Supplementary Exercises for ME. Lexicology 1Part I Multiple choices.1.The definition of a word includes ___________.A. a minimal free form that can function aloneB. a unit of meaningC. a sound unityD. all of the above2. A word is _______ of a language that has a given sound and meaningand syntactic function.A. a minimal free formB. a smallest meaningful unitC. an element which can not be further analyzedD. a grammatically minimal form3.The Indo-European language family consist of________.A. all the languages in Europe and IndiaB. all the languages in India and some languages in Europe.C. most of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India.D. Some of the languages of Europe and all the languages of the Near East4.The symbolic connection of a word to a particular thing is almostalways ______.A. logicalB. arbitraryC. inherentD. automatic5.The prehistoric Indo-European parent language is thought to be ______.A. A highly inflected language.B. A highly developed language.C. A very difficult language.D. A language of leveled endings.6.More than one variant, which can realize some morphemes according tothe position in a word, are termed .A. phonemesB. allomorphsC. morphsD. phones7.Affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammaticalrelationships are known as .A. morphemesB. derivational morphemesC. inflectional morphemesD. suffixes8. is defined as the formation of words by adding word-formingor derivational affixes to stem. This process is also known as .A. derivation, affixationB. affixation, derivationC. derivative, affixationD. affixation, derivative9.Sometimes, the meaning of a compound can be inferred from its separateelements, for example, .A. hot dogB. red meatC. flower potD. fat head10. is universal to all men alike regardless of culture, race,language and so on while belongs to language, so is restricted to language use.A. meaning, conceptB. concept, meaningC. sense, referenceD. reference, sense11.When readers come across the word “home” in reading, they may bereminded of their family, friends, warmth, safety, love. That is because of the “home” has _______.A. collocationsB. connotationsC. denotationsD. perorations12.Which of the following belongs to a semantic field?A. steed, charger, palfrey, plug, nagB. pony, mustang, mule, stud, mareC. policeman, constable, bobby, copD. domicile, residence, abode, home13.Which group of the following are perfect homonyms?A. dear (a loved person)—deer (a kind of animal)B. bow (bending the head as a greeting)—bow(the device used for shooting)C. bank (the edge of the river)—bank (an establishment for money business)D. right (correct)—write (put down on paper with a pen)14.The part of a piece of writing or speech which surrounds a word andhelps to explain its meaning is called _______.A. Linguistic contextB. Grammatical contextC. Extra-linguistic contextD. Para-linguistic context15. means through all difficulties and troubles.A. through high and lowB. through thick and thinC .from head to foot D. from start to finishPart II True or false questions.1. A rule of word-formation is usually identical with a syntactic rule.2.Word-formation rules themselves are not fixed but undergo changes toa certain extent.3.Affixes like “-th” are very productive in current English.4.The chief function of prefixes is to change the word class of the stems.5.The primary function of suffixes is to change the meaning of the stem.pounds are words formed by combining affixes and stems.7.“-age, -al, -ance, -ation, -ence”in “linkage, dismissal,attendance, protection, existence” can produce largely concrete nouns by being added to verb stems.8.The meaning of a compound is usually the combination of stems.9.The free phrase has the primary stress on the first element and thesecondary stress, if any, on the second.10.In both compounds and free phrases the adjective element can takeinflectional suffixes.11.Conversion is only a change of grammatical function of a lexical itemwith no loss of its different range of meaning originally conveyed.12.A fully converted noun from an adjective has all the features of nounsexcept taking an indefinite article or, -(e)s to indicate singular or plural number.13.Generally, conjunctions, modals, finite verbs, prepositions can’tbe converted to nouns.14.Although blends and backformed words have already achieved popularityin English, they are not advisable to be used frequently in formal writing.15.Quite a number of derivational affixes have more than one meaning.16.Simple words in English are usually non-motivated.17.Lexical meaning is dominant in content words.ponential analysis has no disadvantages.19.Polysemic and homonymous words are stylistically useful to achievinghumor or irony, or to heighten dramatic effect.20.In most cases, the native term is more literary than the foreign one. Part III Complete the following statements with proper words or expressions according to the course book.1.Morphemes are a bstract______ units, which are realized in speech bydiscrete units known as m orph_______. The morpheme is to the morph what a phoneme _____ is to a phone. Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph. Such alternative morphs are known asa llomorphs___________.2. A word is a minimal f ree_______ form of a language that has a givensound and meaning and syntactic function.3.Functional words do not have notions of their own. Therefore, theyare also called _empty_____ words.4.According to semantics, a word is a unit of m eaning .5.Bound morphemes include b ound roots and a ffixes .6.The most productive means of word formation area ffixation, c ompounding andc onversion .7.Only when a connection has been, established between the linguisticsign and a r eferent , does the sign become meaningful.8.Most morphemes are realized by single words like "bird, tree, green",etc, Words of these kinds are called m onomorphemic words.9.With N orse invasion____, many Scandinavian words came into the Englishlanguage.10.Antonyms are classified on the basis of s emanticopposition .Part IV Explain the following terms with proper examples.1.Explain with examples morpheme, morph and allomorph2.Semantic fieldPart V Answer the following questions.1.What is collocative meaning? Give at least one example to illustrateyour point.2.Study the following sentence, paying special attention to the wordsin italics. If you find anything wrong, please explain why and then improve the sentence.The police were ordered to stop drinking about midnight.3.Analyzes the morphological structures of the following words and pointout the types of the morphemes.unbearable, international, ex-prisonerAnswers for Exercise 1Part I Multiple choices.1-5 DACBA 6-10 BCBCB 11-15 BBCABPart II True or false questions.1.F2.T3.F4.F5.F6.F7.F8.F9.F 10.F 11.F 12.F 13.F 14.T 15.T 16. T 17. T 18. F 19. T 20. FPart III Fill in the blanks.1. abstract, morph, phoneme, allomorphs2. free3. empty4. meaning5. bound, affixes6. affixation, compounding, conversion7. referent8. monomorphemic9. Norse invasion 10. semantic oppositionPart IV Explain the following terms1. In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone, or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme.Morphs are the actual phonetic representations of the same morpheme.An allomorph is a variant form of the same morpheme, and all the morphsof the same morpheme are grouped as being the allomorphs of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically) without changing meaning.English example:The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", a bound morpheme; "break", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme. "un-" is alsoa prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both "un-" and "-able" are affixes.The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", /s/, in cats (/kæts/), but "-es", /ɨz/, in dishes (/dɪʃɨz/), and even the voiced "-s", /z/, in dogs (/dɒgz/). "-s". These are allomorphs of the same morpheme plural-s.2. The concept is from the concept of “field” in physics, referringto the clustering of a number of semantically related words. A semantic field is a set of lexemes in a named conceptual area that interrelate and define each other in specific ways. A general description is that wordsin a semantic field are not synonymous, but are all used to talk about the same general phen omenon. For example, the semantic field of “bugs” may include bees, spiders, moths, wasps, flies etc. According to semantic field theory a meaning of a word is dependent partly on its relation to other words in the same conceptual area. The kinds of semantic fields vary from culture to culture.Part V Answer the following questions.1. Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires inits collocation. In other words, it is that part of the word-meaning suggested by words before or after the word in discussion. For example,'pretty' and 'handsome' share the conceptual meaning of 'good looking', but are distinguished by the range of nouns they collocate with: pretty handsome.2. The police were ordered to stop drinking about midnight.（1）it is ambiguous（2）ambiguity caused by the structure（3）stop drinking can be understood as1）police stop drinking by themselves2）police stop people drinking（4）improvement1）The police were ordered to stop people drinking about midnight. 2）The police were ordered to stop drinking by themselves about midnight.3. Morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. The morphological analysis of the three words are as follows:1) Each of the three words consists of three morphemes unbearable (un+bear+able), international (inter+nation+al), ex-prisoner(er+prison+er).2) Of the nine morphemes, only bear, nation and prison are free morphemes as they can exist by themselves.3) All the rest un-,-able, inter-,-al, ex-and-er are bound as none of them can stand alone as words.Supplementary Exercises for ME. Lexicology 2Part I Multiple choices.1.From the phrase “ a white paper”, we know that the meaning of theword “paper” here is “document”. This shows that the _______ context can define the meaning of a word.A. extra-linguisticB. grammaticalC. lexicalD. situational2.The use of one name for that of another associated with it isrhetorically called _____.A. synecdocheB. metonymyC. substitutionD. metaphor3.Homophones are often employed to create puns for desired effectsA. humorB. sarcasmC. ridiculeD. all the above4.Which of the following statements is Not correct?A. A word can be formed by two free morphemesB. A word can be formed by a free morpheme and a bound morphemeC. A word can be formed by two bound morphemesD. A word can be formed by any two affixes.5.In different languages, the same concepts can be represented bydifferent sounds, which shows __________.A. the relationship between sound and meaning can not be established.B. there are different logical relations between sound and meaningC. the relation between sound and meaning is a matter of conventionD. the concepts are not really the same6.The two major factors that cause changes in meaning are ______.A. historical reason and class reasonB. historical reason an psychological reasonC. class &psychological reasonD. extra-linguistic factors &linguistic factors7.Old English vocabulary was in essence ________ with a small quantityof words borrowed from Latin and Scandinavian.A. CelticB. GermanicC. RomanD. Irish8. is the basic form of a word, which can't be further analyzedwithout total loss of identity.A. StemB. RootC. MorphemeD. Affix9. is that part of the word that carries the fundamental meaningbut has to be used in combination with other morphemes to make words.A. Free rootB. Bound rootC. MorphemeD. Bound morpheme10.The most productive means of word-formation in modern English are thefollowing except .A. compoundingB. affixationC. acronymD. conversion11.The meanings of many compounds and derivatives are the total of thecombined.A. morphsB. allomorphsC. rootsD. morphemes12.The relationship between the word-form and meaning is ____. Most wordscan be said to be___.A. prescriptive, motivatedB. prescriptive, non-motivatedC. arbitrary, motivatedD. arbitrary, non-motivated13.____ is the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core ofword-meaning.A. Grammatical meaningB. Denotative meaningC. Associative meaningD. Connotative meaning14.“parent/child, husband/wife, predecessor/successor” are ______ .A. contrary termsB. contradictory termsC. relative termsD. complementary terms15.“au revoir and Bye”is a pair of synonyms resulting from____.A. borrowingB. dialects and regional EnglishC. figurative &euphemistic use of wordsD. with idiomatic expressions16.From the phrase “examination paper”, we know that the meaning ofthe word “paper” here is “a set of questions at the end of the term”.This shows that the _______ context can define the meaning of a word.A. extra-linguisticB. grammaticalC. lexicalD. situational17. means damage from continuous use.A. fair and spareB. toil and moilC. wear and tearD. kithand kin18.More often than not, functional words only have .A. lexical meaningB. associative meaningC. collocative meaningD. grammatical meaning19.It is estimated that English borrowings constitute ______of the modernEnglish vocabulary.A. 50 percentB. 50 percentC. 80 percentD. 65 percent20.Functional words do _______ work of expression in English on averagethan content words.A. far moreB. lessC. equalD. similarPart II True or false questions.1.Differences can be found between American and British English inpronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.2.When a prefix is added to a word, its word-class is usually changed.3. A special dictionary deals with one sector of the lexicon of thelanguage.4.Words in the same semantic field do not have a number of collocationsin common.5. A word is a unity of sound and meaning, capable of performing a givensyntactical function.6.Most loan words are borrowed from foreign languages without any changein sound and spelling.7.An allomorph is one of the variant forms of a morpheme.8.Conversion means the transfer of a word from one class to another.9.The relation between a word symbol and its meaning is mostly arbitraryand conventional.ponential analysis is to break down the conceptual sense of a wordinto its minimal distinctive components.11.Psychological research found that vocabulary is stored redundantlyonly as individual morphemes.12.In the following 2 sentences, “How long is he?”“How young areyou?” , the two words long and young are both marked.13.Idioms are not readily understandable from their literal meanings ofindividual constituents.14.“Diamond cut diamond.” is syntactically wrong, and should be revisedinto “Diamond cuts diamond.”15.Fortuitous formerly denoted “happening by chance”, and later tookon the meaning “fortunate” by analogy, because the two words look similar in shape.Part III Explain the following terms with proper examples.1. Explain with examples root, stem and base.2. Semantic motivation3. Sense and reference4. Idiom5. MetonymyPart IV Answer the following questions.1.The ‘pen' is mightier than the ‘sword'. Explain what 'pen' and'sword' mean respectively using the theory of motivation.2.How would you explain the difference between back formation andsuffixation? Give examples to illustrate your point.ment on the following pairs of sentences in terms of hyponymy.a. The man said he would come to our school next week.b. The visiting scholar said he would visit our university next Monday.Answers for Exercise 2Part I Multiple choices.1-5 CBDCC 6-10 DBBBC 11-15 DDBCA 16-20 CCDCAPart II True or false questions.1. T 2 . F 3. T 4. F 5. T 6. F 7. T 8. T 9. T 10. T 11. F 12. F 13. T 14. F 15. TPart III Explain the following terms with proper examples.1. A root is that part of a word form that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed.Thus it cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content. For example, the lexical root of “chatter” is chat.A stem is that part of a word which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed. For example, photographer: photographer; destabilized: destabilizeA base refers to a form to which affixes of any kind (both derivational and inflectional) can be added. It can be a root or a stem. For example, The base of “undesirable”is “desirable”; and that of “desired”is “desire”.2. Semantic Motivation refers to the mental associations suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. For example, when we say the mouth of a river, we associate the opening part of the river with the mouth of a human being or an animal. There are basically 4 types of semantic motivation, and they are: oonomatopoeic motivation, morphological motivation, semantic motivation and etymological motivation.3. The distinction was first made by Gottlob Frege between abstract ideas and concrete objects of sensation. Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationship with other expressions in the language. Reference refers to what a linguistic form refers to in the real physical world. It deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.4. An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be determined by the literal definition of the phrase itself, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use. Idioms are semantically united and structurally stable. For example, Kick the bucket is an idiom, meaning “to die”. Structurally, we can not say “The bucket is kick by John” while still keep its meaning stable.5. Metonymy refers to the rhetorical device in which the name of one thing is used for that of another associated with it. For example, the expression in the cradle means to be in one’s childhood, because cradle is used for the young babies and closely related to the young age of one.Part IV Answer the following questions.1. Motivation accounts for the connection between the linguistic symboland its meaning. Semantic motivation, one of the four major types of motivation, explains the connection between the literal sense and figurative sense of the word. In this sentence, 'pen' reminds one of the tool to write with, thus suggesting writing; 'sword' reminds one of the weapon to fight with, thus suggesting war.2. (1) Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to bases. For example, movement is formed by add a suffix “-ment” to the root “move”.(2) Back-formation is considered to be the opposite process of suffixation; it's the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes. For example, “edit” is created out of “editor” on the mistaken assumption that the agentive suffix.3. Hyponymy refers to the semantic relationship of inclusion, in which the meaning of more specific word is included in that of another more general word. For example, tulip and rose are hyponyms of flower. The more specific words tulip and rose are called hyponyms or subordinate terms of the more general word flower. And flower is named hypernym or superordinate terms of tulip and rose. In the following 2 sentences, such a relation is indicated as follows:Superordinate Subordinate1) man scholar2) come visit3) school university4) week MondaySupplementary Exercises for ME. Lexicology 3Part I Multiple choices.1. A may consist of a single morpheme as in "iron" or oftwo morphemes as in a compound like "handcuff".A. stem, root, rootB. root, stem, stemC. stem, stem, rootD. root, root, stem2.Degradation of meaning is the opposite of .A. semantic transferB. semantic pejorationC. semantic elevationD. semantic narrowing3.Which group of the following are acronyms?A. VOA, AIDS, BASIC, D-DayB. CORE, Laser, TEFL, NATOC. G-man, BBC, BASIC, NATOD. TV, ID, TB, UFO4.Which of the following statements is false?A. Conversion refers to the use of words of one class as that of a different class.B. Words mainly involved in conversion are nouns, verbs and adverbs.C. Partial conversion and full conversion are concerned with adjectives when converted to nouns.D. The conversion between nouns and verbs may involve a change of stress.5.Which of the following is incorrect?A. “airmail” means “mail by air”B. “reading-lamp” means “lamp for reading”C. “green horn” is the horn green in colorD. “hopeless” is “without hope”6.____ is the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core ofword-meaning.A. Grammatical meaningB. Denotative meaningC. Associative meaningD. Connotative meaning7.Antonyms can be classified into three major groups except______ .A. evaluative termsB. contrary termsC. contradictory termsD. relative terms8.“win” and “gain the upper hand”，“hesitate” and“ be in twominds” are two pairs of synonyms resulting from ____.A. coincidence with idiomatic expressionsB. figurative &euphemistic use of words.C. dialects and regional EnglishD. borrowing9.The meanings of a word may be influenced by the structure in whichit occurs. The structure in which the word in question appears can be called ________ context.A. situationalB. morphologicalC. lexicalD. grammatical10. means something useless and unwanted but big and costly.A. white elephantB. dark elephantC. white horseD. dark horse11.Linguistic context is also known as context.A. socialB. verbalC. LexicalD. physical12.The pronunciation of a language has changed more ______ than spellingover the years.A. systematicallyB. arbitrarilyC. logicallyD. rapidly13.The English alphabet was adopted from _______.A. Anglo-SaxonB. the RomansC. GreekD. Sanskrit14.The first peoples known to inhabit what is now England are ________.A. Anglo-SaxonsB. French speaking NormansC. CeltsD. Jutes15.English is more closely related to ____________.A. German than French.B. French to GermanC. Welsh than GermanD. Irish than Dutch16.In the words "recollection, idealistic, and ex-prisoner", "re-, -ion,-ist, -ic, ex-, and -er" are .A. prefixesB. suffixesC. free morphemesD. bound morphemesPart II Complete the following statements with proper words or expressions according to the course book.1.Words taken over from foreign languages are known as l oan_________words.2.One of the variants realizing a morpheme is called a llomorph .3.C ompounding is the formation of new words by joining twoor more stems.4.The word meaning is made up of g rammatical meaning andl exical meaning, which itself has two components:c onceptual meaning and associative meaning.5.When a word was created, it was endowed with p rimary meaning.With the advance of time and the development of language it took on more and more d erived meanings.6.A rgot__ refers to the jargon of criminals. Its use is confined to thesub-cultural groups, and outsiders can hardly understand it.7.In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge oflearning ancient Greek and roman classics, which is known in history as the R enascence_________.8.Affixes can be grouped into d erivational andi nflectional affixes.9.Words do not change in morphological structure but in function, whichis known as f unctional shift.10.Synonyms can be grouped into absolute synonyms andr elative synonyms.11.The Indo-European Language Family is made up of most of the languagesof Europe, the Near East, and I ndia______.12.Old English was a highly i nflectional________ language just likemodern German.13.The allomorphs of the plural morpheme can be realized by z eromorph as in "deer—deer", "fish—fish".14.A melioration _______ refers to the process by which words rise fromhumble beginnings to position of more importance.15.Some words which are used to denote one thing but later changed todenote something else have experienced the process of semantic transfer/transference _____.16.Opposite to d enotative____ meaning, connotative meaning refers to theovertones or associations suggested by the conceptual meaning. 17.Martin Joos (1962) in his The Five ClocksI suggests five degrees offormality: f rozen___, formal, consultative, casual, and initimate.18.Homonyms are classified into perfect homonyms, homographs andh omophones______.19.“parent –child” is a pair of r elational______ opposites.20.Words like now/then, here/there, tomorrow/yesterday are used to referdirectly to the personal temporal or locational characteristics ofa situation. They are called deictic ____ words.Part III Explain the following terms with proper examples.ponential analysis2.Explain the term connotative meaning, with examples.3.schemataPart IV Answer the following questions.1.What are the stylistic features of idioms?2.Perfect homonyms and polysemants are fully identical with regard tospelling and pronunciation. This creates the problem of differentiation. Please design a way to distinguish the two concepts?Answers for Exercise 3Part I Multiple choices.1-5 ACBBC 6-10 BAADA 11-15 BABCA 16 DPart II Fill in the blanks.1. loan2. allomorph3. compounding4. grammatical, lexical, conceptual, associative5. primary, derived6. argot7. Renascence8. derivational, inflectional9. functional 10. absolute, relative 11. India 12. inflectional/inflected 13. zero 14. amelioration 15. transfer/transference 16. denotative 17. frozen 18. homophone 19. relational 20. deicticPart III Explain the following terms with proper examples.1. Componential analysis also called feature analysis or contrast analysis. It is a method typical of structural semantics which analyzes the structure of a word's meaning by breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components, which are known as semantic features. Conventionally, these minimal components can be symbolized in terms of /binary opposition, using “+” and “-” to express the existence or non-existence of semantic properties by using plus and minus signs. It can reveal the culturally important features by which speakers of the language distinguish different words in the domain. Examples are: Man is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [+ADULT]Woman is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [+ADULT]Boy is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [-ADULT]Girl is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [-ADULT]2. Connotative meaning refers to the overtones or associations suggested by the conceptual meaning, traditionally known as connotations. It is not an essential part of the word-meaning, but associations that might occurin the mind of a particular user of the language. For example, mother, denoting a ‘female parent’, is often associated with ‘love’, ‘care’, etc.3. Schemata or schematic knowledge refers to the mental representation of the linked, structured arrangements of facts. The formation of certain type of schemata is considered to be grounded in the present and based on past experiences. Schemata are an effective tool for understanding the world, which provides us with a frame of reference. For example,self-schemata, a schemata of a deal, of a university, etc.Part IV Answer the following questions.1. An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be determined by the literal definition of the phrase itself, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use. Idioms have some stylistic features as stated as follows.(1) Many idioms were created in different professions, so they were trade-or profession-related, colloquial and informal.(2)Now most become a part of the common core, neither formal nor informal.(3)There are still many colloquialisms, slang expressions, literary。
