4.现代英语词汇学(第四章)

Adjectives can also be distinguished from each other by the feature [ ±Dynamic]. Dynamic adjectives are honest, patient, etc.; stative adjectives are short, tipsy, etc. The differences between dynamic verbs and stative verbs on the one hand and stative verbs and adjectives on the other can be shown as follows: 1.Dynamic verbs and adjectives can appear in imperative sentences but their counterparts cannot: Kick the ball! (dynamic v.) Persuade him to leave! (dynamic v.)
from non-human; male from female. The word “man”, for example, has the following semantic features: [Human], [Adult], [Male], and [Concrete]. This kind of analysis is known as componential analysis. Semantic features are established on the basis of binary opposition (语义对分法). For example, we can factor out male-female as the binary opposition that holds between the noun pairs: man woman boy girl rooster hen bull cow
Be honest! (dynamic adj.) Be patient! (dynamic adj.) * Own the house! (stative v.) * Be tipsy/drunk! (stative adj.) 2. Dynamic verbs and adjectives may take the so called progressive aspect but their counterparts cannot: The girl is kicking the ball! (dynamic v.) He is being honest. ( dynamic v.) *The girl is resembling her father.( stative v.) *The men were being tipsy. (stative adj.)
Boy, table, book contrast with hope, thought, problem in this feature. Nouns are also subcategorized according to the feature [Count]. This feature distinguishes countable nouns from so-called “mass” nouns / material nouns. A distinction relevant to verbs is whether they are primarily dynamic verbs or stative verbs. Verbs can also be subcategorized for completiveness versus duration. Other features for verbs produce other subcategorizations, such as causative verbs, noncausative verbs, volitive verbs (verbs relating will, desire etc), non-volitive verbs and many others.
Dynamic verbs and adjectives can appear in a number of embedded sentences (内嵌句）in which non dynamic verbs and adjectives cannot: I told the girl to persuade him to leave. I told the girl to be patient. * I told the girl to own the house. * I told the girl to resemble her father. In actual usage, there are some verbs that are active in form but passive in meaning, as can be shown in the following sentences: The fields ploughs easily after the rain. Dried food stores easily in summer camp.
To capture this generalization, a binary feature [±Male] can be established. With the same list we can factor out an opposition between human and nonhuman: man rooster woman hen boy bull girl cow and the opposition adult-young as in: man boy woman girl
distinguish this in terms of plusses and minuses. Thus [Male] and [Female] are written as [ ±Male] and [ – Male] and so on. We can, moreover, refer to the lack of a sex distinction as ‘plus or minus’ with the symbol [±Male].” ( Palmer 1981:111) The nouns listed above will be distinguished from others like book, chair, dictionary by the feature [±Animate]; we will also need a feature [±Vegetable] to distinguish plants . The feature [±Male ] would not be relevant for many [+Vegetable] nouns, but [±Adult] would be, as intree/sapling (young tree). Nouns are further subcategorized according to whether they are [±Abstract].
Using case grammar to analyze the above sentences semantically, we can find that plough functions in the role called “instrument” (plough= with the plough) though occurring in subject position and that field and food function in the role called “Patient” (the role of the being or thing that is affected by the action or event) though occurring as subjects. This analysis made on the basis of the deep structure of a sentence. Case grammar refers to an approach to grammatical analysis devised by the American linguist Charles Fillmore in the late 1960s, within the general orientation of Generative Grammar.
现代英语词汇学（第四章） Semantic Features
The linguistic meaning of a word is the set of abstracted characteristics necessary to distinguish the category which the word names from all other categories. These abstracted characteristics are known as semantic features. Semantic features are used to describe semantic universals that may characterize all languages. All languages, for example, distinguish nouns that categorize abstract from concrete experience; animat can thus set up three binary semantic features: [Male], ]Adult], [Human]. Using these terms we can characterize man, woman, boy, girl, bull and cow semantically as, among other things: man [ +Male, +Adult, +Human ] woman [ –Male, +Adult, +Human ] boy [ +Male, –Adult, +Human ] girl [ –Male, –Adult, +Human ] bull [ +Male, +Adult, -Human ] cow [ –Male, +Adult, –Human ]