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 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)
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.
26. stem （词干）
（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（mo tivation）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
? 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。