《英语词汇学》知识点归纳

English Lexicology(英语词汇学)

Lexicology: is a branch of linguistics, inquiring into the origins and meanings of words.

Chapter 1--Basic concepts of words and vocabulary

Word: A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. (1)a minimal free form of a language (2)a sound unity (3)a unit of meaning (4)a form that can function alone in a sentence

Sound and meaning: almost arbitrary, “no logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself”

Sound and form:不统一的四个原因

（1）the English alphabet was adopted from the Romans, which does not have a separate letter to represent each other

（2）the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling over the years

（3）some of the difference were creates by the early scribes

（4）the borrowings is an important channel of enriching the English vocabulary

词汇Vocabulary: all the words in a language make up its vocabulary

词语分类Classification of English Words：

1.By use frequency: basic word stock & non basic vocabulary

基本词汇的特征:

1)All-National character（全民通用性most important）2)Stability

3)Productivity（多产性）4)Polysemy（多义性）5)Collocability（可搭配性）

没有上述特征的词:(1)Terminology(术语) (2)Jargon（行话）(3)slang（俚语）(4)Argot（暗语）（5）Dialectal words (6) Archaisms（古语）(7) Neologisms（新词语）:Neologisms

2.By notion: content words实词& functional words虚词

3.By origin: native words & borrowed words

Native words（本族语词）: Two other features:(1)neutral in style (2)frequent in use Borrowed words/Loan words: words taken over from foreign languages.(80% of modern EV)

1) denizens(同化词，融入英语): (shirt from skyrta(ON))

2) aliens（非同化词/外来词，可以看出源头）: kowtow

3) translation loans(译借词):按其他语言方式组成英语long time no see / tofu

4) semantic loans（借义词）：they are not borrowed with reference to the form,but their

meanings are borrowed pioneer本指开拓者，先引申为先锋。

Chapter 2 the development of the English Vocabulary

印欧语系The Indo-European Language Family

The Eight Groups in Indo-European Family of Languages（8大印欧语群）

The Eastern set:

(1)The Balto-slavic Group（波罗的-斯拉夫语族）：Russian,Bulgarian,Polish,Czech etc.

(2)The Indo-Iranian Group（印度-伊朗语族）：Hindi,Bengali,Persian etc.

(3)The Armenian Group（亚美尼亚语族）：Armenian.

(4)The Albanian Group（阿尔巴尼亚语族）：Albanian.

The Western set:

(5)The Hellenic Group（古希腊语族）：Greek.

(6)The Italian Group（意大利语族）：Latin ,Romance languages(French,Italian,Spanish,

portuguese,Romanian) etc.

(7)The Celtic Group（凯尔特语族）：Irish,Welsh,Breton etc.

(8)The Germanic Group（日耳曼语族）：

Flemish,German,Dutch,Scandinavian(Norweigian, Swedish,Danish,Icelandic) etc.

三个发展阶段The Three Stages of Development of the English Vocabulary:

1 Old English (450-1100) (vocabulary 50,000 to 60,000): was I high inflected language.

2 Middle English (1150-1500): retaines much fewer inflections （1066法国开始入侵英国）

3 Modern English (1500-up to now) 始于印刷术

英语外来元素Foreign elements：

Latin （war and agriculture/罗马人把基督教带到英国church terms）

Greek (science/sports/medicine/politics)

French(government and administration/feudalism/religion/morality)

Scandinavian 纳维亚人（nouns、pronouns/birds/sea）

Minor elements：Italian、German、Dutch、Spanish and Portuguese、Celtic

词汇的发展模式Modes of Vocabulary Development:

1) 创造新词creation：the formation of new words by using the existing.

2) 旧词新义semantic change: create many more new useages of the words.

3) 借用外来词borrowing: constitute merely 6 to 7 percent of all new words

Chapter 3 Word Formation I

词素Morpheme: the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words

词素变体Allomorph: is a different variant form of a morpheme，differ in phonological and spelling form, but at the same in function and meaning

词素的分类Type of Morpheme