1、Chapter One Introduction:,Word, Vocabulary and Lexicology,Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words.(W. Shakespeare. Hamlet),Contents,1.1 The Notion of Word1.1.1 Do words exist?1.1.2 Bloomfields definition of word1.1.3 Characteristics of words 1.2 The Organization of English V
2、ocabulary1.2.1 The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations1.2.2 Word classes1.2.3 Lexical fields 1.3 Lexicology and Other Levels of Linguistic Analysis1.3.1 Lexicology and phonology1.3.2 Lexis and grammar: two forms of patterning1.3.3 Lexicology and semantics 1.4 Summary,1.1 The Notion of Word,1.1.1
3、Do words exist? 1.1.2 Bloomfields definition of word 1.1.3 Characteristics of words,1.1 The Notion of Word,1.1.1 Do words exist?There is nothing in the speech signal to indicate where one word ends or another begins. Thus, the sentence There are no spaces between spoken words could be represented on
4、 the level of the acoustic signal as Therearenospacesbetweenspokenwords,But we have already seen that the spelling system is misleading as far as the phonetic properties of lexical items are concerned, so there is no reason to take the boundaries imposed by the writitng system too seriously. Moreove
5、r, the separation of words by spaces does not always correspond to functional realities.,1.1.2 Bloomfields definition of word,“A free form that does not consist entirely of lesser free forms is a word. Thus, boy, which admits of no further analysis into meaningful parts, is a word; boyish, although
6、capable of such analysis, is a word, because one of its constituents, the -ish, is a bound form; other words, such as receive, perceive, remit, permit, consist entirely of bound forms”. (Bloomfield 1933),1.1.3 Characteristics of words,First, the word is an uninterruptible unit. When elements are add
7、ed to a word to modify its meaning, they are never included within that word. They respect the internal stability of the word and are added either at the beginning as prefixes of the word or at the end as suffixes.,Second, the word may consist of one or more morphemes. when it consists of one morphe
8、me only, then it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units, e.g. dog, hand. These are called simple words. When words consist of more than one morpheme, they may be either complex or compound.,Third, the word occurs typically in the structure of phrases. Morphemes are used to build words,
9、words to build phrases, phrases to build clauses, and clauses to build sentences. This is the typical mapping of lower level into higher level units.,Finally, it is also an important characteristic of each word that it should belong to a specific word calss or part of speech. Where the same form app
10、ears in more than one class, as requently happens in English, we regard the various occurrences as separate words.,1.2 The Organization of English Vocabulary,1.2.1 The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations 1.2.2 Word classes 1.2.3 Lexical fields,1.2 The Organization of English Vocabulary,1.2.1 The
11、syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationsThe syntagmatic/paradigmatic distinction is one of the Saussurean distinctions that have been of great importance in the development of structuralism.,The syntagmatic relations which a unit contracts are those which it contracts by virtue of its combination with
12、 other units of the same level. For example, the word old is syntagmatically related with the definite article the and the noun man in the expression the old man.,The paradigmatic relations contracted by units are those which hold between a particular unit in a given syntagm and other units which ar
13、e substitutable for it in the syntagm. For example, old is paradigmatically related with young, tall in expressions like the old man, the young man, the tall man.,The notion of paradigmatic relation is of special relevance here. According to de Saussure, every word is involved in a network of associ
14、ations which connect it with other terms in the lnguage. Some of these associations are based on similarity of meaning, others are purely formal, still others involve both form and meaning. In de Saussures graphic formula, a given term is like the center of a constellation, the point where an infini
15、te number of co-ordinated terms converge.,1.2.2 Word classes,Traditional grammars generally distinguish eight word classes, or parts of speech: moun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. The eight word classes may be subdivided broadly into open classes (the f
16、irst five) and closed classes (the second three).,open class: open to the admission of new items and has a comparatively large membership. New members may be formed by means of the processes of lexical morphology, or by borrowing from another language.close class: relatively fixed in their membershi
17、p. For example, the demonstratives this, that, these and those, a subclass of pronouns, have remained the same since the time of Shakespeare.,Word classes in Hallidayan linguistics,commonnoun properpronounnominals adjectivenumeraldeterminer,lexical verb auxiliaryfiniteverbals preposition,adverb link
18、eradverbials conjunction bindercontinuative,1.2.3 Lexical fields,According to Lyons, what has now come to be known as the theory of semantic or lexical field was first put forward as such by a number of German and Swiss scholars in the 1920s and 1930s.,The lexical field theory looks the vocabulary o
19、f a language as an integrated system of lexemes interrelated in sense. The system is in constant flux. Any broadening in the sense of one lexeme involves a corresponding narrowing in the sense of one or more of its neighbors.,The system of lexemes is mainly characterized by the general-particular an
20、d part-whole relationships, which hold not only between individual lexemes in the lexical field within which thhey are best interpreted, but between specific lexical fields and the vocabulary as a whole.,Lexical field is an important organizational principle of vocabulary.This principle organizes vo
21、cabulary into groups of words which belong to particular activities or areas of specialist knowledge, such as the terms in cooking or sailing, or the vocabulary used by doctors, coal miners or mountain climbers.One effect of lexical field is the use of specialist terms like phoneme in linguistics or
22、 gigabyte in computering.,More common, though, is the use of different senses for a word, for example: Blanket verb. to cover as with a blanket. Blanket verb. Sailing. to block another vessels wind by sailing close to it on the windward side. Ledger noun. Bookkeeping. the main book in which a compan
23、ys financial records are kept. Ledger noun. Angling. a trace that holds the bait above the bottom.,Lexical Field of English Vocabulary,Total English vocabulary Lexical field(1) (colors) Lexical field(2) (vehicles) Lexical field(3) (toys) Lexical field(4) (kinship-terms),Dictionaries recognize the ef
24、fect of lexical fields by including in lexical entries labels like Banking, Medicine, Angling, etc. as in our examples above.Another effect of lexical fields is that lexical relations are more common between lexemes in the same field. Thus peak part of a mountain is a near synonym of summit, while p
25、eak part of a hat is a near synonym of visor.,1.3 Lexicology and Other Levels of Linguistic Analysis,1.3.1 Lexicology and phonology 1.3.2 Lexis and grammar: two forms of patterning 1.3.3 Lexicology and semantics,1.3 Lexicology and Other Levels of Linguistic Analysis,Lexicology is only one possible l
26、evel of linguistic analysis, others being phonology, grammar and semantics.,1.3.1 Lexicology and phonology,As the study of sound system, phonology seems not to be much connected with lexicology. But it is not completely true. The interdependence between the two levels of linguistic analysis can be i
27、llustrated in the following aspects.,First, the difference between two otherwise identical lexical items can be reduced to a difference of a single sound unit. For example, bit and bid, pat and pad, gross and gloss, etc. These pairs of word differ only in one sound unit and they are each a minimal p
28、air in phonological term. This difference, however, has a serious effect at the level of lexicology because it brings us totally different lexical items.,Second, suprasegmental features also differentiate otherwise identical items. Stress, for example, differentiates the verb and noun form of such w
29、ords as combine, convict, insult, produce, record, etc. Compunds provide another good example in this point. the major difference between compound and their corresponding syntactic combinations lies in stress.,1.3.2 Lexis and grammar: two forms of patterning,There are two kinds of opinion concerning
30、 the relationship between lexis and grammar. The first kind of opinion is that lexis and grammar represent two kinds of linguistic patterning which are qualitatively as well as quantitatively different. The difference can be summarized as follows:,(1) Grammar involves system type choices. (2) Gramma
31、tical systems are bounded only by possibility. (3) Grammatical patternings are organized in rank. (4)In lexis, we are not interested in the difference between take, took, and taking, which is purely grammatical and does not affect collocation; but we are interested in the fact that take off collocat
32、es with different items from those that take over collocates with and both differ in this respect from take.,The second kind of opinion argues that lexis and grammar as two types of linguistic patterning cannot be neatly divided. A model for the description of language form may recognize only one ki
33、nd of pattern and attempt to subsume all formal relations within it: some grammatical models, such as Hallidays systemic grammar, envisage that it is the grammars task to distinguish strong from powerful as well as to distinguish a from the; while a lexicographical model in which a and the, as well
34、as strong and powerful, are entered in dictionary and described by means of citations could be regarded as in similar way attempting to subsume grammar under lexis.,Halliday makes the following statement in his systemic grammar:A language is a complex semiotic system composed of multiple LEVELS,or S
35、TRATA (these two are often used synonymously for this concept).The central stratum,the inner core of language, is that of grammar. To be accurate, however, we should call it LEXICOGRAMMAR, because it includes both grammar and vocabulary. These two, grammar and vocabulary, are merely different ends o
36、f the same continuum-they are the same phenomenon as seen from opposite perspectives.,In Hallidayan grammar, language is organized tristratally. The three strata are discourse semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology/graphology. These strata are considered to be related, following Hjemslev, by the con
37、cept of realization. The wording (lexicogrammar) realizes, or encodes, the meaning (semantics). The wording, in turn, is realized by sound/writing.,1.3.3 Lexicology and semantics,Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning. Ever since Ogden and Richards published their classic book The Me
38、aning of Meaning, it has been dustomary for semanticists to emphasize the fact that the noun meaning and the verb to mean themselves have many distinguishable meanings.,The relationship between lexicology and semantics can be illustated by the two distinct but related concepts acceptability and mean
39、ingfulness. Some utterances are acceptable from a lexicogrammatical point of view, but they are meaningless.,1.4 Summary,Although word as a linguistic category is not easy to define, it represents some relatively steady characteristics. Being an uninterruptible unit, it usually consists of one or mo
40、re morphemes and typicaaly occurs in the structure of phrases. The vocabulary of English language is organized in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Every word belongs to a certain class and most of them can be included into specific lexical fields. As one of the levels of linguistic analysis,
41、lexicology is related to other levels such as phonology, grammar and semantics.,Vocabulary,absentia: n. 失神 attorney: n. 代理人, 律师 colloquial: adj. 口语的, 会话的 constellation: n. 1. 星座2. 一群杰出人物3. 一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） dichotomy: n. 一分成二,对分 envisage: vt. 想像, 设想，展望;正视，面对，拟想，观察 hierarchy: n. 1. 等级制度2. 统治集团,
42、领导层3. 层次体系 intermediate: adj. 1. 中间的; 中级的2. 中级的；中等的；适合中等程度者的 n. 1. 中级学生 2. 调解人；中间人 morpheme: n. 词素 paradigmatic: adj.纵向组合的,peripheral: adj. 1. 非本质的;非主要的, 次要的, 外围的2. 周围的, 边缘的 praesentia: adj.句段关系是在场的 prefix: n. 语前缀 prepackage: vt. 出售以前先包装 prototypical: adj. 原型的 syntagmatic: adj.横向组合的 synonymous: adj. 同义的,类义的 suffix: n. 后缀, 词尾 suprasegmental: adj. 超音段的 uninterruptible: adj.不间断的,
