语言学之构词法

• 3,semantic shift: the meaning of the word is changed.
Words silly nice fond Past meaning happy ignorant foolish Present meaning stupid good Loving, affectionate
(7). Borrowing（adopting foreign words)
Loan word: retaining their original phonetic or written forms,
label a new concept, or become a synonym of native words. Eg: education —Latin bungalow—Hindi Food and cooking words in Middle English period: English has borrowed a large number of words from French. Eg: dinner ,supper ,beef ,appetite.
assimilated into English vocabulary. Eg: piano awkward esteem.
→Not all lord words became immediately
assimilated into a language, especially the retention of the original plurals of some Latin borrowed words. Eg : fungus—fungi memorandum—memoranda
Load-translation or calques(直译，意译，仿造词）:a direct
translation of the foreign words into English .
Eg:
Kongfu ,Tofu—Chinese
→Many of these borrowed words have easily
7.4.2 • Words can be lost from a language over the course of several generation, because of discontinuation of the object they name. eg: Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare beseem —— to be suitable gyve —— a fetter wot —— to know
Words deer Wife Girl Past meaning Any animal A woman A child Present meaning A particular kind of animal A married woman A female girl
Rule: general → special
eg: rumble seat soap flakes
7.4Hale Waihona Puke Baidu3
• 1,semantic broadening: meaning of a word becomes broader.
words Past meaning Present meaning
dog aunt
tail
a kind of hunting dog father’ sister
The tail of the horse
any kind of dog Both father’ and mother’ sister
The tail of any animal
Rule: special → general
• 2,sementic narrowing: the meaning of a word is narrowed to what it is now.
Rule: meaning may be elevated or degraded.