英语词汇学复习题重点

英语词汇学

1. Word--- A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a gi ven sound and meaning and syntactic function.

2.Vocabulary --- Vocabulary is most commonly used to refer to the tot al sum of the words of a language. It can also refer to all the word s of a given dialect, a given book, a given subject and all the words possessed by an individual person as well as all the words current i n a particular period of time in history.

The general estimate of the present day English vocabulary is over 1 million words.

3.argot – words used by sub-cultured groups, specialized vocabulary used by criminals

can-opener, dip, persuader

cant, jargon , argot are associated with, or most available to, speci fic groups of the population.

4.Content word (notional word) – denote clear notions and thus are k nown as notional words. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverb s and numerals.

5.Borrowed words (loan words, borrowings) – words taken over from fo reign language are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowing s in simple terms.

6.Semantic loans – are not borrowed with reference to the form, but their meaning are borrowed from another language. In other words, Eng lish has borrowed a new meaning for an existing word in language. e.

g. stupid old dump

7.what is the importance of basic word stock?

The basic word stock is the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the language. five charac teristics: all national character, stability , productivity, polysemy , collocability

8.

9.What are neologisms? Give one example to illustrate it.

Neologisms are newly-created words or expressions, or words that have taken on new meanings. Here is one example: E-mail: electronic mail,

chapter 2

Three modes of vocabulary development

1. Creation – the formation of new words by using the existing mater ials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. (This is the most imp ortant way of vocabulary expansion.)

2. Semantic change - an old form which take on a new meaning to meet the new need.

3. Borrowing – to take in words from other languages.(particularly i n earlier time)

4.Old English(450-1150)

The 1st people known to inhabit England were Celts, the language was Celtic.

The second language was the Latin of the Roman Legions. after the Rom ans

After the Romans,The Germanic tribes called angles, Saxons and Jutes and their language, Anglo-Saxon dominated and blotted out the Celtic. Now people refer to Anglo-Saxon as old English. Old English has a vo cabulary of about 50,000 to 60,000words. It was a highly inflected la nguage just like modern German.

6.Norman Conquest : the Normans invaded England from France in 1066. the Norman Conquest started a continual flow of French words into Eng lish. Norman French became the polite speech. 75% of them are still in use today. The situation of 3 languages (French,English,Latin) exi sting simultaneously continued for over a century..

7.Renaissance: In the early period of modern English, Europe saw a ne w upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the Renaissance. Latin and Greek were recognized as th e language of the Western world's great literary heritage and of grea t scholarship.

reviving archaic words: words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use. They are