词汇学 名词解释

is language?

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a specific

social action and a carrier of information.

“Language is man’s way of communication with his fellow man and. It is language alone which

separate him from the lower animals”

is linguistics?

Generally speaking, linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language. To be more

exact, linguistics studies the general principles upon which languages are constructed and operate as

systems of human communication.

4. What is lexicology?

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

language. It deals with words, their origin, development, structure, formation, meaning and usage. In

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

5. What is the Vocabulary?

Broadly speaking, all the words in a language together constitute what is known as vocabulary.

The term vocabulary usually refers to a complete inventory of the words in a language. But it may also

refer to the words and phrases used in the variants of a language, such as dialect, register, terminology,

etc. There is a total English vocabulary of more than 1 million.

11. What Is a Word?

A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic

function.

词是具有一定的声音、意义和语法功能，能独立运用的最小的语言单位。

A word can be defined the

smallest meaningful

linguistic unit that

can be used independently

14. What is a morpheme(词素)?

The morpheme is the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words, not divisible or

analyzable into smaller forms.

We can difine morpheme in this way, the smallest unit in terms of relationship between

expression and content, a unit which can not be divided without destroying or drastically altering the

meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.

15. What is a allomorph (形位变体，词[语]素变体）

16. Free morphemes(自由词素）：

Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free. Free

morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in

sentences. A free morpheme is one that may constitute a word (free form) by itself, in the traditional

sense.

17. Bound morphemes(粘附词素):

Morphemes that can not occur as separate words. It can not stand by itself as a complete

utterance; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound. Unlike free morphemes,

they do not have independent semantic meaning; instead, they have attached meaning or

grammatical meaning.

18. Root (or root morphemes) :

the basic unchangeable part of a word, and covers the main lexical meaning of the word. That is

to say, it is the part of the word left, whether free or bound, when all the affixes are removed. It carries

the main component of meaning in a word.

19. Free root:

In English many roots are free morphemes, such as

boy, moon, walk, black

( i.e. they can stand

alone as words).

20. Bound roots:

Quite a number of roots derived from foreign sources, esp. from Greek and Latin, belong to the

class of bound morphemes.

A bound root is that part of the word that carries the fundamental meaning just like a free root.

Unlike a free root, it is a bound form and has to combine with other morphemes to make words.

21. Affixes(词缀):

Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function.

According to the functions of affixes, we can put them into two groups: inflectional and derivational

affixes.

22. Inflectional affixes (inflectional morphemes)曲折词缀: —— 不改变词义

Affix attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional, thus

known as inflectional morphemes. The inflectional affix does not form a new word with a new lexical

meaning when it is added to another word. Nor does it change the word-class of the word to which it

is affixed. It just adds some grammatical information to the word.

23. Derivational affixes (derivational morphemes): ——改变词义

They are so called because when they are added to another morpheme, they "derive" a new word.

If a morpheme can change the meaning or the word class, or both the meaning and word class of a

word, it is a derivational morpheme.

25. root (词根)

" A root (词根) is a form which is not further analyzable, either in terms of derivational or

inflectional morphology. It is that part of a word-form that remains when all the inflectional and

derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic part always present in a lexeme." (Bauer

1983:20)

26. stem （词干）

" A stem （词干） is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology. ... Only Inflectional

(but not derivational) affixes are added to it: it is the part of the word-form which remains when all the

inflectional affixes have been removed,“ A stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to

which an inflectional affix can be added.

27. base （词基）

A base （词基） is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added

28. Lexeme（词位）:

Lexeme is an abstract vocabulary item with a common core of meaning. It can be realized by

different word forms. Put it in another way, lexeme is a set of linguistic signs which share the same

lexical meanings but different in their grammaticalmeanings. For example,

dies

,

died, dying, die

belong to the same lexeme DIE.

29. Word form （词形）：

Word form is the realization (representation or manifestation) of the lexeme. Equivalently, it is the

inflected forms of a lexeme.

30. Lexical entry(词条)

Lexical entry is the specification of the information of a lexeme in dictionary or the representation

of the idiosyncratic information of a lexeme, including (i) its pronunciation, (ii) syntactic properties

and (iii) meaning.

36. Paradigm(词形变化表)

A paradigm is a list or pattern showing the forms which a word can have in a grammatical system..

It typically shows a word’s inflections rather than derivatives. It is the set of all the inflected forms

which an individual word assumes or the full set of words realizing a particular lexeme. For example:

Boy, {boy, boys}

37. Word-formation

Word-formation is a process of creating new words by means of existing elements and according

to the patterns and rules of a given language. （affixation or derivation,

conversion, composition or compounding ）

38. Derivation(派生法)

Derivation or affixation is a kind of word-formation when a new word is formed by adding a

derivational morpheme (usually suffix or prefix) to the root.

❖ Prefixation is a kind of word-formation when a new word is formed by adding a prefix to the

root.

❖ Suffixation is a kind of word-formation when a new word is formed by adding a suffix to the

root.

40. Suffixation

Suffixation is the formation of a new word by adding a suffix or a combining form to the base, and

usually changing the word-class of the base;

43. Compounding

Compounding or composition is a word-formation process consisting of joining two or more

bases to form a new unit, a compound word.

47. Conversion - zero derivation

The process of converting words from one part of speech to another without adding any

derivative element is called conversion or zero derivation.(零位派生).

49. Shortening

It is a method of shortening a word without changing its meaning.

(1) Clipping ( 截短法) The process of clipping involves the deletion of one or more syllables

from a word (usually a noun), which is also available in its full form.

(2) Acronymy -- Initialisms and Acronyms（首字母缩略词） Acronymy is a special kind of clipping,

by which a new word is formed from the initial letters of the name of an organization or scientific

term,etc. There are two kinds of word formed by acronymy: initialisms and acronyms，while are

different in that the former are pronounced letter by letter while the latter are pronounced as single

words.

（3）Blending（拼缀法） Blending is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed

by combining parts of two or more words or a word plus a part of another word.

（4）Back-formation（逆构法） Back-formation is a term used to refer to a type of word-formation

by which a shorter word is coined by the deletion of a supposed affix from a longer form already

present in the language.

50. Onomatopoeia （拟声）

Some English words came into being by onomatopoeia, i.e. the imitation of natural sounds.

Onomatopoeic words(拟声词) are echoic ones whose sounds suggest their senses. These words help

us from mental pictures about the things, people, or places that are described.

53. Motivation（理据）

Motivation deals with the connection between name (word-symbol) and its sense (meaning). It is

the relationship between the word structure and its meaning.词的理据（motivation）是指词与词义之间

的联系，也就是语言符号与客观事物和现实联系的依据。

52. Conventionality

Most English words are conventional, arbitrary symbols; consequently, there is no intrinsic

relation between the sound-symbol and its sense.

1. Onomatopoeic motivation（拟声理据）: means defining the principle of motivation by sound.

Words motivated phonetically are called echoic words or onomatopoeic words, whose pronunciation

suggests the meaning. They show a close relation of sound to sense, whereas non-echoic words do

not show any such relationship.

2. morphological motivation: We say the word is morphologically motivated, for a direct

connection can be observed between the morphemic structure of the word and its meaning. This is

called morphological motivation(形态理据）

3. Semantic motivation（语义理据） refers to the mental association suggested by the conceptual

meaning of a word. It explains the connection between the literal sense and figurative sense of the

word.

ogical motivation means that the meanings of words can be explained with reference

to etymological information. Very often, the history of the word can explain why a form has acquired a

particular meaning.

55. Polysemy(一词多义)Polysemy is “a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item

which has a range of different meanings”. That is to say, the same word may have a set of different

meanings. Polysemy gives rise to a great number of polysemic words, which are products of

sense-shift

in the course of the development of the vocabulary.

59. Homonymy (同音同形异义)Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having

different meanings happen to be identical in sound and spelling, or in both.

Synonymy refers the exact sameness or close similarity of meaning. Words that are close in

meaning are called

64. Synonymy ( 同义词)

synonyms(Synonyms are traditionally defined as words different in sound and spelling but

identical or similar in meaning.).

68. Antonymy

Antonymy is the phenomenon that two words have opposite senses; words that are opposite are

antonyms.

70. Oxymoron(矛盾修饰法)

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms.

71. Hyponymy(下义关系)hyponymy: the relationship that obtains between specific and general

lexical items, such that the former is "included" in the later

➢ Extension of Meaning(词义扩大)

It is a process by which a word which originally had a specialized meaning has now become

generalized or has extended to cover a broader and often less definite concept. 一个原本具有特殊意义

的单词的词义被延伸，范围扩大，从而指代一种普遍意义语义变化过程。

➢ Narrowing of Meaning（词义缩小）

It is a process by which a word of wide meaning acquires a narrow or specialized sense. In other

words, a word which used to have a more general sense becomes restricted in its application and

conveys a special concept in present-day English. 把词义范围较广的词缩小，表示特指，即过去具有普遍

意义的词变化后，现在仅仅表达特殊意义。

➢ Elevation of Meaning（词义的升格）It is the process by which words rise from humble

beginnings to positions of importance.词义的升格指词由贬义或中性转变为褒义。

➢ Degradation of Meaning（词义的降格）

It is a process whereby words of good origin or affective neutrality fall into ill reputation or come

to be used in a derogatory sense. 这是一个词由原先表示中性意义或褒义转为表示贬义的过程。