词汇学知识点总结

词汇学期末复习

1.In brief, a word may be defined as a fundamental unit of speech and minimum free form; with a unity of sound and meaning (both lexical and grammatical meaning), capable of performing a given syntactic function.

2.The morpheme (词素) is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.

Example:

One morpheme: nation

Two morphemes: nation-al

Three morphemes: nation-al-ize

Four morphemes: de-nation-al-ize

3. An allomorph (词素变体) is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

For example:

go: went, gone

-ion/-tion/-sion/-ation are the positional variants of the same suffix.

4.Inflectional affixes (曲折词缀)

Affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus known as inflectional morphemes. For example: cats, walked, walking, John’s book…

5.Derivational affixes (派生词缀)

Affixes added to other morphemes to create new words. They can be further divided into prefixes and suffixes.

For example:

re＋write, mini＋car,

work＋er

6.Connotative meaning (内涵意义)

In contrast to denotative meaning, connotative meaning refers to the overtones or associations which a word suggests or implies.

Mother (a female parent) is often associated with ‘love’, ‘care’, ‘tenderness’, ‘forgiving’, etc.

Home (a dwelling place) may suggest ‘family, warmth, safety, love, convenience’, etc

7.Stylistic meaning (文体意义)

Words may have stylistic features, which make them appropriate for different contexts. Examples: male parent, father, daddy ；residence, home, pad

8.Affective meaning (情感意义)

Affective meaning indicates the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thing in question. Words that have emotive values may fall into two categories:

Appreciative or commendatory (褒义): words of positive overtones used to show appreciation or approval. eg: love, cherish, prize, admire, worship, charm .

Pejorative or derogatory (贬义): words of negative connotations imply disapproval, contempt or criticism. eg : hate, vicious .

9.Collocative meaning (搭配意义)

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires in its collocation. In other

words, it is that part of the word meaning suggested by the words before or after the word in discussion.

eg:pretty: girl, woman, flower, etc. handsome: boy, man, car, etc.

10.a) Radiation辐射型：

It is the semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the centre and the secondary meaning radiates out of it.

Though all the secondary meanings are independent of one another, they can all be traced back to the primary meaning.

face head

11.b) Concatenation 连锁型:

It is the semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its primary meaning in succession so that the present meaning seems to have no connection to the primary meaning.

E.g.

candidate：

1) white-roped

2) office seeker in white gowns

3) a person who seeks an office

4) a person proposed for a place, award, etc.

12.Linguistic context can be subdivided into lexical context and grammatical context.

a) lexical context: refers to the lexemes that co-occur with the word in question. The meaning of the word is often affected and defined by the neighbouring lexemes.

E.g“paper”: a term paper ，today’s paper ；"do " : do one’s teeth: brush ，do fish: cook.

13.b) grammatical context: In some cases, the meanings of a polysemant may be influenced by the structure in which it occurs.

E.g.“become”

become + adj./n. , means‘begin to be’

become + pron./n. , means ‘suit, befit’

become + of, means ‘happen to, often in a bad way’

1.Causes of changes in word meaning

1)historical cause :It often happens that though a word retain its original form, its meaning has changed because the object it denotes has changed, this is the historical cause of semantic change.

eg.pencil (from Latin word meaning)—a little tail or a fine brush, like our Chinese pen

when it was made of wood and graphite石墨，it was still called a “pencil”

2)Social cause : Change in word meaning results from a constant verbal traffic between common