Lexicology and Our English Study

Lexicology and Our English Study If we have the knowledge of Latin language, we will understand the word ―lexicology‖ easilily because ―lexicology‖ is a borrowed word from ―lexicologie‖—a french word ,which contains two morphemes: one is Greek lexicón, meaning ―workbook‖ or ―vocabulary;‖ the other is French logie, meaning ―the study of science of‖ From these words above, we can see the meaning of ―lexicology‖. What‘s more, we can briefly understand what is this course mainly about. ―Comprehensively speaking, lexicology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the vocabulary of a given language. It deals with the words, their origin, development, history, structure, meaning and application.‖ [1] Therefore, from this perspective, we can see that lexicology is not equel to vocabulary, it contains many parts of our English study. According to the definition of lexicology, we are able to link it to our English study. Initially, studying lexicoloy is an effective way to raise the interest level of our English study. I bought a book called An Examination of English Etymology last year. In the preface, the author ,Liu Hongbo(chairman of the board of Beijing IELTS), said he was motivated by his students because the majority of his students showed great interest in the tales and myths that he told in his vocabulary class. ―Almost every students dislike remembering English words, but most of the students or Englisn learners are curious about the stories behind the letters.‖ [2] The reason why I bought this book is also the curiosity about the origin of English words. As a branch of lexicology, etymology is of great attaction to English learners. So if we can take good charge of lexicology, the interest level of English studying will be raised prominently. Let me set some words as examples. The word ―ocean‖ is very familiar word. It comes from the god of ocean Oceanus in Greek mythology; the word ―panic‖ comes from Pan—the master of all the forests in Greek mythology. He has human being‘s body but with goat‘s feet and cavels and he always lives in the forests but hide and jump out suddenly to scare the traveller for fun. From the origin of the word ―pan‖,we can easily understand the meaning of it and will never forget it. If we can know the origin of the words, we will feel that learning English is such an interesting thing. Let‘s another example. It is known to us all the meaning of ―queue‖. But just few people know where it came from because it looks kind of strange and is not like ―standard‖ English words. ―Queue‖ is a French word that old meaning is ―tail‖ and then its meaning is pigtail. If we know this, a picture will come into our minds—there is a long tail out of the box office. How funny! Another typical example is the names of the monthes. All the English learners may feel confused when they remember the names of the 12 monthes. However once we could get the point of their origins, we will find that it‘s interesting and easy to remember. January comes from Janus—the god of gate in Rome, who has two faces—one sees back and another see forward to the future. People set his name as the first month‘s name which means ring out the old year and ring in the new year. February , which old meaning is a Roman festival called ―februarius‖. At that day on February, people will whip the women who barren with a strap called ―Februa‖. According to the traditional customs, March is the time for expeditions and wars. Therfore, people set Mars—the god of war as the name of the third month. April is kind of equal to spring, the season of blossom. So the Roman ancestor called the fourth month ―April‖ which means ―the days of blossom‖. May is another month in spring so people named the fifth month ―May‖—the name of godness of spring and life. Roman ancesters admired their godness Juno very much because she is in charge of marriage、fertiling and women. Therefore, the sixth month‘s name was named after Juno. July is a ―great‖ month because it was named after the greatest emperor—Caesar Julius, who was born in the seventh month. August is another ―great‖ month because it came from another great emperor‖s name in Roman. His name is Augustus. Before Caesar change the calendar, semptember ,october,november and december are the seventh,eighth,ninth and tenth month. Because ―septem‖ ,―octo‖ ,―novem‖and ―decem‖ mean seven,eight, nine and ten. However ,after the calendar being changed, people still use their old names. Apart from that aspect above, studying lexicology well can also contribute to memorizing more words. ―The English language has increased its resourses not only through the adoption of words from other languages, but also through the formation of new words with the material available in the language.‖ [3] Firsytly, let‘s see what is a word? A word is a minimum free form. For instance, ―play‖ is a word, and so is ―player‖. But structurally speaking, ―play‖ and ―player‖ are somewhat different whereas ―play‖ can not be broken down into any smaller units, ―player‖ can. The word ―player‖ can be divided into two grammatically significant elements: play and –er. Such word forms as books,desks can also be divided into two grammatically significant elements: book or desk and –s. these minimal grammatical units are called morphemes. Of course, ―player‖ is such a simple word but if we are wallow in compound words, we can try to divide the word into some morphemes. According to morphology, there three types of word: simple words,compound words and complex word. As society develops, so does the language. That is to say, the vocabulary grows and changes together with the development of society. Therefore a great number of compound words and complex words appear constantly. ―Especially today , owing to the rapid development of science and technology, a large number of compound words and complex words have been coined.‖ [4] Therefore , if we are able to be in charge of the methods of morphemes, we may take a shortcut to memorizing a large number of English words. Furthermore, root, base,stem are the cores of the morphemes. ―A root is the base form of a word that expresses its essential meaning, a meaning that never changes even though affixes may be added at the beginning or the end of a word‖ [5]. So we may say that the root is the foundation of each word. To be more exact, the term root is that part of the word left when all the affixes,prefixes and suffixes are removed. English has many words built up from Latin or Greek roots. However ,these roots are limited in number and simple in meaning. That is to say, if we can get in charge of the roots, we may know far more than the words that we have memorized. The base and