英语词汇学复习题重点

英语词汇学复习题重点

英语词汇学

1. Word--- A word is a minimal free form of a language that

has a gi ven sound and meaning and syntactic function.

2.Vocabulary --- Vocabulary is most commonly used to refer

to the tot al sum of the words of a language. It can also refer to

all the word s of a given dialect, a given book, a given subject

and all the words possessed by an individual person as well as all

the words current i n a particular period of time in history.

The general estimate of the present day English vocabulary

is over 1 million words.

3.argot – words used by sub-cultured groups, specialized

vocabulary used by criminals

can-opener, dip, persuader

cant, jargon , argot are associated with, or most available to,

speci fic groups of the population.

4.Content word (notional word) – denote clear notions and

thus are k nown as notional words. They include nouns, verbs,

adjectives, adverb s and numerals.

5.Borrowed words (loan words, borrowings) – words taken

over from fo reign language are known as borrowed words or

loan words or borrowing s in simple terms.

6.Semantic loans – are not borrowed with reference to the

form, but their meaning are borrowed from another language. In

other words, Eng lish has borrowed a new meaning for an

existing word in language. e.

g. stupid old dump

7.what is the importance of basic word stock?

The basic word stock is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the

language. five charac teristics: all national character, stability ,

productivity, polysemy , collocability

8.

9.What are neologisms? Give one example to illustrate it.

Neologisms are newly-created words or expressions, or

words that have taken on new meanings. Here is one example: E-mail: electronic mail,

chapter 2

Three modes of vocabulary development

1. Creation – the formation of new words by using the

existing mater ials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. (This

is the most imp ortant way of vocabulary expansion.)

2. Semantic change - an old form which take on a new

meaning to meet the new need.

3. Borrowing – to take in words from other

languages.(particularly i n earlier time)

4.Old English(450-1150)

The 1st people known to inhabit England were Celts, the

language was Celtic.

The second language was the Latin of the Roman Legions.

after the Rom ans

After the Romans,The Germanic tribes called angles, Saxons

and Jutes and their language, Anglo-Saxon dominated and

blotted out the Celtic. Now people refer to Anglo-Saxon as old

English. Old English has a vo cabulary of about 50,000 to

60,000words. It was a highly inflected la nguage just like modern

German.

6.Norman Conquest : the Normans invaded England from

France in 1066. the Norman Conquest started a continual flow of French words into Eng lish. Norman French became the polite

speech. 75% of them are still in use today. The situation of 3

languages (French,English,Latin) exi sting simultaneously

continued for over a century..

7.Renaissance: In the early period of modern English, Europe

saw a ne w upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics.

This is known in history as the Renaissance. Latin and Greek were

recognized as th e language of the Western world's great literary

heritage and of grea t scholarship.

reviving archaic words: words or forms that were once in

common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited

use. They are

found mainly in older poems, legal document and religious

writing or speech.

8. .Why do we say" English is a heavy borrower?" Please

justily it. English is a heavy borrower and has adopted words from

all other majo r languages of the world. It is estimated that

English borrowings con stitute 80% of the modern English

vocabulary. As is stated in Encyclo pedia Americana ,"The English

language has vast debts. In any diction ary some 80% of the

entries are borrowed".eg. kowtou from China, long time no see

from haojiubujian (China), the word "dream" originally m eant

"joy" and "music" ,its modern meaning was borrowed later from

th

e Norse.

9.Modern English(1150-1500): Modern English began with

the establishm ent of printing in English. word endings were

mostly lost with just a few exceptions. Modern English is

considered to be an analytic langu age.

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