词汇学考试重点

The relations between sound and meaning

Sound is the physical aspect of a word and meaning is what the sound refers to. Their symbolic connection is almost always arbitrary and conventional. They are not intrinsically related. People of different languages used different sounds to express the same concept. Woman, eg. becomes frau in German, femme in French and funv in Chinese. In the same language the same sound can denote different things, e.g. write, right & rite; night&knight.

Sound and form

Naturally the written form should agree with the oral form. In other words, the sound should be consistent with the form. With the development of the language, more and more differences arose between the two. (1) The English alphabet was adopted from the Romans(2) Pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling over the years(3)The stabilization of spelling by printing in the late 1500 breaks the synchronized change of sound and spelling.(4) Borrowing introduces many words which are against English rules of Pronunciation and spelling.

Four classes of loan-words:

Denizens, Aliens, translation-loans, Semantic-loans

Features of old English:

Old English had a small size of vocabulary with only about 50,000 to 60,000 words which are almost monogeneous and entirely Germanic with only a few borrowings from Latin and Scandinavian. It was a highly inflected language of which words are full of endings (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs had complex systems of endings or vowel changes or both.)

Features of Middle English:

A period of great changes, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that had taken place at any time before and since. Steady erosion of the Old English inflectional systems: endings of nouns and adjectives marking distinction of number and case and often of gender lost their

distinctive forms, that is, ME becomes a language with leveled endings and is much closer to modern English.

Characteristics of Compounds:

Compounds have noticeable charavteristics which may in most cases differentiate themselves from noun phrases in the following four aspects：1)Phonological Features.(Compound:a’ fat head; Free phraise:a fat’ head) 2)Semantic Features: Compounds differ from phrases in their semantic ‘one-wordness’. Every compound should express a single idea just as one word. For instance, a green hand is an ‘inexperienced person’, not a hand that is green in color.3)Grammatical Features （Compound: fine art; Free phrase: finer art) 4)Orthographical Features

What are the characteristics of prefixes and suffixes?

Prefixes do not generally change the word-class of the base but only modify its meaning. Unlike prefixes which primarily effect a semantic modification of the base, suffixes have only a small semantic role, their primary function being to change the grammatical function of the base, the change of the word class with a slight modification of meaning.

What is conversion？

Conversion is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class, by turning words of one part of speech to those of another part of speech in traditional terms.

What do you think of the alternatives functional shift and zero -derivation?

Since the words that are made do not change in morphological structure but in function, this process is also known as functional shift. (round- is used as a different part of speech, noun,verb, preposition, adjective). Conversion is generally considered to be a derivational proceess whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class without the addition of an affix. Hence the name zero-derivation.(Take single and simple for example,single is one of zero-derivation whereas simple is one of suffixation as the suffix -ify is added to make simple a verb)

In what way is conversion different from suffixation？

Suffixation is the formation of new words by adding suffixes to stems. Unlike prefixes which primarily change the meaning of the stem, suffixes have only a small semantic role, their primary function being to change the grammatical function of stems. In other words, they mainly change the word class. However, they may also add attached meaning to the stem. For example, lucky(adj.)+ -ly luckily(adv)

Conversion is a word-formation whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another without the addition of an affix. It is also called zero derivation. For example, believe(V.)/belief(N); advice(N.)/advise(V.)

What classes of words are most frequently converted?

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 it originally carried.

Explain partial conversion and full conversion with examples.

Words fully converted: A noun fully converted from an adjective has all the characteristics of nouns. It can take an indefinite article or -(e)s to indicate singular or plural number.( Common adjectives: a white, a crazy, angries, necessaries. Participles and others: a given) Words partially converted: Nouns partially converted from adjectives do not possess all the qualities a noun does.(the poor, the rich, the young)

What changes are occasionally involved in the process of conversion?

In some cases, conversion is accompanied by certain non-affixal changes which affect pronunciation or spelling or stress distribution. The most common changes that take place when some nouns are converted to verbs are the change from the last voiceless consonant to a voiced one, the shift of stress from the initial position to end position and alterations in spelling.

What is motivation?

Motivation refers to the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning, or the logical reason why a certain word has a certain meaning. Motivation includes the following 4 types. Does motivation contradict the theory of ‘arbitrariness’ and ‘conventionality’ concerning the relationship between linguistic symbols and their senses?

As we know, the relationship between the word-form and meaning is conventional and arbitrary, most words can be said to be non-motivated. That is, the connection of the sign and meaning does not account for the meaning. Nevertheless, English does have words the meanings of which are transparent and reasonably explicable.

What are the four types of motivation? Explain them with examples.

1.Onomatopoeic motivation. For example, bow-wow, bang, ping-pong, miaow, cuckoo, tick-tuck, ha ha and the like are onomatopoetically motivated words.

2.Morphological motivation. For instance, airmail means ‘to mail by air’; reading-lamp is ‘the lamp for reading’; miniskirt is ‘a small skirt’; and hopeful means ‘full of hope’.

3.Semantic motivation. For example, when we say the mouth of a river, we associate ‘the opening part of the river’ with ‘ the mouth of a human being or an animal’. When we use the foot of the mountain, we are comparing ‘the lower part of the mountain’ to ‘the foot of a human being’.

4.Etymological motivation. For example, when people use pen for any writing tool through it originally refers to ‘a heavy quill or feather’.

What are the characteristics of conceptual meaning and associative meaning?

Conceptual meaning is given in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning. It is denotative in that it is concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to. Associative meaning is the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning. It differs from the conceptual meaning in that it is open-ended and indeterminate, liable to the influence of such factors as culture, experience, religion, geographical region, class background, education, etc. Affective meaning and examples

Affective meaning is concerned with the attitudes of the speaker or writer. This meaning can be overtly and explicitly conveyed simply by the choice of the right words as many have emotive content in themselves. For example, vicious, love, hate, oh, alas, ect.

Differentiation of homonyms from polysemants?

Homonyms have different sources, meanings are not related to one another and are different lexemes which have the same form, listed as separate entries in dictionaries.

polysemous words are the same lexeme which has several different meanings listed under one headword in dictionary. They are developed from the same source, meanings are related & can be traced back to one central meaning

Differences between ‘pretty’ and ‘handsome’

They are difference in application. We say pretty girl/ child/ flower, but we can only say handsome boy/ man/ house/ car.

Some of the characteristics of antonyms?

1) Antonyms are classified on the basis of semantic opposition

2) A word which has more than one meaning can have more than one antonym.

3) Antonyms differ in semantic inclusion.

4) Contrary terms are gradable antonyms, differing in degree of intensity, so each has its own corresponding opposite.

Study the following passages and explain the rhetoric use of homonyms.

1.The following conversation takes place between a butcher and a customer.

A: ‘How come your sausages taste like meat at one end, but like bread at the other?’ the women asked.

B: The butcher replied: ‘Madam, in times like these no butcher can make both ends meat.’

2.One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it surely warms you on a cold winter day.

3.Ben Battle was a warrior bold, And used to war’s alarms: But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So

he laid down his arms.

1.‘Make both ends meat’ is a parody of ‘make both ends meet’ which means ‘have enough money for one’s needs’. Here te butcher cleverly uses the pair of homonyms ‘meet’ and ‘meat’ to make a pun. It makes a proper answer to the lady’s question. 1)Butchers cannot make both ends meat (make whole sausages with all meat) because they cannot make both ends meet (If they made sausages with only meat, which is more costly, they would not earn enough to survive.) 2)Don’t complain. All the butchers do the same. I am not only one who is making sausages with bread.

2. Swallow is a bird which is seen in summer. Bur by one swallow we see, we cannot deduce that it is already summer time. Swallow can also mean a mouthful of wine. On a cold winter day, if one has a swallow of wine, one may feel warm.

3. Arms has two meanings: 1) weapons; 2) the human upper limbs. Since "a cannon-ball took off his legs" , the soldier was not able to fight on, so he "laid down his arms", which means "surrender". It can also mean he laid down his upper limbs.

What are the major sources of English synonyms?

1.Borrowing. For example, ask(native), question(French), interrogate(Latin); time(native), age(French), epoch(Latin).

2)Dialects and regional English. For example, railway(BrE)/ railroad(AmE); lift(BrE)/ elevator(AmE)

3)Figurative and euphemistic use of words. For example, occupation(profession)/ walk of life(fig); dreamer/ star-gazer(fig)

4)Coincidence with idiomatic expressions. For example: finish--get through, help--lend one a hand.