英语词汇学总结

第一章

1. the definition of lexicology

❖Lexicology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the vocabulary of a given language.

❖It deals with words, their origin, development, history, structure, meaning and application.

❖In short, it is the study of the signification and application of words.

2. Two approaches to the study of English lexicology

The term synchronic means describing a language as it exists at one point of time.

The term diachronic means concerned with historical development of a language.

A synchronic approach is an approach to the study of a language at one period of time, whereas a diachronic approach is an approach to the study of the change in a language that took place over a period of time.

3. the sources of the English vocabulary

❖At the beginning of the fifth century Britain was invaded by three tribes from the Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

4. Evolutional periods of the English Language

A. The period from 450 to 1150 is known as old English. It is sometimes described as the period of full inflections, since during most of this period the case endings of the noun, the adjectives, and the verbs are preserved more or less unimpaired.

B.From 1150 to 1500, the language is known as Middle English. During the period, the inflections, which had begun to break down toward the end of the Old English period, become greatly reduced, and it is consequently known as the period of leveled inflections.

C. The language since 1500 is called Modern English. A large part of the original inflectional system has disappeared entirely and we therefore speak of it as the period of lost inflections. The progressive decay of inflections is only one of the developments that mark the evolution of English in its various stages.

第二章

1. The English vocabulary may be classified into two great groups according to its origin: native words and borrowed words.

Native words are the foundation and the core of the English vocabulary. In structure they are mostly monosyllabic words. In meaning they express the fundamental concepts dealing with everyday objects and things.

The features of the native words:

1) The polysemic feature

2) The collocability of native words

3) Word-forming ability of native words

Borrowed words or loan-words refer to the words that are taken from foreign languages..

Foreign borrowing may be divided into four groups according to their character.

(1) Aliens (2) Denizens (3) translation-loans (4) semantic borrowings

Aliens are words borrowed from a foreign language without any change of the foreign sound and spelling.

Denizens are words taken from a foreign language with a transformation of the foreign sound and spelling into native forms. They are not foreign words, but have been naturalized into native sound and spelling.

Translation-loans are words borrowed from foreign languages by means of translation. Semantic borrowings: words which have acquired a new meaning under the influence of other language are called semantic borrowings.

2. What is a word?

The definition of word:

A particular string of sounds must be united with a meaning

3. Morphemes:

The minimal units of Meaning.

What is a morpheme? A morpheme, the minimal linguistic unit, is thus an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning that cannot be further analyzed. Therefore, every word in every language is composed of one or more morphemes.

4. Classification of morphemes

⏹We can make a broad distinction between two types of morphemes. Free morphemes and

Bound morphemes.

⏹Free morphemes refer to the morphemes which can stand by themselves as single words,

e.g. open and door.

⏹Bound morphemes refer to those which cannot normally stand alone, but which are

typically attached to another form, e.g. re-, -ist, ist, -s.

What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs which we think of as the words which carry the content of messages we convey, these free morphemes are called lexical morphemes, e.g. boy, man, house, tiger, long, yellow, sincere, open.

The other group of free morphemes are called functional morphemes, like and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, etc. This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns.

The set of affixes which fall into the bound category can also be divided into two types. One is derivational morphemes. These are used to make new words in the language. A list of derivational morphemes will include suffixes such as the ish in foolish, the –ly in badly and the –ment in payment. It will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, dis-, un- and so forth.

The second set of bound morphemes contains what are called inflectional morphemes. These are