英语词汇学基本概念汇总

《英语词汇学》重要术语

One:

1. Native words 本族词 Words of Anglo-Saxon origin or of Old English are native words.

2. Loan words 借词 Words borrowed from other languages are loan words or borrowed words.

3. Slang words 俚语 Slang words are those words of a vigorous, colourful, facetious, or taboo nature, invented for specific occasions, or uses, or derived from the unconventional use of the standard vocabulary.

4. Function words 功能词 Function words are often short words such as determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliaries that serve grammatically more than anything else.

5. Content words 实义词 Content words are used to name objects, qualities, actions, processes or states, and have independent lexical meaning.

6. Free forms 自由形式 Forms which occur as sentences are free forms.

Two:

1. Morphemes 语素 Morphemes are the smallest meaningful linguistic units of English language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms.

2. Allomorphs 语素变体 Allomorphs are any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

3. Free morpheme 自由语素 Free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning.

4. Bound morpheme 粘着语素 Bound morpheme cannot stand by itself as a complete utterance and must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound.

5. Root 词根 Root is the basic unchangeable part of a word and it conveys the main lexical meaning of the word.

6. Affix 词缀 Affix is a collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme.

7. Inflectional affix 屈折词缀 Inflectional affix serves to express such meanings as plurality, tense, and the comparative or superlative degree.

8. Derivational affix 派生词缀 Derivational affix is the kind of affixes that has specific lexical meaning hand can derive a word when it is added to another morpheme.

9. Prefixes 前缀 Prefixes are affixes added before words.

10. Suffixes 后缀 Suffixes are affixes added after words.

Three

1. Word-formation rules 构词规则 Word-formation rules define the scope and methods whereby speakers of a language may create new words.

2. Stem 词干 Stem is the part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed.

3. Base 词基 Base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added.

4. Compounding 合成法 Compounding is a word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit.

5. Derivation 派生法 Derivation or affixation is a word-formation process by which new words are created by adding a prefix, or suffix, or both, to the base.

6. Conversion 转化法 Conversion is a word-formation process whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another word-class without the addition of an affix.

7. Prefixation 前缀法 Prefixation is the addition of a prefix to the base.

8. Suffixation 后缀法 Suffixation refers to the addition of a suffix to the base.

Four:

1. Initialism 首字母连写词 Initialism is a type of shortening, using the first letters of words to form a proper name, a technical term or a phrase and it is pronounced letter by letter.

2. Acronyms首字母拼音词 Acronyms are word formed from the initial letters of the name of an organization or a scientific term, and they are pronounced as words rather than as sequences of letters.

3. 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.

4. Blending 拼缀法 Blending is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms.

5. Back-formation 逆成法 Back-formation is 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.

6. Reduplication 重叠法 Reduplication is a minor type of word-formation by which

a compound word is created by therepetition of one word or of two almost identical words with a change in the vowels or of two almost identical words with a change in the initial consonants.

7. Neoclassical formation 新古典词构成法 Neoclassical formation is the process by which new words are formed from elements derived from Latin and Greek.

Five:

1. Conventionality 约定俗成 It is the characteristics of relation between the sound-symbol and its sense: there is no way to explain why this or that sound-symbol has this or that meaning beyond the fact that the people of a given community have agreed to use one to designate the other.

2. Motivation 理据 Motivation refers to the direct connection between word-symbol and its sense.

3. Echoic/ onomatopoeic words 拟声词 Echoic words or onomatopoeic words are words motivated phonetically whose pronunciation suggests the meaning.

4. Morphological motivation 语素结构理据 A word is morphologically motivated if

a direct connection can be observed between the morphemic structure of the word and its meaning.

5. Semantic motivation 语义理据 Semantic motivation refers to motivation based on semantic factors and it is usually provided by the figurative usage of words.

6. Grammatical meaning 语法意义 Grammatical meaning consists of word-class and inflectional paradigm.

7. Inflectional paradigm 词形变化 The set of grammatical forms of a word is called its inflectional paradigm. Nouns are declined, verbs are conjugated and gradable adjectives have degrees of comparison.

8. Denotative meaning 外延意义 The denotative meaning of a word is its definition given in a dictionary.

9. Connotative meaning 内涵意义 Connotative meaning refers to the emotional association which a word or a phrase suggests in one’s mind.

10. Social or stylistic meaning 社会意义 Social meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use.

11. Affective meaning 情感意义 Affective meaning is concerned with the expression of feelings and attitudes of the speaker or writer.

12. Componential analysis 语义成分分析 The conceptual meaning or denotative meaning can be broken down into its minimal distinctive components which are known as semantic features. Such an analysis is called componential analysis.

Six:

1. Polysemy 一词多义 Polysemy happens when more than one meaning is attached to

a word.

2. Radiation 词义辐射 Semantically, radiation is the process in which the primary or central meaning stands at the center while secondary meanings radiate from it in every direction like rays.

3. Concatenation 语义的连锁、联结 Concatenation is a semantic process in which the

meaning of a word moves gradually away from its first sense by successive shifts, like the links of a chain, until there is no connection between the sense that is finally developed and the primary meaning.

4. Homonymy 同音异义、同形异义 Homonymy is the relation between pairs or groups of word which, though different in meaning, are pronounced alike, or spelled alike or both.

5. Perfect homonyms 完全同音同形异义词 Words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning are called perfect homonyms.

6. Homophones 同音异义词 Words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning are called homophones.

7. Homographs 同形异义词Words identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning are called homographs.

8. Phonetic convergence 音变的汇合 Phonetic convergence is the kind of phenomenon where two or more words which once were different in sound forms take on the same pronunciation.

9. Semantic Divergence 词义分化 When two or more meanings of the same word drift apart to such an extent that there will be no obvious connection between them, the word has undergone the process of semantic divergence.

Seven: 1. Synonyms 同义词 A synonym may be defined as a word having the same meaning as another word: as one of two or more words of the same language and grammatical category having the same essential or generic meaning and differing only in connotation, application, or idiomatic use. 2. Complete synonyms 完全同义词 Two words are totally synonymous only if they are fully identical in meaning and interchangeable in any context without the slightest alteration in connotative, affective and stylistic meanings. 3. Relative synonyms 相对同义词Relative synonyms are words that are not fully identical but may differ in shades of meaning,

in emotional colouring, in level of formality, in collocation, and in distribution.

4. Antonymy 反义关系 In its general sense, antonymy refers to all types of semantic oppositeness.

5. Contraries/gradable antonyms 相对性反义词Contraries or contrary terms display such a type of semantic contrast that they can be handled in terms of gradability, that is, in terms of degrees of the quality involved.

6. Complementaries/contradictory terms 互补性反义词Complementaries or contradictories represent a type of binary semantic opposition so that the

assertion of one of the items implies the denial of the other. 7. Conversives/converses/relational opposites 换位性反义词 Conversives represent such a type of binary semantic opposition that there is an interdependence of meaning, or say, one member of the pair presupposes the other. 8. Hyponymy 上下义关系Hyponymy is the relationship which obtains between specific and general lexical items, such that the former is included in the latter. 9. Superordinates 上义词 The general term in a hyponymy pair is called a superordinate linguistically. 10. Hyponyms 下义词 The specific term in a hyponymy pair is called the hyponym or subordinate. 11. Semantic field 语义场 Semantic field theory is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as a system of interrelated lexical networks. The words of a semantic field are joined together by a common concept, and they are likely to have a number of collocations in common. Eight: 1. Context 语境 Context in its narrowest sense consists of the lexical items that come immediately before and after any word in an act of communication. But, in broader sense, it may cover the whole passage and sometimes the whole book in which a word occurs, and in some cases even the entire social or cultural setting. 2. Linguistic context 语言语境Linguistic context is lexical, grammatical and verbal context in its broad sense.

3. Extra-linguistic context 语言之外的环境 Extra-linguistic context refers not only to the actual speech situation in which a word is used but also to the entire

cultural background against which a word, or an utterance or a speech event is set.

4. Lexical context 词汇语境 Lexical context refers to the lexical items combined with a given polysemous word.

5. Grammatical context 语法语境 In grammatical context, the syntactic structure of the context determines various individual meanings of a polysemous word.

6. Verbal context 言语语境 The verbal context, in its broadest sense, may cover an entire passage, or even an entire book, and in some cases even the entire social or cultural setting.

7. Ambiguity 歧义 Ambiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentences with more than one possible interpretation or meaning.

8. Lexical ambiguity 词汇歧义 Lexical ambiguity is caused by polysemy.

9. Structural ambiguity 结构歧义 Structural ambiguity arises from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase.

Nine: 1. Change of word meaning 语义变化 When a word loses its old meaning and comes to refer to something altogether different, the result is a change of word meaning. Broadly speaking, change of meaning refers to the alteration of the meaning of existing words as well as the addition of new meaning to establish words. 2. Restriction of meaning 语义专门化 Restriction of meaning or specialization of meaning means that a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower, specialized sense which is applicable to only one of the objects it had previously denoted. 3. Extension of meaning 词义扩展化 Extension of meaning or generalization means the widening of a word’s sense until it covers much more than what it originally conveyed.

4. Degeneration of meaning 词义降格 There are two main forms of degeneration or pejoration. One refers to the process where words once respectable or neutral may shift to a less respectable, or even derogatory meaning. The other refers to the weakening of meaning resulting from habitual use of particular words on unsuitable occasions.

5. Elevation of meaning 词义升格 It refers to the process that the meaning of a word goes uphill.

6. Metaphor 暗喻 Metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison based on association of similarity, in which a word

or a phrase ordinarily and primarily used for one thing is applied to another. 7. Metonymy 转喻 It is a figure of speech by which an object or idea is described by the name of something closely related to it. Ten: 1. Idiom 习语 An English idiom is a group of words with a special meaning different from the meanings of its constituent words. It is a combination of two or more words which are usually structurally fixed and semantically opaque, and function as a single unit of meaning.

2. Phrase idioms 惯用短语All phrase idioms have a noun, verb, adjective, preposition or an adverb as the central word and correspond to the familiar parts of speech, and are capable of a given syntactic function.

3. Clause idioms 从句成语 Clause idioms or subject-less clause patterns contain objects and / or complements.

4. Sentence idioms 句子成语 The two major types of sentence idioms are proverbs or sayings and typical conversational expressions.

5. Proverbs 谚语 Proverbs are sentences accepted by the people and handed down to the present day because they express some obvious truth or familiar experience in a concise and witty style.