign sources, esp. from Greek and Latin, belong to the class of bound morphemes.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.A root, whether it is free or bound, generally carries the main component of meaning in a word.Notice what the following words have in common:e.g. -tain contain, detain retain-viv/vit revive vitamin vital vivacious vivid例词基本第一种第二种意义单位符号(词) 符号（词根）⏹人man anthro⏹花flower anth(o)⏹时time chron⏹色colour chrom⏹水water hydr(o)⏹石stone lite(o)⏹牙tooth dent(i)⏹头head cephal⏹脚foot ped⏹音sound phon⏹日sun sol⏹月moon lun⏹星star astro(er)⏹世界world cosm(o)⏹生命life bi(o)⏹中心center center☐Affixes(词缀): Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. According to the functions of affixes, we can put them into two groups: inflectional and derivational affixes.⏹Inflectional affixes (inflectional morphemes): Affix attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus known as inflectional morphemes. The inflectional affix does not form a new word with a new lexical meaning when it is added toanother word. Nor does it change the word-class of the word to which it is affixed. It just adds some grammatical information to the word. It serves to express such meanings as plurality, tense, and the comparative or superlative degree.Plural markers: -s, -es, -en, feet, sheepGenitive case: -’sVerbal endings: -ing, -(e)d, irregular verbs,Comparative and superlative degrees: -er, -estThe number of inflectional affixes are small and fixed; no new ones have bee added since 1500.Derivational affixes (derivational morphemes): They are so called because when they are added to another morpheme, they "derive" a new word. If a morpheme can change the meaning or the word class, or both the meaning and word class of a word, it is a derivational morpheme.e.g. re+write,mini+car, super+market, modern+ize, mean+ness, work+er.⏹Many derivational affixes have a specific lexical meaning, for instance: -ism means “doctrine or point of view” as in socialism.⏹Quite a number of other derivational affixes have more than one meaning.⏹e.g. de- 1. to undo what has been done, to reverse the action ofdecentralize, decode⏹ 2. to remove: to debone⏹ 3. to reduce: devalue⏹ 4. (esp. in grammar) coming from sth. else: a deverbal nounDerivational affixes do not only have independent lexical meaning but also affective meaning.e.g. prefixes: mis-, mal-, pseudo--- pejorativesuffix: -ling -- derogatory : hireling, weakling-ish, -- "of the nature of," -- derogatory: bookish uppish. derivational affixes which can be attached to words of different words-classes:e.g. -able -- verbs -- washable-- nouns -- marriageable;The number of derivational affixes, although limited, is much larger than that of inflectional affixes. New ones are coined from time to time.e.g. Russian: sputnik (1957),-nik beatnik, peacenik computernikDerivational morphemes or derivational affixes are commonly subdivided into prefixes and suffixes. Affixes before the word are called prefixes (as in supermarket) those after are called suffixes ( as in friendship).⏹Both prefixes and suffixes may be grouped according to:⏹(1) Their linguistic origin:⏹OE affixes: un-, mis-, be-, out-, over-, -ness, -dom, -hood, -ly, and -er. ⏹Foreign affixes: ab-(L), bi- (L), dis-(L), re-(L), kilo(GK), poly(GK), mal-(F),-able(F), -ism(GK), -ic(GK).⏹(2) Their productivity:⏹Affixes (such as re-, un-, -able, -ize) are called productive or living when they can be used to form new words. Those that are no longer used to form new words are termed dead or unproductive.⏹e.g. for- forgets, forgive, forbid-with withdraw, withhold, withstandRoot, stem, baseAs defined by Bauer:" A root (词根) is a form which is not further analyzable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. It is that part of a word-from that remains when all the inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic part always present in a lexeme." (Bauer 1983:20)e.g. un touch able sgreenhouse-- green houseBauer defines "stem" as follows:" A stem （词干）is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology. ... Only Inflectional (but not derivational) affixes are added to it: it is the part of the word-form which remains when all the inflectional affixes have been removed,“ A stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added.e.g. friends, friendships, greenhousesA base （词基）is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added; it may also be defined as "a form to which a rule of word formation is applied."⏹From the definitions of the three terms, we can see that any root or stem can be termed a base. But a base is different from the root in that the former is (sometimes) derivationally analyzable while the later is derivationally unanalyzable. A base is also different from a stem in that both derivational and inflectional affixes can be attached to a base but only inflectional affixes can be attached to a stem.⏹e.g. disagreements, disagreement, disagree3. Lexeme, word form, lexical entry, word⏹1) Lexeme:⏹Lexeme an abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning. It can be realized by different word forms. Put it in another way, lexeme is a set of linguistic signs which share the same lexical meaningsbut different in their grammatical, meanings. Fro example, dies,died, dying, die belong to the same lexeme DIE. Man and men are varying forms of the same lexeme MAN.⏹Some set expressions such as bury the hatchet, give up and ups and downs would be each considered a single lexeme.⏹2) Word form （词形）：⏹Word form is the realization (representation or manifestation) of the lexeme. Equivalently, it is the inflected forms of a lexeme.An illustration of the relationship between lexeme and word form:⏹word-forms lexeme⏹See, seeing, saw, seen SEE⏹Sleeps, sleeping, slept SLEEP⏹Catch, catches, catching, caught CATCH⏹Jump, jumps, jumped, jumping JUMP⏹Tall, taller, tallest TALL⏹Boy, boys BOY⏹Woman, women WOMAN3）Lexical entry(词条)：⏹Lexical entry is the specification of the information of a lexeme in dictionary or the representation of the idiosyncratic information of a lexeme, including (i) its pronunciation, (ii) syntactic properties and (iii)meaning. For example, the lexical entry swim:⏹PHONOLOGY /swim/⏹SYNTAX intransitive verb⏹SEMANTICS [SWIM]⏹MORPHOLOGY Past swamPast Participle swum4）WordHow to define a word?⏹A word can be defined the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used independently. Knowing a word means knowing its pronunciation (sound) and meaning, whose relationship is arbitrary. A word can be defined from the following aspects:⏹1) Orthographically speaking, a word is a unit which, in print, is bounded by spaces on both sides. It is a physically definable unit. But there is a problem with this definition: should we count it as two words or one word when two words are contracted as one orthographic unit.⏹a. I am a good cook.⏹b.I’ve been a good cook.⏹2) Morph-syntactically speaking, word has four characteristics: (i) syntactic independence, (ii) positional mobility, (iii) uninterruptibility, (vi) Internal stability.⏹Syntactic independence means that nothing smaller than a word cannormally form a sentence on its own. That is to say, word is the smallest independent unit in a language. It is the smallest unit which can constitute, by itself, a complete utterance.⏹Positional mobility means that the word-forms as a whole can be moved relatively easily within the sentence, such as “This we must se e” and “Plums I love”.⏹Uninterruptability means that extraneous material cannot be inserted into a word form even there are several parts in a word, such as the contrast between nationalism vs. *national-anti-lism.⏹Internal stability means that internal morpheme or letters are fixed / stabilized, i.e., the ordering of items within the word-form is usually fixed and non-contrastive, as opposed to the ordering of word-forms within the sentence, as is the case with * ly-sudden⏹Part of Speech / Word Class:⏹Part of Speech are the categories into which the words of a language can be classified either according to their syntactic functions or according to their morphological structure.⏹There are traditionally nine word classes in English: noun, verb (transitive and intransitive), adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, article, conjunction, interjection. There are still some new categories introduced recently into linguistic analysis. They are particles, auxiliaries (助动词) and pro-forms(代词形式).⏹Particles include the infinitive marker “to”, the negative marker “not” and the subordinate elements in phrasal verbs, such as “up” in look up, break up and do up, and “at” in look at and arrive at.⏹Pro-form is a collective term for the set of items which can be used to substitute for other items or construction. They are always neglected.e.g.⏹Do you need a lift? If so, I will drive you to the destination.⏹Do you think your little brother study hard enough? Yes, he does.⏹I know him more than I did.⏹I would have never believed it. She has readily accepted his proposal.⏹The dog is hiding there, under the table.⏹Different ways of classifying words:⏹1) Open-class words and closed-class words⏹Open-class words include nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs. They are so called because their membership is not fixed or limited. With the emergency of new ideas and inventions, new expressions are continually being added to the lexicon. The other six word classes are called closed-class words because their membership is relatively fixed.⏹2) Grammatical (function) words and lexical(content) words⏹Grammatical words are also called function words, whose role is largely or wholly grammatical. They include link verb “be”,prepositions, conjunctions and determiners, ect. Lexical words carry the semantic meaning. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and most adverbs are lexical words.⏹3) Variable words and invariable words⏹Variable words are those that have ordered and regular series of grammatically different word forms. Invariable words are those that remain relatively constant.⏹Token(标记) and Type（类型）⏹In linguistics, a distinction is always made between classes of linguistic items (e.g. phonemes, words, utterances) and actual utterances in speech or writing of examples of such classes. The class of linguistic units is called a type and examples of individual members of the class are called tokens.⏹In mathematic linguistics the total number of words in a text may be referred to as the number of text tokens, and the number of different words as the number of text types. The ratio of different words in a text to the total words in the text is known as the lexical density or Type-Token ratio for that text.⏹Paradigm⏹A paradigm is a list or pattern showing the forms which a word can have in a grammatical s ystem.. It typically shows a word’s inflections rather than derivatives. It is the set of all the inflected forms which anindividual word assumes or the full set of words realizing a particular lexeme.⏹For example: Boy, {boy, boys}⏹DO, {do, does, did, doing, done}⏹Summary:⏹1.Words are composed of morphemes. A morpheme, the minimal meaningful unit of the English language, possesses both sound and meaning. An allomorph is any of variant forms of a morpheme.⏹2. Morphemes may be classified as free or bound. A free morpheme is one that can stand by itself as a complete utterance, while a bound morpheme cannot exist on its own; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound.⏹3. Morphemes can also be classified into roots and affixes. A root carries the main component of meaning in a word. Roots can be free or bound morphemes. Free roots can stand alone as words and provide the language with a basis for the formation of new words. Bound roots cannot appear as words in modern English, although they were once words, nor can they be used to form new words.⏹4. Affixes are bound morphemes, because they are used only when added to other morphemes. Affixes are classified into inflectional and derivational affixes. The former are related to grammar only. Derivational affixes are subdivided into prefixes and suffixes, whichare related to the formation of new words. Roots, prefixes and suffixesare the building blocks with which words are formed.⏹5. On morphemic level, words can be classified into simple, complexand compound words, according to the number and type ofmorphemes they are composed of.⏹6. Morphemes are important in the word-building process becausethe two most central and productive word-formation process,compounding and affixation, are related to morphemes: the former is acombination of free morphemes, the latter is the addition of boundmorphemes to free ones.English LexicologyUnit 3Word formation 2Contents⏹Abbreviation (shortening)❑Clipping❑Initialism❑Acronym❑Blending❑Aphesis⏹Back-formation⏹Onomatopoeia⏹Words from Proper Names⏹ExercisesClipping(shortening a word or words by leaving out letters or syllables)⏹apocope (back clipped)❑dorm(itory), disco(theque), expo(sition), gas(oline), hi(gh)-fi(delity), memo(randum), rep(resentative),⏹aphaeresis (front clipped)❑(violon)cello, bus, cab, phone,⏹front and back clipped❑flu, fridge⏹syncope (middle clipped, contraction)❑fossil(iz)ation, pacif(ic)ist❑gov't (government), can’tClipping⏹Clipping in phrases:❑daily (paper), finals (final examinations)❑IOU (I owe you),⏹Clipping in style❑informal⏹Changes needed in clipping for the sake of sound❑bike (bicycle), coke (Coca-Cola),Initialism—General(the use of initialization in words where each letter is pronounced)CPPCC (the Chi nese People’s Political Consultative Conference) D.J. (disc jockey)GDP (Gross Domestic Product)GNP (Gross National Product)CPI (consumer price index)IOC (International Olympic Committee)BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, APc/o =care ofP.S. =postscriptRSVP=Re ponde s’il vous plaitInitialism—ITAGP ←Accelerate Graphics ProcessorAI ←Artificial IntelligenceBBS ←Bulletin Board SystemCAD ←Computer-Aided DesignCAI ←Computer-Assisted InstructionCD ←Compact DiskCPU ←Central Processing UnitDPI ←Dots Per InchFTP ←File Transfer ProtocolHTTP ←Hypertext Transfer ProtocolIC ←Integrate circuitIP ←Internet ProtocolLCD ←Liquid Crystal DisplayLED ←light-emitting diode OS ←Operating System PPM ←Pages Per Minute USB ←Universal Serial Bus VGA ←Video Graphics Array Initialism—Web-chatting ASAPAAMOF (as a matter of fact) BTWBBL (be back later)BRB (be right back)CU (see you)CUL (see you later)FE (for example)FTF (face to face)FYI (for your information)IC (I see)IMO (in my opinion)IOW (in other words)LOL (laughing out loudly)OIC (Oh, I see)TIA (Thanks in advance) TTUL (Talk to you later)TY (Thank you)VG (very good)Initialism—Compound⏹E-school = electronic school（网络学校）⏹E-tail = electronic retail（电子零售）；⏹H-bomb = hydrogen bomb（氢弹）⏹V-day = victory day（胜利日）⏹U-boat = undersea boat（潜艇）Acronym(words derived from the initials of several words, pronounced as a word, not as a list of letters)❑APEC ←Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation （亚太经济合作组织）❑ASEAN ←the Association for South-East Asian Nations（东南亚国家联盟）❑NATO ←the North Atlantic Treaty Organization （北大西洋公约组织）❑UNESCO ←the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization（联合国教科文组织）❑laser ←light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation（激光）❑ROM ←read only memory（只读内存）Acronym-Intentional coincidence⏹近年来，首字母拼音词出现了一个有趣的现象，人们有意或无意地把首字母英语词汇学拼音词拼写成与现存的词相同的样子，并借用其读音。
