词汇学论文
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The lexicology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the vocabulary of the English language in respect to words and word equivalents. The scope of lexicology embraces the development, structure, formation, meaning, and usage of words and word equivalents. By learning the lexicology which have learned quiet a number of English words together with other features of English, it help me learned summarize what I have learned and acquire a systematic knowledge of English vocabulary so that I can improve my ability to enlarge my personal vocabularies and choose the right words to use in a given context. Moreover, it also developed my skills and analyzing and generalizing about linguistic phenomena observed in study English. The lexicology not only plays a crucial part in learning foreign language, but also it plays a important role in my life. And I’ll mainly expound the Meaning and Context’roles was played in my learning and life. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language, and one or more morphemes can be composed a word, which can link to a sentence express the meaning of a specific situation. Like: one morpheme----imagine two morphemes----imagine + ation word----imagination sentence----I won’t tell you his reaction I’ll leave that to your imagination. With a little imagination, you could turn this place into a palace. From the first sentence, we can see the meaning of the imagination is the ability to create pictures in your mind, in the second sentence, the imagination mean the ability to have new and exciting ideas. So in different context, the same words have the different meaning. Context is of great importance for the understanding of word meaning. There are three vital roles of context in determination of word meaning, eliminating ambiguities, conveying emotional overtones, indicating referents and the range of the meaning of a word. I. Eliminating ambiguities Ambiguity is a common linguistic phenomenon, which indicates a section of a sentence has two or more than two different explanations or semantic interpretations. Eliminating the ambiguous interpretation or meaning, which contain the lexical ambiguity or structure ambiguity. A. 1.The lexical ambiguity caused by polysemy, E.g I saw a crane in the field. In this sentence, “ crane”is a polysemic word, it could mean either a bird or a machine . You should have seen the bull we got from the Pope. The sentence is ambiguous, because the word “bull” may stand for several distinct things – either a male animal of different kinds, a swearword or an official order or statement from the Pope. 2. It also caused by homophones. E.g I went to the bank yesterday. The word "bank" could be the word that means the bank where I deposit money. It could also be the word that means the bank at a river or a lake. The night (knight) is gone. If the sentence is uttered rather than written, it may cause ambiguity because the hearer is not sure whether the speaker is talking about the night as opposed to the day, or someone who is good at fighting in the middle ages. Although the ambiguity has a matter for understanding the meaning of context, but it also has play a crucial role in the advertisement, E.g Try your sweat corn, you will smile from ear to ear.( 玉米销售广告） In this sentence“ear”is polysemy which mean either of the organs on the sides of the head that you hear with or the top part of a grain plant. So in Chinese this sentence means 尝尝我们的甜玉米，你会吃了一个又一个（ear 玉米穗），高兴得合不拢嘴（ear 耳朵）。The advertisement was designed by the pun function of ambiguity. More sun and air for your son and heir.( 海滨浴场广告）In Chinese it means我们这里有充足的阳光和新鲜的空气，对你的儿子的身体健康，也就是事业和财产的继承人的身体健康，大有好处。 This ads. is persuaded for the rhythm and the words, it using homophones sun and son, air and heir, nobody wouldn’t want their own son have a good health, so it makes the place more attractive. Make time for time.(时代杂志) The first “time” mean 时间，the second mean the name of the magazine, it is “为了争取时间，就要阅读时代杂志”，the pun using the ambiguity of polysemy and homophones in words get the perfect effect B. The structural ambiguity arising from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase. E.g I saw the man with the telescope. In this sentence, the prepositional phrase “with the telescope” can be analysis as a part of object noun phrase has the semantics “the man who had the telescope” or has the higher attachment is associated with a semantics “where the seeing is achieved by means of the telescope”. So we can see whatever the meaning of words is, just the wider context of the utterance that can rule out one or the other confusion. Similarly, in the communication of our life we just give more information, the other person can understanding what we have say or what we are meaning. II. Conveying emotional overtones The emotive side of word meaning depends largely on the context. Like, usually, when we say the word “wind” it means 风or the word “cloud”means 云朵 and so on, but put its in a poem where it express the different emotions, like in the following poem, Every now and then fleecy clouds floated across the sky. The lake and the hills add radiance and beauty to each other. Butterflies fluttered about among the flowers. The wind whiffed through the trees. The branches swayed about the wind. Leaves flaked down in the breeze. No one knows where the leaf comes from and where it belongs. Only one thing will be sure that the leaf belongs anywhere because of the wind and the wind never feels lonely because of the leaf. Everything may change, seasons may come, and true love never grows old. In this poem, the word wind, clouds, leaf does not ordinarily occur in
