Causes of Changes in Word Meaning

2018年10月高等教育自学考试《英语词汇学》试题2018年10月高等教育自学考试《英语词汇学》试题课程代码：00832I. Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that best completes the statement and blacken the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. One point is given to each correct choice. (1% X 30 = 30% )1. Which of the following can NOT be defined as a word?A. manB. forC. mentD. blackmail2. The differences between sound and form are NOT due toA. innovations made by linguistsB. stabilization of spelling by printingC. influence of the work of scribesD. the fact of more phonemes than letters in English3. Words may fall into native words and borrowed words byA. notionB. originC. functionD. use frequency4. means an old form which takes on a new meaning to meet the new need.A. BorrowingB. CreationC. Semantic changeD. Loaning5. The language used between 1150 and 1500 is calledEnglish.A. OldB. MiddleC. ContemporaryD. Modern6. In Middle English vocabulary, we can find words relating to every aspect of human society, e.g. government, law, food, fashion and so on. Which of the following words does NOT belong to them?A. wechatB. baconC. judgeD. power7. Structurally, many words can be separated into even smaller meaningful units. For example, denaturalization can be broken down intoA. de-, natura-, lize-, ationB. dena-, ture, al-, lize, ationC. de-, nature, al, ize, ationD. de-, natu, real, ize, ation8. The morpheme of plurality/-s/is pronounced as/s/in cats,/z/in bags, and/iz/in matches. This example showsA. morphemes are abstract unitsB. allomorphs are phonetically conditioned and thus predictableC. morphs are actual spoken, minimal carriers of meaningD. monomorphemic words coincide with words and function freely in a sentence9. Which of the following words is the example of free morphemes?A. menB. teethC. workerD. anger10. The following words have prefixes of time or order EXCEPTA. bilingualB. ex-studentC. foretellD. post-election11..4 green hand is an "inexperienced person", not a hand that is green in color. This exampleshows that compounds are different from free phrases in feature.A. phoneticB. semanticC. grammaticalD. lexical12. Omnibus has given way to its shortened form bus. This is the example of in word formation.A. acronymyB. clippingC. compoundingD. conversion13. , which is beyond language, is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the human mind.A. ReferenceB. MotivationC. SenseD. Concept14. The following words are onomatopoetically motivated EXCEPTA. blowB. quackC. miaowD. hiss15. The meanings of many words often relate directly to their origins. In this sense, words havemotivation.A. onomatopoeicB. morphologicalC. semanticD. etymological16. From a synchronic point of view, the basic meaning of a word is theA. primary meaningB. derived meaningC. central meaningD. secondary meaning17. Which of the following is NOT the derived meaning of the word face?A. The front of the head.B. Outward aspect.C. A surface of a thing.D. The expression of the countenance.18. Which of the following pairs are absolute synonyms?A. large/tremendousB. stagger/reelC. alter/varyD. scarlet-fever/scarlatina19. The process by which a word which originally had a specialized meaning has now become generalized is of word-meaning.A. transferB. elevationC. narrowingD. extension20. reason is reflected in the meaning change of the word computer, from "a person who computes" to "electronic machine".A. ClassB. HistoricalC. ScientificD. Psychological21. Which of the following is the internal factor within the language system that causes changes in word-meaning?A. AnalogyB. ContrastC. Historical reasonD. Psychological need22. As most words have more than one meaning, it is often impossible to tell the meaning of a word before it is used inA. contextB. textsC. conversationD. writing23. That the word do means differently in "do a city", "do a sum" and "do the flowers" shows that context affects the meaning of words.A. extra-linguisticB. grammaticalC. lexicalD. semantic24. Which of the following is NOT the role of context?A. Elimination of ambiguity.B. Indication of referents.C. Provision of clues for inferring word-meaning.D. Simplification of meaning.25. Which of the following is a true idiom?A. make friends withB. break silenceC. in the rawD. turn over a new leaf26. Among the following idioms," "is an idiom adverbial in nature.A. flesh and bloodB. up in the airC. as poor as a church mouseD. tooth and nail27. All of the following are stylistic features EXCEPTA. colloquialismsB. slangC. literary expressionsD. rhymes28. In the headword or entries are defined and illustrated in the same language.A. monolingual dictionariesB. bilingual dictionariesC. linguistic dictionariesD. encyclopedia dictionaries29. Usage notes and language notes in a dictionary explain the following EXCEPTA. important British and American differencesB. difficult points of grammar and styleC. information concerning the origins of wordsD. the slight differences between words of similar meanings30. The following are some unique features of Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary EXCEPTA. definitionB. extra columnC. usage examplesD. clear grammarII. Complete the following statements with proper words or expressions according to the course book. (1.5% × 10 = 15%)31. It is generally agreed that the written form of a natural language is the written record of theform.32. After the Romans, the Germanic tribes called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came and dominated the British Isles. Now people generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as English.33. Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are morphemes.34. Comic means "of comedy", while comical means "funny". This example shows that both-ic and -ical can be affixed to the same stem, but differ in35. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of relationship with other expressions in the language.36. Words like bear which means both "a large heavy animal" and "to put up with" are called37. The process by which the word wife used to mean"woman" but now means "a married woman" is of word-meaning.38. Linguistic context includes context, where the meanings of a word may be influenced by the structure in which it occurs.39. Unlike free phrases, the structure of an idiom is to a large extent , as is shown in the idiom "in a brown study", which cannot be changed into "in a brown hall".40. For beginners, and elementary and lower-intermediate learners, a dictionary is essential as they do not know enough of the target language to understand fully a monolingual dictionary.III. Define the following terms with one or two sentences. (3% × 5 = 15%)41. borrowed words42. stem43. associative meaning44. degradation45. dismembering (of idioms)IV. Answer the following questions. Your answers should be clear and short. (5% × 4 = 20%)46. What are the three main sources of new words in Present-day English?47. In what way are the underlined words formed in the following sentences?1) He wolfed down his lunch.2) There is no milk in the fridge.3) The headmaster is an easy-going man.4) You have to show your ID before checking in the hotel.5) I promised to babysit for my neighbor this weekend.48. What are the types of antonyms? Explain the types of antonyms with the following example words: sell/buy, same/different, old/young.49. How are context clues used in the sentence "The village had most of the usual amenities: a pub, a library, a post office, a village hall, a medical centre, and a school."?V. Analyze and comment on the following. (10% × 2 = 20%)50. 1) nickname n.→to nickname2) bottle-feeding n.→to bottle-feedUse the above examples to discuss in what way compound verbs are generally formed?51. Illustrate the differences between synonyms by analyzing the following groups of synonyms.1) rich and wealthy2) ask, beg and request3) allow and let。

Factors in the Change of English Word Meaning作者：王晓素来源：《新农村》2011年第13期Abstract： In the learning of English Lexicology, we find that there are some changes in the meaning of English words. Word meaning is significant in English learning, and this paper is going to explore the factors in the change of English word meaning.Key Words：changefactormeaningWhen a word loses its old meaning and comes to refer to something different, the result is a change in word meaning. For instance, the word villain is originally neutral referring to a farmer working on the farm or in the suburbs. However, villain in current English means a scoundrel. Change of meaning refers to the alternation of the meaning of existing words, as well as the addition of new meaning to a particular word. The change is formed in the way of extension, narrowing, elevation and degradation of meaning.There are several factors that can cause possible changes of meaning. Mostly, they are extra-linguistic factors and linguistic factors.Ⅰ.Extra-linguistic factorsExtra-linguistic factors make up of historical reason, social reason psychological reason, and cultural blending.i.Historical reasonIn the old English the word pen was written as penn from the Latin word penna, which means the writing tool made by feather. However, with the development of technology, pen now means golden pen, iridium fountain pen and fountain pen, which have nothing to do with feather.ii.Social reason or class reasonLanguage records the speech and attitude of different social classes, so different social varieties of language have come into being. The attitude of classes has penetrated into lexical meaning, particularly in the case of elevation and degradation. Quite a number of words that denote different sorts of working people or their occupations have taken on a pejorative sense. Churl and hussy which were originally neutral have been down-graded as “ill-manned or bad people”.iii.Psychological reasonThe associated transfer of meaning and euphemistic use of words is often due to psychological factors. People change word meaning owing to various psychological motives: love, respect, courtesy, suspicion, pessimism, sarcasm, irony, contempt, hatred, avoidance of embarrassment, etc. Let's see the expression of death. It is too straightforward to say directly that someone has died. Instead, we can use some euphemisms such as to go west, to be deceased in the formal English and to be no more in the spoken English. The euphemism "culturally deprived environment" is often used in place of "slum".iiii.Cultural blendingWith the development of economy and policy, the earth is becoming smaller and smaller and here comes the cultural blending. Education has been applying itself to teach us to respect the differences between cultures and expand the similarities we share. Different cultures are blending in the process of communication. The words like Kong fu, mahjong, tofu and typhoon from Chinese have been an important part of English. Besides, Latin, Scandinavian language, French and Greek also have influences on English.Ⅱ.Linguistic factorsThe change of meaning may be caused by the internal factors within the language system, i.e. linguistic factors.i.EllipsisThe meaning of a word may change when a phrase is shortened to one word which retains the meaning of the whole. This is called ellipsis. The meaning of the word “gold” has changed from material to refer to the whole phrase “gold medal”. "A general" comes from "a general officer". This kind of change often occurs in habitual collocations.ii.AnalogyIf an adjective develops a new meaning, the derived noun from the adjective will have a corresponding new meaning by analogy. The process can be applied to a word of any word class. The word diplomatic originally means relating to or involving the work of diplomats and its noun diplomacy means the job or activity of managing the relationships between countries. At present, diplomatic has its new meaning "dealing with people politely and skillfully without upsetting them" while diplomacy means "skill in dealing with people without upsetting them".iii.Figurative use of wordsChange in word meaning may result from the figurative use of the language. Metaphor and metonymy are two important figures of speech. "The foot of the mountain" metaphorically means the bottom of the mountain. "White House" metonymically refers to the U.S. Government.In conclusion, change of word meaning is related to the environment in many ways. It is developing with the pace of times. To learn the factors of the change of English word meaning is animportant part to learn English. In the process, we learn to analyze the root causes of change. After the learning of regularity of word meaning change, we can memorize English words more easily. Above all, we can learn gradually to use words appropriately and speak in a tasteful manner avoiding embarrassment.Reference：[1] 张维友,华先发. 论英语词义的演变[J]. 华中师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版), 1988,(06).[2] 肖志兰. 英语中的词义变化及其理解[J]. 同济大学学报(社会科学版), 2001,(06).。

Chapter 7Changes in Word Meaning一、【考情分析】本章主要考核的知识点为：词义变化的种类，词义变化的原因。

通过对本章的学习考生应该了解词义变化的必然性，词义变化的主要方式和原因。

在历年考试中：常常以选择题，填空题，搭配题和名词解释题的形式对本章知识点进行考核。

二、【知识串讲】重点知识锦集：1. Extension(词义扩大) of meaning is also known as generalization.2. Narrowing of meaning is also called specialization.3. Of the modes of word-meaning change, extension and narrowing are by far the most common.4. Degradation（降格）or pejoration of meaning is the opposite of semantic elevation.5. The degraded meaning “sexual desire ”of the word “lust ”comes from its old meaning “ pleasure”.6. The name given to the widening of meaning which some words undergo is extension.7. There are generally two major factors that cause changes in meaning: Extra-linguistic Factors and Linguistic Factors.（非语言因素和语言因素）8. The attitudes of classes have made inroads into lexical meaning in the case of elevation or degradation.9. The changes of meaning may be caused by internal factors within the Language system.10. The meanings of “lip”and “tongue”in “the lip of a wound”and “the tongue of a bell”have experienced associated transfer.（联想转移）11. The so-called “King’s English”serves as a class reason（阶级原因）in word-meaning change.12. The change of word-meaning is brought about by following internal factors: the influx of borrowing, shortening, analogy.13. Generalization is a process by which a word that originally had a specialized meaning has now become generalized.14. The four major modes of semantic change are: extension（扩大）, narrowing（缩小）, elevation （升华）and degradation（降格）.名词解释：1.extension（词义的扩大）: It is a process by which a word which originally had a specialized meaning has now become generalized. In other words,the term has extended to cover a broader and often less definite concept.2.narrowing（词义的缩小）: it is the opposite of widening meaning. It is a process by which a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower or specialized sense. In other words, a word which used to have a more general meaning becomes restricted in its application and conveys a special meaning in present-day English.3.elevation（升华）: Elevation or amelioration refers to the process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance.4. degradation（降格）: Degradation or pejoration of meaning is the opposite of semantic elevation. It’s a process whereby words of good origin fall into ill reputation or non-affective words come to be used in derogatory sense.5. transfer（转移）: Words which were used to designate one thing but later changed to mean something else have experienced the process of semantic transfer.论述问答题：1.What are the linguistic factors(语言因素) that have caused the changing of meaning? Try to explain it.答：Linguistic Factors that have caused the changing of meaning cover four:1) One type of such change occurs when a phrase is shortened to one word which retains the meaning of the whole。

英语词汇学问题库（一）C1 A General Survey to English V ocabulary1。

What is lexicology？2。

What is the nature and scope of English Lexicology？3。

What subjects is English Lexicology correlated with？And to what extent?4。

Why should a student of English study English Lexicology？5. What is a word?6. What are the reasons of more and more inconsistances between sound and form..7. What is vocabulary？8。

What are the three stages of development of the English vocabulary?9. Illustrate the relationship between sound and meaning with examples。

10。

What are the three main criteria for the classification of English words？11。

What is a common word（通用词, literary word(文学词）colloquial word（口语词）,slang word（俚语词）jargon（行话）, argot（黑话）, neologism（新词语)? Give examples。

12。

What is hybrid（混种词）？13. How do you account for the role of native words in English in relation to loan—words?14。

Questions( 简答+例子)1.The fundamental features of the basic word stock of the English vocabulary (1). National character(全民通用性)：Words of the basic word stock belong to the people as a whole, not to a limited group.(2). Stability（稳定性）:As words in the basic word stock denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged. However, a certain number of Old English words have dropped out of the basic word stock, while new words have joined the rank of basic words, following social and technological changes.(3). Word-forming ability(构词)：Basic words are very active in forming new words.(4). Ability to form collocations（搭配能力）：Basic words combine readily with other words to form habitual expressions and phrases.Since the great majority of the basic word stock are native words, they are naturally the ones used most frequently in everyday speech and writing.2.WHY Native words are the core of the English vocabularyFirst, because the native words are form the great majority of the basic word stock of the English language. And the basic word stock is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over a number of epochs.Second, they make up the most familiar, most useful part of the English vocabulary. So we say that native words are the core of the English vocabulary for its importance.3.Causes for changes in the meanings of words①historical cause. One meaning has changed because the object it denoted has changed. For example, “pencil” is from Latin word meaning “a little tail” or a fine brush”, like our Chinese “pen”(毛笔）. Later ,when it was made of wood and graphite, it was still called a “pencil”.②Social cause. Change in word meaning resulting from a constant verbal traffic between common words and various technical words is referred to as social cause of semantic change. For example, the word “allergic” means “being unusually sensitive to the action of particular foods, pollens, insect-bites, etc.” But when used as a popular word, it means “having a dislike; unable to get on well with”, as in “I am allergic to hypocrites”.③Foreign influences. The influence of foreign words has caused change of words’meanings. Sometimes a Saxon word which had a general sense has been replaced by a French word or a Latin derivative, but the original word has survived with a restricted meaning. Thus the Saxon word “doer”(=deer) meant a wild animal of any sort from a lion to a mouse.④Linguistic cause. It includes two tendencies, towards ellipsis and towards analogy. Ellipsis often occurs in habitual collocations, such as adj+n, in which the first element is left. For example, private come to be used as a noun denoting “a soldier of the lowest rank”. Because at first it is “private soldier”; The analogical tendencypoints out that new meanings developed in one part of speech are passed on to other parts of speech from the same lexical base. For instance, diplomatic means firstly “skillful in managing international relations,”had by 1862 developed the sense of “tactful in the management of relations of any kind.” Then this new meaning had been passed on the noun diplomacy.⑤Psychological cause. 1. euphemism.委婉Use mild words to describe an unpleasant fact. “pass away””to breathe one’s last”-”death”; “to go to the toilet”-”urinate” 2. grandiloquence. 美化Use long, important-sounding words for effect. “custodian”-”janitor”“landscape architect” 3. cynicism讽刺desire to sneer and to be sarcastic. Pious may mean “hypocritically virtuous”in addition to its primary meaning “having, showing deep devotion to religion”. Fanatic, “unreasonable enthusiastic, almost approaching to madness”.4.The major differences between American English and British English①pronunciation. The chief difference lie in the vowel sounds, which are shown in the attached table. Ate/et/ in British English, but /eit/ in American English. So as stress. ‘Address in British English, ad’dress in American English.②spelling. The American variant if simpler than its English counterpart. Colour-color, centre-center, aesthetic-esthetic③grammar. British English commonly adds should to the subordinate clause while the American English not. And there are differences in prepositions, aim to, aim at....④vocabulary. Words without counterparts. Same words, different meanings. Bill in America means bank note, but means a demand for payment of a debt in Britain. Common ideas, different words. Alumnus in America means graduate in Britain.5.The role of context in determination of word meaning①Eliminating ambiguities which result from polysemy and hyponymy. He tipped the chess-board, dumping the men( a playing piece used in chess) to the floor.②Conveying emotional overtones. The sentence “You’ve got us into a nice(bad) mess.”, is ironic and acquires an unfavorable sense.③Indicating referents and the range of the meaning of a word. Betty told Mary that Alice was angry. She said it secretly. But she didn’t believe her. But she wasn’t angry. Without the context, we don’t know who she is. Another example, Man is mortal. We know the man infers the whole of mankind.6.The major sources of English idiomsTen sources:(1) From everyday life: to make ends meet(2) Agricultural life: to go to seed(3) Nautical and military life: in the same boat(4) business life: come under the hammer(5) student life: read between the line(6) food and drinking: keep the pot boiling(7) sports and card-playing: keep the ball rolling(8) Bible: thorn in the flesh(9) Shakespeare’s play: give the Devil his due公开对待(10) fables, myths, and legends: sour grapes7.The causes for the rapid growth of neologisms after world war II① marked progress of science and technology. Example: to blast off(炸掉，炸毁) ,to countdown ,capsule,launching pad②socio-economic（社会经济）, political and cultural changes. Example: roller-hockey , surfriding, skydiving（跳伞运动）, disignated hitter③the influence from other cultures and languages. Example: cosmonaut , discotheque（小舞厅，迪斯科舞厅）, ombudsman（调查官员舞弊情况的政府官员）, apartheid（种族隔离）.Differences between A and B1. A. inflectional affixes B. derivational affixesInflectional affixes have only their particular grammatical meaning, as with the plural morpheme -s and the past tense morpheme -ed. But derivational affixes are added to another morpheme and “derive” a new word. Re+write, mini+car...2. A. restriction of meaning (specialization)B.extension of meaning (generalization)The former means a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower, specialized sense which is applicable to only one of the objects it had previously denoted. Meat: food, especially solid food, as distinguished form drink.-the flesh of animals used as food, excluding fish and birds. The latter means the widening of a word’s sense until it covers much more than what it originally conveyed. Bird from old English means a young bird, but now it means general term for feathered creatures with two legs and two wings, usu. able to fly.3. A. clipping B. blendingClipping involves the deletion of one or more syllables from a word. Ad= advertisement, auto= automobile, champ= champion. Blending involves 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. Smog= smoke+ fog. Medicare= medical+ care.4. A. free morphemes B. bound morphemesFree morphemes: These morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. E.g., man, earth, wind, car, anger.Bound morphemes: These morphemes cannot occur as separate words and theyare bound to other morphemes to form words. -s, -ed, re-5. A. initialisms B. acronymsInitialisms is a type of shortening, using the first letter of words to form a proper name, or a phrase, which is pronounced letter by letter, BBC, CNN. But acronyms are words formed from the initial letter of name of an organization or a scientific term. They are pronounced as words rather than as sequences of letter. TOEFL...7. A. polysemy B. homonymyMore than one meaning is attached to a word is polysemy, .run.. two or more words may have the same form but be different in meaning is homonymy. (i)8. A. common words B. literary words(1) Common or popular words are words connected with the ordinary things or activities necessary to everyday life. The great majority of English words are common words . The core of the common words is the basic word stock. They are stylistically (在文体上) neutral , and hence they are appropriate in both formal and informal writing and speech.(2) Literary words are chiefly used in writing, especially in books written in a more elevated（升高的，提高的，崇高的）style, in official documents, or in formal speeches. They are comparatively seldom used in ordinary conversation.9. A. archaic words B. poetic wordsArchaic words are words no longer in common use, which are employed in poetry, business letters, legal documents, religious speeches, and prose. Abed, in bed, behold, see....But poetic words are traditional words, used only in poems. The deep, the sea, betwixt, between. Some words are both archaic words and poetic words.10. A. root B. stemRoot is a form which is not further analyzable , either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. Desire.. a Stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology. It is part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed. Undesirables desire- undesirableTerms1. hyponymy: relationship which obtains between specific and general lexical items, such that the former is “included” in the latter.2. morpheme: is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.3. function words: are often short words such as determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliaries, and so forth. They do not have much lexical meaning and some of them have no lexical meaning of their own. They serve grammatically more than anything else.4. allomorph: is any of the variants forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.5. compounding: a word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit, a compound word.6. derivation:a word-formation process by which new words are created by adding a prefix, or suffix, or both, to the base.7. back-formation: a term used to refer to a type of word-formation by which a shorter words is coined by the deletion of a supposed affix from a longer form already present in the language.8. root: is a basic unchangeable part of a word, and it conveys the main lexical meaning of the word.9. homograph: words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning.10. homophone: words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning.自行整理，如有错误，请指出！。

Changes of Word Meaning in English英语词义的演变AbstractWith the flying development of human society, languages as tools for people to express and communicate their ideas changes constantly and frequently. English as a lively language is no exception. Among many elements of language, words changes faster and most obviously. In the course of the development of language old words die out, new words are added, and existing words change their meanings. It is obvious that the gradual change of meaning in words is a universal feature of human language.Key words: word meaning; changes; cause; English. 摘要随着人类社会的快速进展，语言作为人们表达思想和交流思想的工具也随着不断的转变。

英语作为一门有活力的语言自然也不例外。

在语言的众多因素中辞汇的变幻最快，最明显。

随着语言的转变进展，旧的词不断消亡，新的辞汇不但显现，存在的辞汇的意思也不断地发生改变。

显而易见，辞汇意思的不但转变是人类语言的要紧特点。

关键词词义转变; 转变; 缘故; 英语Abstract……………………………………………….摘要……...……………………………………………... Contents…………………………………………………Introduction……………………………………………1. Causes ofchanges ………………………………1.1 Historical causes………………………………. 1.2social causes………………………………………1.3 Psychological cause…………………………..1.4 linguistic causes……………………………….. Conclusion…………………………………………1.Causes of changes in meaningWhile, changing in word meaning has close relationship with the society. Many factors may cause it to change, history, psychological, society factors and so on. We probably agree whenever new meanings are added to old words, or new words are created. It is in response to certain read. suddenly in our daily life. Let quickly expanded to embrace the concept. There are several major factors that cause changes in meaning.1.1 History factor.It can date from AD 5 century, when Anglo-Saxon speak, with changes and development of the social history, some borrowing words crowded in England. What influence the English words most wasRenaissance studying old Greek and Roman culture provided many synonyms to the English. What’s more, after the England capital stage revolution and industrial revolution, English people began to expand and connect with other countries. Other languages were added into English. For example, bazzar is from Persia Meanwhile, England kept connection with France and French words constantly increase in English. Shakespeare was famous for his works and he is a master of language. He created many words by mixing France language and native language. He enriched the English words, and increased the power of English words. Although objects, the meaning changes, because the object which it describes has changed.The word car, for instance, is a good example.The word car was borrowed through theAnglo-French word carre and directly from the Latin word carra in 1301, plural of carrus, meaning ”two wheeled vehicle for carrying loads.” The word car was first applied to the automobile in 1895.The word atom was borrowed form Greek. It has been regarded as the smallest indivisible of matter for a long time. The latest scientific discoveries have proved that an atom can be subdivided into a proton, neutron, and electron. The word is still retained to describe a different scientific concept.1.2Social causesWith the development of society, many new things and new thoughts appear. To meetthe need of people to express new thoughtsand describe new things, besides, it promote to new words and it give many old words newmeanings. And these promote to the changesof meanings, for example, the development of civil movement and woman right movementbring old words new meanings. The word soulwas used to representative black culture, andchair was used to refer to leaders the common word, black is original a kind of dark color, can used to representative black man, color-blindwas used to describe that treating black andwhite equally. What’s more, social value plays an important role in word meaning change. In curtain notion or things that people try to avoid mentioning directly, though there are such term in language. With the widely use of internet, people in the internet create many new words, many information was spreaded. The switches between technical terms and common words also make word meaning change. For instance, salt in chemical term signifies chemical compound of a metal and an acid”. “Scene” originated from dramatic word design ated “place represented on the stage of a theatre but has now come to mean “any casuals” “aloof” was originally an adverb in nautical use, meaning “away and wing ward” but now changed to “cool and remote in character” or unconcerned”. The two examples are used to exemplify word meaning change from technical term to common words. Increased scientific knowledge and discovery and also important factors thataccount for the change of word meaning, forinstance, atom is derived from the Greek fromatoms, which means “any of the indivisiblepart icles”. Now science has proved thatatomis not the smallest and can be divided into even smaller pentacles, hence theabandonment of the original meaning.Language is just like a mirror, reflectingeverything that exists in human society.Naturally, it records the speech and attitude of different social class. As a result, differentsocial varieties of language have come intobeing. The attitudes of classes of languagehave come into being. The attitudes of classeshave also made inroads into lexical meaning in the case of elevation or degradation.1.3Psychological causesPeople change word meaning owing to various psychological motives: love, respect, courtesy, suspicious, pessimism, sarcasm, irony, contempt, hatred, etc. The fact that some low, humble and despised occupations often take on more appealingnames is all due to psychological reasons. Religious influence is another kind of psychological need. He associated transfer of meaning and euphemistic use of words, etc. It takes three forms (1) euphemism (2) grandiloguence (3) cynicismTake one example, we have such euphemistic expre ssion in referring to death as “to pass away”“to be no more” “can’t breath any more” and many others. Since there too many we can go deep in psychological cause so I had to reduce a lot of things. Let’s move to the next cause.1.4 Linguistic causesThere has been a tendency towards ellipsis in English. The main ellipsis are as follows.Phrases containing ‘adjective + noun’ or‘noun + noun’ may be shortened and one word is retained to represent the meaning of the phrases.With the word general meaning ’completely or almost universal.’ It also has the meaning of the phrase General officer, that is, ‘an officer of very high rank in the army of American air force.’It’s a particularly important cause of change. Sometimes a Saxon word which a general sense has been replaced by a French word or a Latin derivative, but the original word has survived with a restricted meaning. Just like the word “doer (“deer” in English)” meant a wild animal of any sort from a lion to a mouse. But when Middle Ages, the French word “beste”become the general word. So “deer” was change to refer a particular kind of animal.In fact, science and technology also brings about changes of meaning. Take the word “engine” for example. Its origin is a Latin word “ingenium”.But when stream power was developed in the first quarter of the 19thcentury, the term“engine” come to mean “a railroad locomative”, and in contemporary English it means “any machine that uses energy to develop mechanical power, esp. A machine for starting motion in some other machine”ConclusionAfter all above the passage has introduced the causes of changes in word meaning, and how didthey take effect on English words. This was very important for English major, when students study a language, they c an’t just learn its grammar or vocabulary, students should know something more, like how did this come, how would this changed. The more we asked the more we got. Hold this attitude can make us be more professional on our major subject.。

词汇学1,Polysemy:is a common feature peculiar to all natural languages,a words has two or more meanings.2,Synonym:one of two or more words in the English language which have the same or very nearly thesame essential meaning.3,Homonymy:words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identicalonly in sound or spelling.4,Hyponymy:deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion.that is,the meaning of a more specificword is included in that of another more general word.5,Antonymy:is concerned with semantic opposition.Antonyms can be defined as words which are oppositein meaning.they can be classified into three major groups.1,Contradictory terms.2,Contrary terms.3,Relative terms.6,Semantic field:a kind of meaning area,a group of related words sharing the same concept.7,Narrowing:it is also called specialization .it is the opposite of widening meaning.it is a process bywhich a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower or specialized sense.8,Extension:it is also called generalization.is the name given to the widening of meaning which somewords undergo.it is process by which a word which originally had a specialized meaning has now become generalized.9,Linguistic context:it refers to the words,clauses, sentences in which a word appears.it may cover a paragraph,a whole chapter and even the entire book.10,Metonymy:the name of one thing is used for that of another associated with it.11,Morphological motivation:accounts for the connection between the meaning of the word and the meaningof each morpheme in the word.the meanings of many words are the sum total of the morphemes combined.12,specialized dictionary:the dictionary that concentrates on a particular area of language or knowledge.13,Concept:which is beyond language is the result of human cognition,reflecting the objective world in the human mind.A concept can have as many referring expressions as there are language in the world.14,Radiation:a semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the centre and the secondary meanings proceed out of it in every direction like rays.15,Onomatopoeic motivation:indicates the relationship between sound and meaning of a word.its sound suggests its meaning.16,transfer:words which were used to designate one thing but later changed to mean something else have experienced the process of semantic transfer.17,Elevation:It refers to the process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance. 18,English idioms:strictly speaking,idioms are expressions that are not readily understandable from theirliteral meaning of individual elements.In a broad sense,idioms may include colloquialisms,catchphrases,slang expressions,proverbs,etc.they form an important part of the English vocabulary.19,synecdoche:it refers to substituting part for the whole and vice versa.20,Monolingual dictionary:a dictionary written in one language.21,Degradation:a process wherebywords of good origin fall into ill reputation or non-affective words come tobe used in derogatory sense.22,Dismembering:it refers to breaking up the idioms into pieces,an unusual case of use of idioms particularlyin literature or popular press to achieve special effect.23,Unabridged dictionaries:it is a complete record of all the words in use.It provides a great quantity of basic information about a word.24,Concatenation:a process where each of the later meaning is related only to the preceding one like chains. 25,lexical context:it refers to the words that occur together with the word in question.26,linguistic dictionaries:aim at defining words and explaining their usages in the language.they usually cover such areas as spelling,pronunciation,meaning,grammatical function,usage and etymology,etc.27,Affective meaning:indicates the speaker's attitude towards the person or thing in question.28,Motivation:accounts for the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning.29,connotative meaning:refers to the overtones or associations suggested by the conceptual meaning.30,Word:a word :is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. 31,sound and meaning:There is no intrinsic relationship between sound and meaning as the connection between them is arbitary and conxentional.Woman,for examle,becomes'Frau'in German,'female'in French32,vocabulary:all the words in the language make up its vocabulary.not only can it refer to the total number of the words in a language,but it can stand for all the words used in a particular historical period.we also use itto refer to all the words of a given dialect,a given book,a given discipline and the words possessed by an individual person33,Middle English:the language used in England from 1150 to 1500.34,affixes:are forms that are attached to word elements to modify meaning or function.35,Acronymy: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.36,stability:Words of the basic word stock hace been in use for centuries. man,fire,mountain37,productivity:Words of the basic word stock are mostly root words or monosyllabic.footage,doghoody38,collocability:Many words of the basic word stock enter quite a number of set expressions,idiomatic usages, proverbial sayings and the like.39,Morphemes:the morpheme is the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words.40,Allomorph:one of the variants that realize a morpheme.41,Free morpheme:a morpheme that can stand alone.they have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentense.42,Bound morpheme:a morpheme that occurs with at least one other morpheme.43,inflectional affixes:affixes attached of the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships44,derivational affixes:affixes added to other morphemes to create new words45,root:a morpheme which is the basic part of a word that can not be further analyzed withour total loss ofidentity46,stem:a form to which affixes of any kind can be added47,Bound root:a root that can not stand alone as a word48,Monomorphemic words:words that have nothing more than a free morpheme49,Argot:it generally refers to the jargon of criminals.50,old English:the language used in England from 450 to 1150.51,conversion:the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class.52,Borrowed words:words taken over from foreign lanugages.53,backformation:the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes.54,semantic-loans:words whose meanings are borrowed and whose forms are not borrowed.55,clipping:to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using what remains instead.56,Aliens:borrowed words which have relained their original pronunciation and spelling.57,Blending :is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. Word formed by blending are called blends or pormanteau.58,Derivation(also known as affixation)is the process of formation of words by adding word-forming or derivational affixes to stems.59,Reference is the relationship beween words and the things ,actions,events,and qualities they stand for.By meansof reference ,a speaker indicates which things in the world are being talked about .An example in English is the relationgship between the word CAT and the animal"CAT"in the real world.60,Concept,which is beyond language,is the result of human cogition,reflecting the objective world in the human mind 61,Sense denotes the relationships inside the language or the place which a word or phrase holds in the system of relationship with other words in the vocabulary of a language.⼤题1，Causes of changes词义变化的原因。