1、English lexicologyBasic conceptsLexicology: the study of meanings and origins of words.(WNWD) Etymology 语源学:The origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, tracing its transmission from one la
2、nguage to another, identifying its cognates in other languages, and reconstructing its ancestral form where possible. l 词源：一种语言形式的起源及其历史发展可通过确定该词或词素的基本组成部分，已知最早的用法及其形式和含义的转变，追溯它从一种语言转变为另一种语言的过程，鉴定它在其它语言中的同源词和重现它的祖传形式来展现和说明 Vocabulary:1) the total number of the words in a language 2)all the words use
3、d in a particular historical period e.g.Old English Vocabulary3) all the words of a given dialect, a given book, a given discipline and the words possessed by an individual person. Word ( to be exact a single word)In terms of spoken language(a sound unity) In semantics(a unit of meaning) Grammatical
4、ly(a form that can function alone in a sentence) A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function. Visually (to refer to the next page) Orthography 正字法In languages with a literary tradition, there is interrelation between orthography and the question
5、 of what is considered a single word. Word separators (typically space marks) are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts, but these are (excepting isolated precedents) a modern development (see also history of writing). lIn English orthography, words may contain spaces if
6、 they are compounds or proper nouns such as ice cream or air raid shelter. lVietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes, not words. Conversely, synthetic languages often combine many lexical morphemes into single words, making it difficult to boil them
7、down to the traditional sense of words found more easily in analytic languages; this is especially difficult for polysynthetic languages such as Inuktitut and Ubykh,尤比克语(高加索语系中一种) where entire sentences may consist of single such words. Logographic scripts 语标脚本 use single signs (characters) to expre
8、ss a word. Most de facto existing scripts are however partly logographic, and combine logographic with phonetic signs. The most widespread logographic script in modern use is the Chinese script. While the Chinese script has some true logographs, the largest class of characters used in modern Chinese
9、 (some 90%) are so-called pictophonetic compounds (形声字, Xngshngz Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character repre
10、sents. In this sense, the character for most Chinese words consists of a determiner and a syllabogram 代表一个音节的书写符号,字, similar to the approach used by cuneiformscript 楔形文字 and Egyptian hieroglyphs. There is a tendency informed by orthography to identify a single Chinese character as corresponding to a
11、 single word in the Chinese language, parallel to the tendency to identify the letters between two space marks as a single word in the English language. In both cases, this leads to the identification of compound members as individual words, while e.g. in German orthography, compound members are not
12、 separated by space marks and the tendency is thus to identify the entire compound as a single word. lCompare e.g. English capital city with German Hauptstadt and Chinese 首都 (lit. chief metropolis): all three are equivalent compounds, in the English case consisting of “two words“ separated by a spac
13、e mark, in the German case written as a “single word“ without space mark, and in the Chinese case consisting of two logographic characters. Sound and meaning Certain sounds will represent certain persons, things, places, properties, processes and activities external to the language system. There is
14、no logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself. Conventional 常规的 relationship between the letters ,sound and the concept. Eg. Dog, Word structure and letter-sound combinationbl/bl/ has meaning of a sudden (load) sound, especially on
15、e produced by a stream of forced air, such as blare 高声鸣叫 , blat 咩咩叫、喋喋不休, bleat 咩咩叫、讲废话, blip and blast 爆炸 Cl/kl/ means to make an abrupt, sharp sound, as in the collision of two hard surfaces, such as clack噼啪响, clang,clap,clash,click,clatter,clop,cluck and clunk Cr/kr/is to make a sharp,snapping 咔嚓
16、折断 sound,such as crack,crackle, creak, crepitate, crunch and crush Gr/gr/is to voice a deep, inarticulate 口齿不清的 sound, as of pain,grief, or displeasure, and sound is usually made by human being and animals, such as groan, grouse, growl,grumble and grunt. Scr/skr/ means a high-pitched 声调高的, strident
17、刺耳的 sound or cry, such as, scrannel, screak, screech, scroop,scrunch Squ/skw/ is to give forth a short, shrill 尖锐的刺耳的 cry or sound, such as squall, squeak, squeal,squelch and squish. stops or plosives , onomatopeia Sound and formOld English: written form agrees with the oral form Reason for the disc
18、repancy 不一致 between sound and form in Modern English: 1)The Englsih alphabet 字母表 was adopted from the Romans, 2)the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling 3)borrowed words do not conform 遵守 to the rules of English pronunciation and spelling About 80%english words fit consistent 一致的一贯的
19、spelling patternsSome changes of the word form by scribes 抄写They changed the letter u to o when it came before m, n, or v.( to avoid misunderstanding in combination) Eg. Sum, cum,wuman,wunder,munk came to be written as ? No English word should end in u or v. thus, an e was added but not pronounced E
20、g. Liv, hav, du, tru came to be written as ? Classification of wordsBy frequency: basic word stock and nonbasic vocabulary(controversial) By notion: content words and functional words By origin: native words and borrowed words By morphology 词法、词态学: simple words, compounds and derived 衍生 wordsBasic w
21、ord stockThey denote the most common things and phenomena of the world aroud us 1)natrual phenomena 2)Human body and relations 3)names of plants and animals 4)action, size, domain 领域, state 5)numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctionsNonbasic vocabulary1.Terminology 术语（学）:technical terms used in
22、 particular disciplines and academic areas 2.Jargon 术语、行话: specialized vocabularies by which members of particular arts, sciences, trades and professions communicate among themselves 3.Slang:A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived coinages
23、and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect. 俚语：主要出现在非正式的、游戏性的话语中的一种语言，基本由存在时间很短的派生词和修辞构成，它们被故意地用来取代标准的词语以达到生动、幽默、无礼或其它效果 4.Argot:语源 French 暗语, 暗号, 隐语 5.Dialectal words: eg. AusE beauty=excellent,great but a tren
24、d of language change 6.Archaisms:words or forms that were once in common use but now restricted only to specialized or limited use. ( older poems, legal documents and religious writing or speech) eg. Thou(you),thee(you),quoth(said),wherein(in what) 7.Neologisms 新字、新义: newly-created words or expressi
25、ons or words that have taken on new meanings. slangTart: loose woman 妓女 荡妇Bloke : fellow Gat: pistol Swell: great Chicken: coward Blue: fight Smoky: police Full: drunk Dame: woman Beaver: girl Archaic 古代的 wordsHaply: by chance, accidentally Ableit: even though Methinks: it seems to me Morn: morning
26、Troth: faith Ere: before De facto: in fact Quoth :said Hallowed: holy Billow: wave Bade: bid Eke: also Sooth: truthNative wordsNative words: Anglo-Saxon words, brough to Britain in the 5th Century by the German tribes. 1)neutral in style Begin-commence Brotherly-fraternal Kingly-royal-regal Rise-mou
27、nt-ascend 2)frequent in use Borrowed wordsaccording to the degree of assimilation and manner of borrowingDenizens: 同化词 words borrowed early in the past and now are well assimilated 同化 into the English language. They have come to conform to the English way of pronunciation and spelling. Eg. port, cup
28、, shift, shirt, change, pork Aliens: 非同化词 borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling. Translation loans: 译借词 words and expressions formed from the existing material in the English language but modeled on the patterns taken from another language. (according to the me
29、aning or the sound) Eg. mother tongue, a slip of the tongue, ketchup, Semantic loan: 借义词 an existing word which has borrowed a new meaning. Eg dream (梦）old Norse, (欢乐 ,音乐）old English； fresh (impertinent, sassy ,cheeky 莽撞的）GermanDenizens ：Wall Kettle Skirt Husband die Aliens ：Confrere 会友，同行，同事 Pro pa
30、tria For ones country Wunderkind 神童 Mikado 日本天皇 Parvenu 暴发户，新贵Translation loans ：Chopstick Typhoon Black humor Long time no see Semantic loans : dream typhoonPerhaps few words better illustrate the polyglot background of English than typhoon, with its Chinese, Arabic, East Indian, and Greek backgrou
31、nd. The Greek word typhon, both the name of the father of the winds and a common noun meaning “whirlwind, typhoon,” was borrowed into Arabic (as was many a Greek word during the Middle Ages, when Arabic learning both preserved the classical heritage and expanded upon it, passing it on to Europe). ?f
32、?n, the Arabic version of the Greek word, passed into languages spoken in India, where Arabic-speaking Moslem invaders had settled in the 11th century. Thus the descendant of the Arabic word, passing into English (first recorded in 1588) through an Indian language and appearing in English in forms s
33、uch as touffon and tufan, originally referred specifically to a severe storm in India. China, another great empire, gave us yet another word for a storm, in this case the hurricane that occurred in the waters around China. This Chinese word in its Cantonese form, toi fung, was similar to our Arabic
34、borrowing and is first recorded in English guise as tuffoon in 1699. The various forms coalesced and finally became typhoon. 也许很少有单词能像 typhoon 一样表明汉语、阿拉伯语、东印度语和希腊语的多国语言背景。 希腊单词 typhon 既是风神的姓名又是意为 “旋风，台风”的普通名词， 被借入到阿拉伯语（就象在中世纪时许多希腊语单词进入阿拉伯语一样，那时，阿拉伯人的学问保存了古典的风格，同时在把它传向欧洲时又有所扩充） 。Tufan ，希腊语的阿拉伯语形式， 传入到了印度人使用的语言，11 世纪时讲阿拉伯语的穆斯林入侵者在印度定居下来。这样，阿拉伯语单词的衍生，从印度语言进入英语（最早记载于 1588 年） ，并以如 touffon 和 tufan 的形式出现于英语中， 最先特指印度的猛烈风暴。中国，另一个大帝国，给了我们风暴的另一个单词，这里指的是在中国附近洋面发生的飓风。汉语单词的广东语形式 toi fung 同我们的阿拉伯语借用词相近， 最早以 tuffoon 的形式于 1699 年载入英语。 各种形式合并在一起最后变成了 typhoon
