词汇学论文赏析

词汇学论文赏析

Introduction

The expansion of vocabulary in modern English depends chiefly on word

formation. There is a variety of means being at work now. The most productive are

affixation, compounding and conversion. Talking about word formation patterns

means dealing with rules. But not all words which are produced by applying the rule

are acceptable. The acceptability is gained only when the word have gained an

institutional currency in the language. Therefore rules only provide a constant set of

models from which new word are created from day to day. Rules themselves are not

fixed but undergo changes to a certain extent. For instance, affixes and compounding

processes may become productive at one time or lose their productivity. By word

formation processes, we concentrate on productive or on productive rules. While

applying the rules, we should keep in mind that there are always exceptions. In my

opinion, the most important principle for all these rules of word formation is

economy.

Chapter 1 the function of English word formation

1.1 W ord formation is an effective way to enlarge our English vocabulary. Nowadays, more and more people have taken notice of learning English. The number of the people who begin to learn English has increased at a high speed. How

can we improve our English effectively is undoubtedly the focus of ourattention.

Generally speaking, vocabulary and grammatical rules are keys to learning English

2

well. Among the two aspects, vocabulary apparently plays a more important role.

V

ocabulary is the foundation of language. If a language learner doesn

?t have enough vocabulary to express his or her opinions and understand other people, even if

his or her grammatical rules and pronunciations are excellent, but he can not

communicate with others well, he shouldn

?t be a good language learner.

Under the influence of traditional teaching mode, teachers often emphasis more on

grammatical rules and pronunciations than vocabulary. As a result, students spend a

lot of time on remembering new words, but the results are not so efficient. However if

we have a knowledge of English word formation, the results will be not that bad.

Word formation is really an effective way to enlarge our English vocabulary.

1.2 Word formation can help us have a better comprehension of an article. When we are reading a new article, we often encounter with some new words that

we have never seen before. In this case, most of us will leave out the new word and go

on with the following sections. However, this is not a good habit. If we want to

improve our English, we have to take every new word seriously either

look them up in

the dictionary or search for the internet. But don

?t you think that these methods are

inefficient? If we know something about English word formation, maybe the article

would not be so difficult for us to understand. In this way, we can guess the meaning

of the new word according to what we have learned about English word formation. It

has been proved that our guess is correct in most cases. So we say word formation can

help us have a better comprehension of a new article.

1.3 Many new words can be derived based on the rules of word formation Recent years, the use of computers as a medium of communication has given birth

to a new language phenomenon-cyber language. A large amount of cyber language

has sprung up. Not all the new vocabulary can be recognized by human society. Some

new words only emerged in a very short time and then disappeared, however, there

are still a lot of words are shared by many people. Finally, these words are recognized

by the whole human society. Some are even added to the reversed dictionary. Can we

say that these words are unreasonable and irrational?

The answer is absolutely

Most of the new words that have been recognized are derived based on certain

rules of word formation. For example, the sentence

“3QUis widely used in the

chatting room on the internet by foreigners. This is also known as one important

characteristics of English word-productivity. So it is necessary for us to learn English

word formation.

Chapter 2 Affixation

Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding word-forming

or derivational affixes to bases. This process is also known as derivation, by which new words derived from old or base forms. The words that are

created in this way arecalled derivatives. According to the position affixes occupy in words, affixation falls into three subcategories: pre-fixation, in-fixation and Pre-fixation is formation of new words by adding prefixes to bases, which do not generally change the word-class of the base. That is to say, prefixes do not change the part of speech of a word. Their chief function is to modify its meaning, although There are exceptions. In my opinion, prefixes can be divided into: negative prefixes, pejorative prefixes, prefixes of degree or size, prefixes of time and order, and so on. Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to bases. Their primary function is to change the grammatical function of the base, such as the change of the word class with a slight modification of meaning, though there are a few exceptions. Suffixes can be divided into noun suffixes, adjective suffixes, adverb suffixes, and verb suffixes. I can give you an example. The word countless change the part of form and show the negative meaning of the stem. Infixes are not so common and they usually show a kind attitude of the speaker and will not change the part of form and meaning of words.

Chapter 3 Compounding

Compounding is the formation of new words by joining two or more bases. Words

formed in this way are called compounds. So a compound is a lexical unit

consisting

of more than one base and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a

single word(Quirk).Compounds can be written solid, hyphenated and open.

Compounds have remarkable characteristics which are different from noun phrases. It

comes down to three major ones:

1) Phonological features. In compounds the word stress usually occurs on the first

constituent whereas in noun phrases the second element is generally accented if there

is only one stress. In cases where there are two stresses, the compound has the

primary stress on the first element and the second stress, if any, on the second,

whereas the opposite is true of free phrase.

2) Semantic features. Compounds differ from free phrases semantically. Every

compound should express a single idea just as one word. The meaning of a free phrase

can not be inferred from the two components of itself. Nevertheless, a lof

compound are transparent, that is to say, the meaning can be obtained from the

separate elements of compounds. But the two elements are inseparable and the change

of the element would result in the loss of the original identity.

3) Grammatical features. Two elements of a compound each plays a separate

grammatical role, which can be seen in the way the expressions are handled

morphological. For example, compound nouns often show their plural forms by

taking inflectional

s at the end. Though there are exceptions, their

one-wordnesS

identity is apparent.

Chapter 4 Conversion

In English learning, students will often confused with words which have two or

more part of form. Many of such conditions are caused by conversion. Conversion is

the formation of mew words by converting words of one part of sthose of another part of speech, without changes in morphological structures but

in function.

Words created in this way are new only in a grammatical sense. Words produced by

conversion are primarily nouns, adjectives and verbs. The most productive, however,

is the conversion that takes place between nouns and verbs. It deserves nothing that

conversion is not only a change of grammatical function of the item involved but with

it the different range of meaning is originally carried.

Chapter 5 Blending

Blending is a very productive process and many coinages are resulting from

blending have become well established. Moreover, they can sever as models for new

formation. It is not the Combination of two words directly, but to combine parts of

two words or a word plus a part of another word. This kind of word formation is

called blending. This processes including:

The first part of the first word +the last part the second word.

The whole part of the first part +the last part the second word.

The first part of the first word +the first part the second word.

The whole part of the second word + the first part of the first word.

The overwhelming majority of blends are nouns; very few are verbs and adjectives are even fewer. Blends are mostly used in writing related to science and

technology, and newspapers and magazines. Though many of them have already

achieved currency in English, they are still considered by the serious-minded people

to be slang and informal. However, it is advisable not to use such words too often,

particularly in formal writing.

Conclusion

Language develops with the development of society and vocabulary is sensitive to

the changes of society. Some old words are abandoned and some new ones are created.

Most of the new words in English are created according to certain rules and

conformed to certain methods. These rules and methods are closely related to English

word formation. So it is essential, as well as important, for us to learn

word formation,

especially for the students of English major.

：英语构词法主要有以下几种方式：派生法、转化法、合成法。

(1)派生法(derivation)

2)合成3)转化法(conversion法(compounding／composition)

CONMENTS；American and B r i t i s h English are dialects of English whicha v e a recognised

standard form and are equally acceptable in Academic Englisas long as the style and register used are appropriately formal.There are n o significant ifferences i n t he academic form of other varieties of English.T h e m o s t noticeable difference in the academic context in spelling. American and British English will betwom a j o r varities of one language bacause o f t he similarities of the basic w o r d stock,the basic grammerand the basic phonetic system, and because of rapid development of modern science, technologymass media,

and constant cultural and economic exchanges between these two nationsDifferencesof this type can b e very confusing,even f o r p e o p l e whosfirstlanguageEnglish.

T h e MacmillanEnglishDictionary providesover25specialusage notes that deal withtheseAmerican/British 'false friends