北京语言大学2012考研资料重要章节要点整理

Chapter3 Lexicon
1、Three senses of word
(1)A physically definable unit. Words may be seen as a set of sounds segments
or writing letters between two pauses or blanks.
(2)Words both as a general term and as a specific term.
(3)A grammatical unit.
Ranks：clause complex——clause——phrase/word group——word——morpheme
2、Identification of words
(1)Stability. Words are the most stable of all linguistic units, in respect of their
internal structure.
(2)Relative unterruptibility. New elements should not be inserted into a word.
(3)A minimal free form. (Leonard Bloomfield 1933) Word is the smallest unit
that can be used, by itself, as a complete utterance. (sentence-the maximum free form)
3、Classification of words
(1)Variable & invariable words
Variable words have inflectional changes; they are mainly nouns, verbs and
pronouns, e.g. follow-follows-followed-following
Invariable words do not have inflectional endings, e.g. since, happy, to, etc.
(2)Grammatical & lexical words
Grammatical words (function word) are used mainly for constructing group,
phrase, clause, clause complex, or even text. They serve to link together
different content parts, such as, conjunctions, prepositions, articles,
pronouns.
Lexical words (content word) are used for referring to substance, action, and
quality. They carry the main content of a language, such as, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
(3)Closed-class & open-classed words
Closed-class: its membership fixed or limited, one cannot easily add or deduce a new member, .such as pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and others.
Open-class: Its membership is in principle infinite or unlimited. When new ideas, inventions, or discoveries emerge, new members are being added to the lexicon, such as, nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs.
Note: Preposition is relative open because regarding, in spite of, according to, and ,many others are now regarded as prepositions and complex
prepositions.
Auxiliary verbs are relatively closed in number.
(4)Word class
9 word classed: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition,
conjunction, article, interjection
Particles:
·Infinitive marker “to”
·Negative marker “not”
·Subordinate units in phrasal verbs, e.g., watch out, break down
Auxiliaries
Traditional auxiliaries & modal verbs
Pro-form
Pro-adjective/ pro-verb/ pro-adverb/ pro-locative
Determiners: words used before noun acting as head of a nominal group, and determine the kind of the reference the nominal group has.
· definite the
· indefinite a/an
· partitive some
· universal all
Pre-determiner: all, half, double, twice, one-third, etc.
Central-determiner: articles, demonstrative pronouns, indefinite
pronouns, possessive pronouns.
Post-determiner: cardinal numerals, ordinal numerals, general ordinals,
quatifiers.
Morpheme:the smallest unit of language in terms of the relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be further divided into
smaller units without destroying or altering the meaning.
Free morpheme: morpheme that can make up words by itself.
Bound morpheme: morpheme that must appear with at least another morpheme.
Root: the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without destroying its meaning.（The part of the word that is left when all the affixed are removed.）Free root: roots that can stand be themselves and are the base forms of words. Bound root: roots can be used only when added to another morpheme. e.g. –ceive,-cur.
Some roots have both free and bound variants. Sleep-slep t, child-child ren
Affix: the type of morpheme that can be used only when added to another morpheme. Prefix: para-, un-
Suffix: -tion, -al
Infix: abso-bloomingly-lutely
Stem:any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix
can be added. （Stem may be the same as a root, may contain a root and one or more then one derivational affixes.）
Inflectional vs.derivational
Inflectional affixes:
1.productive across an entire category.
2.only add a grammatical meaning to the stem.
3.do not change the word class of the stem..
4.often conditioned by non-semantic linguistic factors, e.g. the present tense third
person singular marker.
5.normally suffixes in English.
6.small in number in English.
Derivational affixes:
1.not productive across an entire category, e.g. –not all verbs can be changed into
noun by attaching –tion, only some verbs can be changed in this way.
2.often change the lexical content.
3.may or may not change the word class of the stem.
4.more often based on simply meaning distinctions.
5.can be both prefixes and suffixes.
6.much larger in number.
Inflectional Morphology: the study of in flections.
Derivational/Lexical Morphology: the study of word formation.
Inflection indicates grammatical relations be adding inflectional affixes, e.g. number, person, finiteness, aspect and case.
Word-Formation refers to the process of how words are formed.
Compound (Compositional type):words that consist of more than one lexical (free) morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single
form. Complete united, hyphenated, separated.
Endocentric compound:(Verbal compound/ synthetic compound) the head of a endocentric compound is a de-verb (derived from a verb).
Usually the first member is a participants of the process verb.
Exocentric compound: the first word in an exocentric compound is derived from a verb.
Derivation: shows a relationship between roots and affixes.
Sememe: the smallest component of meaning.
1.one morpheme vs. one sememe -less
2.one morpheme vs. more than one sememe a-
3.one sememe vs. more than one morpheme il-, im-, ne-, un-
4.morphemes that have no specific sememe en-joy, cran-berry
5.function changes in both sememe and morpheme without morpheme change.
There may also be no morpheme change in a word, but both the grammatical and the semantic categories would change according to the context it occurs.
e.g. run a company/ in a short run-----verb and event/ noun and thing
Morphophonology/ Morphonology/ Morphophonemics/ Morphonemics: a branch of linguistics that refers to the analysis and classification of the phonological factors that affect the morpheme forms, and, correspondingly, the morphological factors that affect the phoneme forms, It studies the interrelationship between phonology and morphology.
1.a single morpheme vs. a single morpheme
Plurality boys
/z/ Possessive case john’s
Means nothing raise
2.a single morpheme vs. multiple phoneme
Monophonemic dog s
Monosyllabic love+ly
Polysyllabic tobacco
Allomorph: different shapes and phonetic forms of a morpheme.
Morpheme transcription: {-s~-z~-iz~-i:~-n~-ai~-ø}
Morphologically conditioned: have 3 requirements
1.All the allomorph should have the same sememe.
2.All the allomorphs should be in complementary distribution.
3.Allomorphs that have the same sememe should occur in parallel formation. This
suggests that allomorphs have the same functional place in the grammatical structure of the language.
Word formation
1.invention：many new lexical items come directly from technological and
economic activities.
2.Blending: a relatively complex form of compounding, in which two words are
blended by joining together the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by only joining the initial parts of the two words.
3.Abbreviation/Clipping: a new word is created by
(1)cutting the final part (advertisement-ad)
(2)cutting the initial part (telephone-phone)
(3)cutting both the initial and final parts accordingly (influenza-flu)
4.Acronym: made up from the initial letters of the words in a phrase or idiom or
the name of an organization.
WTO -World Trade Organization
Aids -acquired immune deficiency syndrome
5.Back-formation: an unusually abnormal type of word-formation where a
shorter word is derived by deleting an imaginary affix form a longer form already in language.
Editor-edit gangling-gangle
6.Analogical creation:
7.Borrowing：from many different languages, esp. Latin, Greek, French, and
Spanish.
（1）Loanwords：both form and meaning are borrowed with only a light adaptation. Kung-fu(Chinese)
（2）Loanblend：part of the form is borrowed, part is native, but the meaning is fully borrowed. Coco nut (Spanish)
（3）Loanshift：the meaning is borrowed, but the form is native.
Bridge(a card game from Italy)
（4）Loan translation：each morpheme or word is translated from the equivalent morpheme or word into another language.
Verse libre-free verse
Semantic change
1.Broadening:a process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally
specific sense to a relatively general one.
2.Narrowing: the original meaning if a word can be narrowed or restricted to a
specific sense.
3.Meaning shift: the departure from the original domain as a result of its
metaphorical usage.
4.Class shift/ Zero-derivation/ conversion: by shifting the word class one can
change the meaning of a word from concrete entity or notion to a process or
attribution.
5.Folk etymology: the change of the form of a word or phrase, resulting from an
incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term, or from the
influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous.
Phonological change
(The change in sound leads to the change in form.)
Factors that contribute to the formation of new pronunciation:
1.Loss: the loss of sound- the disappearance of the very sound as phoneme in the
phonological system.
2.Adding: sounds may be added to the original sound sequence.
3.Metathesis: a process involving a change in the sequence of sounds. Metathesis
had been originally a performance error, which was overlooked and accepted by the speech community.
4.Assimilation: the change of a sound by the influence of an adjacent sound,
which is more specifically called “contact” or “contiguous”
assimilation—Theory of least effort.。