英语语言学词汇学习分类

A

Acquisition: According to Krashen, acquisition refers to the gradual and subcon-scious development of ability in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations.

“Abbreviation”, also called in some cases ―clipping‖, means that a word that seems unnecessarily long is shortened, usually by clipping either the front or the back part of it, e.g., telephone→phone, professor→prof., etc.

Broadly speaking, abbreviation includes acronyms that are made up from the first letters of the long name of an organization, e.g., World Bank→WB, European Economic Community→EEC, etc. Other examples of acronyms can be found with terminologies, to be read like one word, e.g., radio detecting and ranging→radar. Test of English as a Foreign Language→TOEF L , etc.

arbitrariness?

By ―arbitrariness‖, we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. A dog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like ―bang‖, ―crash‖, ―roar‖, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly, some compounds (words compounded to be one word) are not entirely arbitrary either. ―Type‖ and ―write‖ are opaque or unmotivated words, while ―type-writer‖ is less so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say ―arbitrariness‖ is a matter of degree.

assimilation rule? the deletion rule?

The ―assimilation rule‖ assimilates one segment to another by ―copying‖ a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar. This rule accounts for the raring pronunciation of the nasal [n] that occurs within a word. The rule is that within a word the nasal consonant[n] assumes the same place of articulation as the following consonant. The negative prefix ―in-― serves as a good example. It may be pronounced as [in], [i] or [im] when occurring in different phonetic contexts: e. g., indiscrete-[ ] (alveolar) inconceivable-[ ](velar) input-[‗imput] (bilabial)

The ―deletion rule‖ tells us when a sound is to be deleted although is orthographically represented. While the letter ―g‖ is mute in ―sign‖, ―design‖ and ―paradigm‖, it is pronounced in their corresp onding derivatives: ―signature‖, ―designation‖ and ―paradigmatic‖. The rule then can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. This accounts for some of the seeming irregularities of the English spelling. Antonymy? How many kinds of antonyms are there?

The term ―antonymy‖ is used for oppositions of meaning; words that stand opposite in meaning are called ―antonyms‖, or opposites, which fall in there categories1) gradable antonyms (e.g, good-bad); (2) complementary antonyms (e.g., single-married); (3) relational antonyms (e.g., buy-sell). affixation, conversion and compounding?

―Affixation‖ is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base (root or stem). It has been the oldest and the most productive word-formation method

analogical creation?

The process of ―analogical creation‖, as one of the English tendencies in English word-formation, refers to the phenomenon that a new word or a new phrase is coined by analogy between a newly created one and an existing one. For example, ―marathon‖ appeared at the First Olympic Games and by analogy modern English created such words as ―telethon‖, ―talkthon‖, etc. Analogy may create single words (e.g., sunrise-moonrise, earthrise, etc.; earthquake-starquake, youthquake, etc.) and phrases (e.g., environmental

pollution-sound pollution, air pollution, cultural pollution, etc.).

assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis?

―Assimilation‖ refers to change of a sound as the result of the influence of an ad jacent sound, which is called ―contact‖ or

―contiguous‖ assimilation. The assimitative processes at word in language could be explained by the ―theory of least effort‖ ,i.e., in speaking we tend to exert as little effort as possible so that we do not want to vary too often places of articulation in uttering a sequence of sounds. Assimilation takes place in quick speech very often. In expressions such as ―immobile‖, ―illegal‖, etc., the negative prefixes should be or have been ―in-‖ etymologically.

applied linguistics?

In the broadest sense, applied Linguistics refers to the study

of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems, such as lexicography, translation, speech pathology, etc. Applied linguistics uses information from sociology, psychology, anthropology, and information theory as well as from linguistics in order to develop its own theoretical models of language and language use, and then uses this information and theory in practical areas such as syllabus design, speech therapy, language planning, machine translation, various facets of communication research, and many others.

In the narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the study of second /foreign language learning and teaching. It serves as a mediating area which interprets the results of linguistic theories and makes them user-friendly to the language teacher and learner.

assimilation rule --- The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by ―copying‖ a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. Assimilation of neighbouring sounds is, for the most part, caused by articulatory or physiological processes. When we speak, we tend to increase the ease of articulation. This ―sloppy‖ tendency may become regularized as rules of language. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, [p] and [ph] are the two phones under the phoneme /p/ in English, thus [p] and [ph] are called the allophones of the phoneme

auditory phonetics:It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hearer.

acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking

at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another.

B

branches of linguistics?

The study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics. But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics etc.

“Borrowing”means the English language borrowed words from foreign languages, which fall in four categories: aliens, denizens, translation-loans and semantic borrowings.

―Aliens‖ are foreign loans that still keep their alien shapes, i.

e., morphological and phonological features, e.g., ―elite‖, ―coup détat‖, ―coupé‖, etc.(from French).―Deniens‖ , also foreign words, have transformed their foreign appearance, i.e., they have been Angolcized (or Americanized), e. g., ―get‖ (a Scandinavian borrowing), ―theater‖ (a French loan), etc. ―Hybrids‖ are also denizens, because they are words made up of two parts both from foreign soil, such as ―sociology‖ (―socio-‖ from French and –logy from Greek). “Translation-loans”are words imported by way of translation, e. g., ―black humor‖ from French(―humor noir‖), ―found object‖ form French ,too (―object trouve‖), etc. Finally, semantic borrowings have acquired new meaning under the influence of language or languages other than the source tongue. For example, ―gift‖ mean ―the price of a wife ‖ in Old English (450-1150AD), and after the semantic borrowing of the meaning of ―gift or present‖ of the Scandinavian term ―gipt‖, it meant and still means ―gift‖ in the modern sense of it.

blending, abbreviation and back formation?

―Blending‖ is a relatively complex form of compounding in which two roots are blended by joining the initial part of the first root and the final part of the second root, or by joining the initial parts of the two roots, e.g., smog→smoke+fog, boatel→boat + hotel, etc.

“Back-formation”refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by detecting an imagined affix from a longer form already present in the

language. It is a special kind of metanalyais, combined with

analogical creation, e.g., editor→edit, enthusiasm→enthuse,

etc.

Bilingualism and diglossia

It has been observerd that in some speech communities，two

language are used side with each having a different role to

play；and language switching occurs when the situation

changges。This constitutes the situation of bilingualism。

behaviorism--- Traditional behaviorists view language as

behavior and believe that language learning is simply a

matter of imitation and habit formation. A child imitates

the sounds and patterns of the people around him; people

recognize the child‘s attempts and reinforce the attempts by

responding differently, the child repeats the right sounds or

patterns to get the reward (reinforcement). The child learns

the language gradually in much the same way as

habit-forming. So imitation and practice are preliminary,

discrimination and generalization are key to language

development in this theory.

bound morpheme: Bound morphemes are the morphemes

which cannot be used independently but have to be combined

with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a

word,such as the –ing,-ed and un-,im-,-ful,-tion,they can not

be used alone. bound morphemes can further be classified as

derivational and inflectional morphemes.

C

Context: It is generally considered as the constituted

knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer. The shared

knowledge is of two types: the knowledge of the language

they use, and the knowledge about the world, including the

general knowledge about the world and the specific

knowledge about the situation in which linguistic

communication is taking place.

Constative:Constatives were statements that either state or

describe, and were verifi-able, such as the sentence ―China is

a developing country‖, it is simply a sentence to state the fact

that China is a developing country, from this point of view,

we can say it is a constative.

culture Culture, in a broad sense, means the total way of

life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs,

objects, institutions, techniques, and language that

characterizes the life of human community. In a narrow sense,

culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or

customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture,

enterprise culture or food culture etc. Generally speaking,

there are two types of culture: material and spiritual.

cultural transmission?

This means that language is not biologically transmitted from

generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic

system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that

the capacity for language in human beings (N. Chomsky

called it ―language acquisition device‖, or LAD) has a genetic

basis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a

cultural one other than a genetic one like the dog‘s barking

system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot

acquire language. The Wolf Child reared by the pack of

wolves turned out to speak the wolf‘s roaring ―tongue‖ when

he was saved. He learned thereafter, with no small difficulty,

the ABC of a certain human language.

Complementary distribution: refers to the relation between

two similar sounds which are allophones of the same

phoneme. If the two sounds do not distinguish meaning but

complement each other in distribution, i.e. they occur in

different phonemic environment and can not occur in the

same phonemic environment, they are said to be in

complementary distribution. For example, the clear[l] and the

dark [ľ] are two similar sounds and they can not distinguish

meaning, they appear in different situations, i.e. the clear[l]

always appears before a vowel while the dark [l] always

appears before a vowel and a consonant, so they are two

allophones of the same phoneme /l/, they are in

Complementary distribution.

collocation?

―Collocation‖ is a term used in lexicology by some linguists

to refer to the habitual co-occurrences of individual lexical

items. F or example, we can ―read‖ a ―book‖; ―correct‖ can

narrowly occur with ―book‖ which is supposed to have faults,

but no one can ―read‖ a ―mistake‖ because with regard to

co-occurrence these two words are not collocates.

“clause‖ is group of words with its ow n subject and predicate

included in a larger subject-verb construction, namely, in a

sentence. Clauses can also be classified into two kinds: finite

and non-finite clauses, the latter referring to what are

traditionally called infinitive phrase, participle phrase and

gerundial phrase.

category?

The term ―category‖ in some approaches refers to classes and

functions in its narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject,

predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically it

refers to the defining properties of these general units: the

categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender,

case and countability; and of the verb, for example, tense,

aspect, voice, etc.

concord? government?

―Concord ‖ may be defined as requirement that the forms of

two or more words of specific word classes that stand in

specific syntactic relationship with one another shall be

characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category

or categories, e.g., ―man runs‖, ―men run‖. ―Government‖

requires that one word of a particular class in a given

syntactic class shall exhibit the form of a specific category. In

English, government applies only to pronouns among the

variable words, that is, prepositions and verbs govern

particular forms of the paradigms of pronouns according to

their syntactic relation with them, e.g., ―I helped him; he

helped me.‖

conjoining? embedding? recursiveness?

―Conjoining‖ refers to a construction where one clause is

co-ordinated or conjoined with another, e. g., ―John bought a

cat and his wife killed her.‖ ―Embedding‖ refers to the

process of construction where one clause is included in the

sentence (or main clause) in syntactic subordination, e.g., ―I

saw the man who had killed a chimpanzee.‖ By

―recursiveness‖ we mean that there is theoretically no limit to

the number of the embedded clauses in a complex sentence.

This is true also with nominal and adverbial clauses, e.g., ―I

saw the man who killed a cat who…a rat which…that…‖

contextualism?

―Contextualism‖ is based on the presumption that one can

derive meaning from, or reduce it to, observable context: the

―situational context‖ and the ―linguistic context‖. Every

utterance occurs in a particular spatial-temporal situation, as

the following factors are related to the situational context: (1)

the speaker and the hearer; (2) the actions they are

performing at the time; (3) various external objects and

events; (4) deictic features. The ―linguistic context‖ is another

aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one

word‘s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which

forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in

communication.

componential analysis?

―Componential analysis‖ defines the meaning of a lexical

element in terms of semantic components. For example, we

may ―clip‖ the following words ―Man‖, ―Woman‖, ―Boy‖

and ―Girl‖ so that we have only separate parts of them.

Man: + Human + Adult + Male

Woman: + Human + Adult -Male

Boy: +Human –Adult +Male

Girl: +Human –Adult –Male

conceptualist view

Conceptualist view holds that there is no direct link between

a linguistic form and what it refers to(i.e,between language

and the real world);rather ,in the interpretation of meaning

they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the

mind.This is best illustrated by the classic semantic triangle

语义三角or triangleof significance意义三角suggested by

Ogden and Richards: In the diagram，the SYMBOL or

FORM refers to the linguistic elements（words，phrases），

the REFERENT refers to the object in the concept。For

example，The word―dog‖is directly associated wi th a certain

concept in our mind，i。e。，what a ―dog‖is like，but it is not

directly linked to that particulate dog mentioned in the

sentence―The dog over there looks unfriendly‖，i。e，the

referent in this particular case。

Critical Period Hypothesis？(P150)--- Eric Lenneberg, a

biologist, argue that the LAD, like other biological functions,

works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right

time—a specific and limited time period for language

acquisition—which is referred to as the Critical Period

Hypothesis(CPH).There are two versions of the CPH. While

the strong one suggests that children must acquire their first

language by puberty or they will never be able to learn from

subsequent exposure, the weak holds that language learning

will be more difficult and incomplete after puberty.

Cooperative Principle is a conversational principle proposed

by Paul Grice, according to which in making conversation,

the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate;

otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the

talk:

Make your conversation contribution such as required at the

stage at which it occurs by the participate purpose or

direction of the exchange in which it you are engaged.

Creole: When a pidgin has become the primary language of a

speech community, and is acquired by the children of that

speech community as their native language, it is said to have

become a Creole.

D

diglossia: Diglossia usually describes a situation in which

two very different varieties of the same one language co-exist

in a speech community, each with a distinct range of purely

social function and appropriate for certain situations.

design features of language?

―Design features‖ here refer to the defining properties of

human language that tell the difference between human

language and any system of animal communication. They are

arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural

transmission and interchangeability

Duality:Language is a system,which consists of two sets of

structures,or two levels. At the lower or basic level there is no

structure of sounds. Which are meaningless by themselves.

But the sounds of language can groud or regrouded into a

large number of uints of meaning,which are found at the high

level of system.For exmple, the grouping of the three sounds:

/k/ /a:/ /p/ can mean either a kind of fish (carp),or a public

place for rest and amusement (park).

displacement --- Language can be used to refer to things

which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in

the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other

words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed

from the immediate situations of the speakers. This is what

―displacement‖ means. This property provides speakers with

an opportunity to talk about a wide range of things, free from

barriers caused by separation in time and place.

directive function?

The ―directive function‖ means that language may be used to

get the hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences

perform this function, e. g., ―Tell me the resul t when you

finish.‖ Other syntactic structures or sentences of other sorts

can, according to J. Austin and J. Searle‘s ―Indirect speech act

theory‖ at least, serve the purpose of direction too, e.g., ―If I

were you, I would have blushed to the bottom of my ears!‖

Derivation: It is a process by which new words are formed

by the addition of affixes to the roots, stems or words. such as

we add the suffix ―ment‖to ―develop‖and the prefix ―un‖to

―able‖,thus creating the new words ―development‖and

―unable‖

Derivational morpheme: it is a kind of bound morpheme

when added to a word can change the grammatical class of

words, or the lexical meaning of a word ,such as when we

add –able to the word accept , we add mult-to the word

media,we will get new words acceptable and multimedia, the

meaning or the word category of the word acceptand media

thus change,we can say –able,multi- are derivational

morphemes.

double articulation

Doudle articulation refers to the duality of structure, the fact

thet language is a system,which consists of two sets of

structures,or two levels.At the lower or the basic level there is

a structure of sounds,which are meaningless by

themselves.But the sounds of language can be grouped and

regrouped into a large number of units of meaning,which are

at the higher level of the system.

“Dissimilation‖, opposite of assimilation, is the influence

exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of

another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than

expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word

―peregrines‖, for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate

into[l], hence the English word ―pilgrim‖.

double negation constructions: Another aspect of Black

English is the use of double negation constructions.

Whenever the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns

"something", "some-body", and "some" become the negative

indefinites "nothing", "nobody", and "none", for example:

He don't know nothing. (He doesn't know anything.)

E

expressive function?

The ―expressive function‖ is the use of l anguage to reveal

something about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker.

Subconscious emotional ejaculations are good examples, like

―Good heavens!‖ ―My God!‖ Sentences like ―I‘m sorry about

the delay‖ can serve as good examples too, though in a subtle

way. While language is used for the informative function to

pass judgment on the truth or falsehood of statements,

language used for the expressive function evaluates, appraises

or asserts the speaker‘s own attitudes.

evocative function?

The ―evocative function‖ is the use of language to create

certain feelings in the hearer. Its aim is , for example, to

amuse, startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please. Jokes(not

practical jokes, though) are supposed to amuse or entertain

the listener; advertising to urge customers to purchase certain

commodities; propaganda to influence public opinion.

Obviously, the expressive and the evocative functions often

go together, i.e., you may express, for example, your personal

feelings about a political issue but end up by evoking the

same feeling in, or imposing it on, your listener. That‘s also

the case with the other way round.

endocentric and exocentric constructions?

―Endocentric construction‖ is one whose distribution is

functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its

constituents, i.e., a word or a group of words, which serves as

a definable ―centre‖ or ―head‖. Usually noun phrases, verb

phrases and adjective phrases belong to endocentric types

because the constituent items are subordinate to the head.

―Exocentric construction‖, opposite of endocentric

construction, refers to a group of syntactically related words

where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the

group as whole; that is to say, there is no definable centre or

head inside the group. Exocentric construction usually

includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate (verb

+ object) construction, and connective (be + complement)

construction.

entailment?

―Entailment‖ can be illustrated by the following two

sentences, with Sentence A entailing Sentence B:

A: He married a blonde heiress.

B: He married a blonde.

In terms of truth value, the following relationships exist

between these two sentences:(1) When A is true, B is

necessarily true;(2) When B is false, too;(3) when A is false,

B may be true or false; (4) When B is true, A may be true or

false. Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical

implication, but we have to assume co-reference of ―He‖ in

sentence A and sentence B, before we have A entail B.

Eye movement experiments。The eye movement experiment

is another method used to study sentence processing。

error

Errors defined as unintentionally deviant from the target

language and not self-corrigible by the learner suggest failure

in competence. In the efforts to categorize learne rs‘ errors

and to find out ways to avoid or remedy errors, two main

sorts of errors were diagnosed; interlingual errors and

intralingual errors.

F

Fossilization: it is a process that sometimes occurs in second

language learning in which incorrect linguistic features

become a permanent part of the way a person speaks or

writes in the target language.