2010词汇学试题

西安外国语大学考试试题（A）编号:2502102

2010-2011学年第 1 学期院（系、部）：英语教育学院专业：英语

课程：英语词汇学班级：08级、10级专升本命题时间：2010.12 命题教师：穆小莉

以上栏目由命题教师填写，下栏由考生填写

学号：姓名：系（院）：专业：班级：

Ⅰ. Define the following terms. (20%)

1. Free Morpheme Free Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free.

2. Polysemy Words belonging to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have undertone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous.

3. Semantic Motivation Semantic motivation refers to the mental associations suggested by the conceptual meaning of

a word. It explains the connection between the literal sense and figurative sense of the word.

4. Associative meaning meaning is the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning. It differs from the conceptual meaning in that it is open-ended and indeterminate. It is liable to the influence of such factors as culture, experience, religion,geographical region, class background, education, etc.

5. Degradation Degradation or pejoration of meaning is the opposite of semantic elevation. It is a process whereby words of good origin fall into ill reputation or non-affective words come to be used in derogatory sense.

Ⅱ. Answer the following questions. (50%)

1.How have the following words become degraded in meaning?

Villain person who worked in a villa evil or wicked person or scoundrel, wench country girl prostitute, boor peasant rude，ill-mannered person, churl peasant / free man uncultivated or mean person, silly happy foolish

2.What is meant by transference of meaning? Explain the meanings of the italicized words

in the following sentences.

1)To Kate, calculating精明的and cold, the most important thing was power.

2)They treated the captives with calculated carefully thought out in advance cruelty.

3)The music is inspiring. stimulating or exalting to the spirit

4) He gave an inspired of such surpassing excellence as to suggest divine inspiration performance of

the piano.

3. What is meant by conversion? Pick out examples of conversion in the sentences below to

illustrate your explanation.

1) So she believed me and doctored my battered face, pleased that she could be useful.

2) The train is telescoped as a result of the collision.

3) We cannot mandate a solution to inflation.

4) There will be a repeat of this programm next week.

4. What are the causes of meaning change? Illustrate your point.

5. Why can a word have more than one antonym? Give examples.

III. Analyze and comment on the following. (30%)s

1. Comment on the following two pairs of sentences in terms of superordinates and

subordinates.

1) He got a piece of furniture recently.