Chapter Three 语言学 第三章 大学英语语言学

Variable and invariable words
• Variable words have inflective endings ,i.e. part of the word remains constant while the other part changes regularly to fulfill different grammatical functions.
• Dormitory 一词常被简写为dorm; if you rearrange the word dormitory, what will happen? • You can spell the word dirty room ! • This kind of word game is called ANAGRAM(变位词).
Word is a Grammatical Unit
• This can be understood in two ways. First of all, word in itself possesses some grammatical features. • take is transitive verb. • book is a countable noun.
Classification of words
• Variable and invariable words ( 可变词和不变词) • Grammatical and lexical words ( 语法词和词汇词) • Closed-class words and open class words ( 封闭类词和开放类词) • Word class ( 词类)
Counterexamples
• dorm=to sleep • 来源于拉丁文dormire, “to sleep”。如 dormitory 睡觉的地方→宿舍。 • BrE: a large room for several people to sleep in, for example in a boarding school or hostel • AmE: a large building at a college or university where students live [= hall of residence BrE]
English inflectional affixes
Affixes Grammatical functions
-s -s Third person singular present tense marker Plural number marker
Examples
Tom talks The chairs are his
• Silent =
Listen
• Eleven plus two= twelve plus one • Mother-in-law= • • God= Dog • Ate=
woman Hitler
eat
• By UNINTERPRETIBLIITY, we mean new elements are not inserted into a word even when there several parts in a word. • Dis-appoint-ment • Nothing is to be inserted in between the three parts.
• Then word is the basic structural unit of language. It can enter a sentence and possess a structural position in the sentence; • He is an engineer. • He is not merely a pronoun, it is also the subject of the sentence.
What is Lexicon
• LEXICON is a puzzling term and the beginner may find it hard to approach. What is lexicon? If we use the more familiar term “vocabulary” to replace it, the puzzlement will disappear. In this sense, lexicon is the collection of all the words of a language. Words are the focus of the study of lexicon, so the emphasis of this chapter naturally falls upon words ,i.e. ,the analysis and creation of words
Word is meaningful
• Word is made up of sounds and letters. But word is totally different from sounds or letters. Word is meaningful whereas sounds or letters are meaningless. • a is meaningful that it can be used to mean indefiniteness when modifying nouns. The letter “a” is, however, meaningless, which can be used as an element in building words.
• Sentences are made up with different classes of words which are stored in a speaker’s mental dictionary or lexicon, they are the fundamental building blocks of language.
-’s -ed
Possessive case marker Past tense marker
John‘s friend came here Tom talked
Tom has talked/It was stolen Tom is talking.
-ed/-en Past participle marker/perfect aspect -ing Present participle marker/progressive aspect
-er -est
Comparative degree marker Superlative degree marker
He is thinner than Tom. Tom is the tallest in his class
Grammatical word and lexical words • Those expressing grammatical meanings ,like conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns are grammatical wordsfunction words (功能词). • Those having lexical meaning is referring to the substance, action and quality, like nouns, verbs and adverbs are lexical words-content words（实义词）.
Sentences Inflection+ word formation words
Internal structure
compound……..
Smaller units
morpheme
Derivationaffixation
Morphological rules
Organized in a particular way The ways words are combined
• In contrast, one could add Jane in the coordinating subject of the following sentence. • Paul, (Jane) and Rebecca are my classmates. • (Even) Paul (even) didn‟t (even) love (even ) Jane.
Word is relatively Stable and Uninterruptible • Compared with other linguistic units such as phrase, clause ,and sentence, Word is the most stable linguistic unit, in respect of its internal structure ,that is ,the constituent parts of a complex word have little potential for rearrangement. • Chairman • if the two components chair and man are rearranged as ﹡manchair, it is an unacceptable word in English.
What is Word?
• You may wonder whether this question is worth answering ,because everyone of us can identify word without much effort due to our everyday language experience and our language intuition.
Single –word-sentence
• A:Who came yesterday? • B:John
• A:What is the color of your bag? • B:Red.
• A:What are you going to do this afternoon? • B:Swim.
• Words, like bricks used in building houses, are ready-made units for building sentences.
• Word is a basic and meaningful sentence component that speakers recognize as the smallest speech units admitting between them a momentary pause in normal speech and a space in written texts. E.g. A matter of sth • 词是句子中有意义的基本单位，说话者把 词看成语句中的最小单位，在说话时，单 位之间可以略有停顿，书写时，单位之间 有间隔。
• 可变词有形态变化，即词的一部分保持不变，另 一部分有规则地变化以实现不同的语法功能 • Invariable words don‟t have inflectional endings such as since , when and hello .
•Байду номын сангаас• • • •
Follow mat Follows mats Following Followed The same word may have different grammatical forms but part of the word remains relatively constant.
Chapter Three Morphology and Lexicon
一句话的死亡 A word is dead When it is艾米利· said, 狄更生 Some say. 有人说， 一句话说完， I say it just 它就死亡。 Begins to live 我说， That day. 就在那天， Emily Dickinson, A Word 它的生命刚刚开端。