词汇学复习资料

Episode 1: A General Survey of Word

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

2. Vocabulary --- Vocabulary is most commonly used to refer to the sum total of all the words of a language. It can also refer to all the words 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 in a particular period of time in history.

The general estimate of the present day English vocabulary is over 2 million words.

3. Content word (notional word) --- denote clear notions and thus are known as notional words. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and numerals.

4. Borrowed words (loan words, borrowing) --- words taken over from foreign language are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowings in simple terms.

According to the degree of assimilation and manner of borrowing, we can bring the loan words under 4 classes: Denizens, Aliens, translation loans, Semantic loans

5. Semantic loans ---are not borrowed with reference to the form, but their meaning are borrowed from another language. In other words, English has borrowed a new meaning for an existing word in language. e.g. stupid old dump

6. Reference– the relationship between language and the world. By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being talked ab out. The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary and conventional. This connection is the result of generalization and abstraction.

Although reference is abstract, yet with the help of context, it can refer to something specific.

7. Concept– which beyond language is the result of human cognition reflecting the objective world i n the human mind. It isn’t affected by language. Meaning and concept are closely connected but not identical. Meaning belongs to language, so is restricted to language use.

A concept can have as many referring expressions as there are languages in the world.

8. Sense---denotes the relationship inside the language. Every word that has meaning has sense. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.

1. 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, which has five characteristics: all national character, stability, productivity, polysemy, collocability.

2. What are the characteristics of associative meaning?

Associative meaning is the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning.

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.

3. Tell briefly about Martin Joos’ the Five Clocks?

It suggests five degrees of formality: frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate.

4. What is the difference between lexical meaning and grammatical meaning?