English Lexicology (I)
“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary
nothing can be conveyed.”
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unilateral, bilateral, trilateral,
multilateral
monogamy, polygamy
inflexible, imbalance, irrational, illegal
download, copyright, mother wit,
green wealth
We summered in Qingdao last year.
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skate, skim, skin, ski, sketch, skid
This fox goes well with your cap.
He is too found of bottles.
blue-collar workers, white-collar workers,
gray-collar works, pink-collar works, goldcollar workers
forbidden fruits
The question was like the Sphinx’s riddle to
them
Your Adam’s apple is not apparent
as timid as a rabbit ; a green hand
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It’s a difficult operation.
I do think Adam is quick.
a sheet of paper; a white paper, a term
paper; today’s paper, examination
paper
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He is a wise boy.
A: Is the library open Sundays?
B: Of course.
Ladies and Gentleman, I’m delighted
to introduce you a very pretty girl,
Miss Brown. She is a very good
teacher from U.S.A.
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Contents
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1. Introduction
2. Basic Concepts of Words and Vocabulary
3. The Development of the English Vocabulary
4. Morphological Structure
To be continued
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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Language, Linguistics and Lexicology
1.2 Aims and Significance of the Course
1.1 Language, Linguistics and Lexicology
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What is language?
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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”
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1.1 Language, Linguistics and Lexicology
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What is linguistics?
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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
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1.1 Language, Linguistics and Lexicology
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What is lexicology?
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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.
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1.2 Aims and Significance of the Course
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What is lexicology?
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English lexicology is a theoretically-oriented
course. It is chiefly concerned with the basic
theories of words in general and of English words
in particular. However, it is a practical course as
well, for in the discussion, we shall inevitably deal
with copious stocks of words and idioms, and
study many usage examples. Naturally, there will
be a large quantity of practice involved.
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1.2 Aims and Significance of the Course
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The role of vocabulary in the language
system
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Vocabulary is the building material of the language system.
It is one of the there essential elements of language:
speech sounds, grammar and vocabulary.
“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without
vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”
“…there is a sense in which learning a foreign language is
basically a matter of learning the vocabulary of that
language. Not being able to find the words to express
yourself is the most frustrating experience in speaking
another language.”
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1.2 Aims and Significance of the Course
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Aims of the course
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Give a systematic description of the English
vocabulary.
Offer an insight into the origin and development of
the English vocabulary.
Discuss the problems of word-structure and wordformation
Study the use of English words , their meanings
and changes in meaning, their sense relations.
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1.2 Aims and Significance of the Course
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The significance of the course
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Develop your personal vocabulary and consciously
increase your word power (active vocabulary).
Understand word-meaning and organize, classify and
store words more effectively.
Raise your awareness of meaning and usages, use
words more accurately and appropriately.
Develop your skills and habits of analyzing and
generalizing linguistic phenomena in your learning
experiences.
Ultimately improve your receptive and productive skills
in language processing as well as language production.
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Four levels of word power
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Speaking vocabulary (active vocabulary)
Writing vocabulary(active vocabulary)
Reading vocabulary(passive vocabulary)
Guess vocabulary(passive vocabulary)
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Watergate, Irangate, Zippergate
ecology, ecocide, ecocrisis, ecofriendly
-ump: plump, chump, rump, hump,
stump, dump, mump, lump, bump,
tump
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Picture
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A flock of sheep, goats, birds
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painting, drawing (including sketch, diagram, graph),
illustration, chart
A herb of cows, elephants, zebras, antelopes
A school of fish, whales, dolphins
A swarm of ants, bees, wasps, locusts (insects)
A pride of lions
Essential, indispensable, necessary
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Warm clothing is indispensable in cold wealth.
It’s necessary for us to study hard.
The essential point is we must do what the contract says.
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National psychology
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Dutch: to go Dutch, to talk Dutch, double Dutch,
Dutch courage, Dutch bargain, Dutch comfort, I’m a
Dutchman if…
Cognate adjectives
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historic, historical;
economic, economical;
considerable, considerable:
comprehensible, comprehensive;
confident, confidential
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Chapter 2
Basic Concepts of Words and
Vocabulary
2.1 What Is a Word?
2.2 Word, lexical Item, Vocabulary
2.3 Sound and Meaning
2.4 Meaning and Concept
2.5 Classification of Words
The structure of English words
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Entry
Lexeme
Word form
Lexical unit
词是能独立运用的、最小的、有语义的语言单位。
Function word and content word
I (pron.我）
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoco
niosis (n.肺尘病）
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2.1 What Is a Word?
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The definition of a word
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It is quite difficult to state the criteria by which a word can
be defined; so far no completely satisfactory definition has
been given.
In brief, a word may be defined as a fundamental unit of
speech and minimum free form; with a unity of sound and
meaning (both lexical and grammatical meaning), capable
of performing a given syntactic function. Therefore, from
the lexicological point of view, a word is a combination of
form (phonological) and meaning (lexical and grammatical).
In addition, a word acts as a structural unit of a sentence.
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2.1 What Is a Word?
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The definition of a word
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To sum up, the definition of a word comprises the
following points
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A minimal free form of a language
A sound unity
A unit of meaning
A form that can function alone in a sentence
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Compare:
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Book books bookish bookcase
Tolerate tolerance tolerant
toleration tolerable intolerable
Telephone telegram telescope
telecommunication
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book+s book+ish book+case
Toler+ate toler+ance toler+ant
toler+ation toler+able in+toler+able
-ate
Tele-phone
Morpheme
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2.2 Word, Lexical Item, Vocabulary
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Lexical item
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A unit of vocabulary is generally referred to as a
lexical item. A complete inventory of the lexical
items of a language constitutes that language’s
dictionary.
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2.2 Word, Lexical Item, Vocabulary
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Vocabulary
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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.
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2.2 Word, Lexical Item, Vocabulary
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Relation
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Nation—a lexical item, also a word
National, nationalize, nationalism, the Chinese
nation, the United nations—words and word
equivalents
All the words and word equivalents constitute the
vocabulary of a language.
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2.3 Sound and Meaning
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There is a debate over the connection
between sound and meaning. Mainly there
are two positions.
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The naturalists maintain there is a natural connection
between sound and meaning.
The Conventionalists, on the other hand, hold that the
relations between sound and meaning are conventional and
arbitrary. The meaning of a word is a kind of linguistic
social contract. Facts have proved this argument to be
valid. Words that convey the same meaning have different
phonological forms in different languages. Alternatively,
the same phonological forms may convey different
meanings; e.g.: sight, site, cite.
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2.4 Meaning and Concept
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Relation
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Meaning is closely related to a concept. A concept
is the base of the meaning of a word. A word is
used to label a concept. The concept is abstracted
from the person, thing, relationship, idea, event,
and so on, that we are thinking about. We call this
the referent. The word refers to the referent
through a concept.
This approach to meaning can be diagrammed as
followings: wordconceptreferent.
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2.4 Meaning and Concept
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But meaning is different from concept:
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A concept is an abstraction from things of the
same kind. A concept refers to something in
general, but not in particular, while meaning can
refers to both something in general and in
particular. For example:
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…some have begun to realize that the automobile is a
mixed blessing.
The automobile was stalled in a snowstorm.
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2.4 Meaning and Concept
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But meaning is different from concept:
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Meaning in the language context may have
emotional and stylistic colors, express one’s
emotion, attitude and position. Therefore, meaning
adds supplementary value to the concept the word
expresses.
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For example, dog might include the connotations of
friend, helper, loyalty, etc. other examples are:
motherland, home, candle, locust, panda, etc.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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The English vocabulary consists of
different kinds of words, which may be
classified by different criteria. In this
section we will discuss three main
criteria:
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By origin
By level of usage
By notion
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2.5 Classification of Words
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By origin
Native words
 Loan words
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Native words
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Words of Anglo-Saxon origin are native words. They form
the great majority of the basic word stock of the English
language. The basic word stock is the foundation of the
vocabulary accumulated over a number of epochs. Most
native words in modern English are monosyllabic. Though
small in number, these words are the ones used most
frequently in everyday speech and writing; they play no
small part in linguistic performance and communication.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Native words
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In the native stock we find the most frequently used words
denoting the commonest things necessary for life, such as
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names of natural phenomena (sun, moon, rain, frost, snow…),
names of animals and plants (horse, dog, tree, flower…),
names of parts of body (head, hand, foot…),
adjectives denoting size and color (big, small, red, white…),
verbs expressing concrete actions (live, eat, work, go, come…)
auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, most numerals, prepositions
and conjunctions.
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2.5 Classification of Words★
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Native words
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The fundamental features of the basic word stock
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National character: Words of the basic word stock
denote the most common things and phenomena of the
word. These words cannot be avoided by any speaker of
a given community, irrespective of class origin,
education, profession, geographical regions, culture,
etc.
Stability: as words in the basic word stock denote the
commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to
remain unchanged.
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2.5 Classification of Words★
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Native words
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The fundamental features of the basic word stock
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Productivity: Words of the basic word stock are mostly
root words or monosyllabic words. They are very active
in forming new words. For example, the word hand
forms such derivatives and compounds as: handful,
handy, handily, handbag, handball, handwriting, etc.
Collocability: Basic words combine readily with other
words to form habitual expressions and phrases. The
word hand again can be found in phrases like at first
hand, hand in hand, to show one’s hand, to play into
sb.’s hands, and so on.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Loan words
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The English vocabulary has replenished itself by
continually taking over words from other languages over
the centuries. Those words borrowed from other languages
are loan words or borrowed words. The historical
development of the English language shows that English is
a heavy borrower; it has adopted words from almost every
known language, especially from Latin, French, and Greek.
After World War II the English vocabulary expanded at a
rate much faster than ever before.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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By level of
usage
Common words
 Literary words
 Colloquial words
 Slang words
 Technical words
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Common words
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Common words are connected with the ordinary
things or activities necessary to everyday life. The
core of the common words is the basic word stock.
They are stylistically neutral, hence they are
appropriate in both formal and informal writing and
speech.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Literary words
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Literary words are chiefly used in writing, especially in
books written in a more elevated style, in official
documents, or in formal speeches. They are comparatively
seldom used in ordinary conversation. In English, most of
the literary words are of French, Latin or Greek origin. Many
of them have their everyday synonyms. For example, cast
(throw), edifice (building), endeavor (try), purchase (buy),
etc.
More examples: recognition, distinction, inclination,
dubious, amelioration…
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Colloquial words
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In contrast with literary words, colloquial words or
expressions are used mainly in spoken English, as
in conversation among friends and colleagues.
They can also be use in informal writings, but are
inappropriate in formal speeches or writings. They
are marked colloq. or informal in dictionaries. Such
as: kid, guy, fellow, gay…
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2.5 Classification of Words
Compare:
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Feeling fatigued, tom retired early. (literary)
Tom felt so dog-tired he hit the sack early. (colloquial)
John was dismissed for petty thieving. (common)
John was fired for petty thieving. (colloquial)
Penalties for overdue books will be strictly enforced
(literary)
You have got to pay fines for overdue books.(colloquial)
They approved of the plan. (literary)
They agreed to the plan.(common)
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Slang words
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Slang is defined as language, words or phrases
of a colorful, facetious (playfully jocular;
humorous), or taboo nature, invented for specific
occasions, or uses, or derived from the
unconventional use of the standard vocabulary.
The chief reason for the formation and use of
slang expressions is to secure freshness and
novelty. A slang usage is not generally used in
formal conversation unless the speakers are on
intimate terms; slang embraces those daring and
new expressions that have not been accepted by
the majority of people as Standard English.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Slang words
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Beaver(girl)
Smoky, bear (police)
Nut, dome, upper, bean, block (head)
Elevated, merry, jolly, comfortable, boiled, tight,
blue-eyed, stiff (drunk)
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Technical words
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Technical or special words refer to those words used in
particular disciplines and academic areas.They are also
called terminologies or technical terms. Every branch of
science, every profession or trade, every art and every sort
of sports has its own technical terms. The function of those
technical words is partly to denote things or processes
which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to
increase precision in nomenclature.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Technical words
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In music: symphony, sonata, orchestra, concerto.
In education: audiovisual, microteaching
In mathematics: algebra, geometry, calculus,
trigonometry
In biology: clone, embryo, cell , organism,
DNA(deoxyribonucleic acid), gene
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Technical words
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Most of these technical terms are Latin or Greek in origin.
In fact, they are part of literary words. Most of the
technical words remain essentially foreign to outsiders,
even to educated native speakers. However, under the
influence of radio, television, newspaper and the Internet,
we are witnessing a remarkable breaking down of the
barrier between technical and common words. Many
technical neologisms created yesterday by specialists
are today heard in ordinary conversation, e.g. moonwalk,
space shutter, gene, transgenic, clone, etc.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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By notion
Function words
 Content words
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Function words
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Function words are often short words such as determiners,
conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliaries, and so forth.
Although they do not have much of their lexical meaning,
they have a special kind of meaning---grammatical meaning.
They act as grammatical signals to show the connection
between content words.
Another important characteristic is that function words
belong to a relatively small and permanent set of words, in
comparison to content words. The total number of
functional words is about 154. They are stable; they do not
come and go with changing fashions and ideas.
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2.5 Classification of Words
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Content words
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Content words have independent lexical meanings.
Content words belong to an open list. New lexical
items are constantly being created, and no one
could make a complete list of all the content words
in English.
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Chapter 3
The Development of the English
Vocabulary
3.1 The Historical Development
3.2 The Growth of Present-day English Vocabulary
3.3 Percentage of Each Source of New Words
3.4 Modes of English Vocabulary Development
3.1 The Historical Development
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The study of the historical development of the
English vocabulary should not be treated in
isolation from the history and the growth of the
English language itself. Understanding the
history may give us an insight into the nature
of English: extremely rich and heterogeneous,
a heavy borrower, full of synonyms, global
language.
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3.1 The Historical Development
Time
450
790
1066
Historical events
Influences
Celts (the earliest inhabitants
The Celts
The conquest and settlement of
the Angles, Saxons, and the
Jutes
the Scandinavian or the Danish
conquests
The Norman Conquest
AngloSaxon
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Old Norse
borrowed
French
borrowed
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3.1 The Historical Development
Time
Historical events
Influence
16th-18th
century
The
1. Latin borrowed
Renaissance(14t 2. Other European
h century)
languages borrowed
At the turn of
the 19th and
20th centuries
Colonization
1.Non-European
2. languages borrowed
English worldwide
After WWII
Advance in
science and
technology
Many new words created
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The history of the
English language is
divided into three
periods.
 The Old English (4501100)
 The Middle English
(1100-1500)
 The Modern English
(1500-present)
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Old English
(450-1100)
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The history of the
English language begins
with the conquest and
settlement of what is
now England by the
Angles, Saxons, and the
Jutes from about 450 AD.
The language they spoke
was Anglo-Saxon, which
replaced
the
Celtic
spoken by the former
inhabitants Celts.
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Old English (450-1100)
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The vocabulary of Old English was chiefly AngloSaxon with a small mixture of Old Norse words as
a result of the Scandinavian or the Danish
conquests of England in the ninth century, such as,
cake, call, egg, knife, take, give, etc.The English
continued to adopt words from Latin during the Old
English period due to the Angles and Saxons’
various contacts with the Romans, such as, candle,
kettle, mountain, school, cup, etc.
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Middle English (1100-1500)
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Middle English is characterized by the strong influence of
French following the Norman Conquest in 1066. Since the
French-speaking Normans were the ruling class, French
was used for all state affairs and for most social and
cultural matters; but the masses continued to speak
English. The language that emerged at that time showed
vast and significant changes in the English vocabulary--the loss of a large part of the Old English word stock and
the adoption of thousands of French words.
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Middle English
(1100-1500)
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The Norman Conquest:
William the Conqueror,
the Duke of Normandy,
invaded and conquered
England and the AngloSaxons in 1066 AD.
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Middle English (1100-1500)
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The French loan words were found in every section
of the vocabulary:
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law and governmental administration (judge, jury,
justice, country, government, parliament, state…),
military affairs (conquer, sergeant, victory…),
religion (baptism, confess, divine, sermon…),
food (beef, pork, dinner, mutton…),
art (beauty, image, design…),
literature (chapter, poet, prose, rime…), and so on.
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Middle English (11001500)
 The Middle English literary
culture was mostly an oral
one, and literacy levels were
still low at this time. Middle
English poetry is a
particularly oral genre, and is
often structured so as to
make it easy to remember,
either through rhyme or
through alliteration
Geoffrey Chaucer
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3.1 The Historical Development
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The Modern English (1500-present)
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In the early stages of this period, the Renaissance brought
great changes to the vocabulary. In this period, the study of
classics was stressed and the result was the wholesale
borrowing from Latin.
From the sixteenth century onward, English borrowed
words from an increasing number of languages, the major
ones being the three Romance languages, French, Spanish,
and Italy. English also adopted words from other European
languages.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as a result of
exploration, colonization and trade, many words came in
from non-European languages.
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3.1 The Historical Development

The Modern English (1500-present)
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Since the beginning of this century, particularly
after World War II, the world has seen breathtaking
advances in science and technology. As a result,
thousands and thousands of new words have been
created to express new ideas, inventions, and
scientific achievements. Although borrowing
remained an important channel of vocabulary
expansion, yet more words are created by means
of word-formation.
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3.1 The Historical Development

In fact English has adopted words from almost every
known language in the course of its historical
development. This has made the English vocabulary
extremely rich and heterogeneous. English is
supposed to have the most copious vocabulary of all
the languages, estimated at more than a million words.
It is also noted for its wealth of synonyms and idioms,
a fact no doubt due to its sharing so many common
words with other languages.
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary
 Neologism

Neologisms are newly coined words or words
that are given new meaning to fit new situation
because of social, economic, political, cultural,
scientific and technological changes in human
society.
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary
 After World War II, neologisms
sweep in at a rate much faster than
any other historical period. The main
reasons for the frequent appearance
of neologisms are three:
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Marked progress of science and technology
Socio-economic, political and cultural changes
The Influence of other cultures and languages
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary
 Marked progress of science and
technology


Exploration of space: moonfall, moonwalk, moonquake,
moonscape, space suit, space shutter, space station,
lander, black hole…
Ecology: environmentalist, ecocide, ecocrisis, air
pollution, noise pollution, thermal pollution, visual
pollution, cultural pollution, spiritual pollution, graffiti
pollution, eco-friendly, environment-friendly, green
product, green wealth…
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Marked progress of science and
technology

Computer science: software, hardware, input,
output, memory, on line, to process, internet
cafeteria, online communication, e-mail,
cyberspace, data base, programming, virtual
communities…
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Marked progress of science and
technology

Others:
transgenic
products,
clone,
nanotechnology, behaviour science, bulletin
train, instant coffee, bionics, sociolinguistics,
container ship, green revolution …
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Socio-economic, political and cultural
changes


income gap, income inequality, economic inequality,
wealth disparity, economic polarization, downsizing,
layoff, second career, knowledge workers, cross
functional, Euro, credit card, globalization
Watergate (a political scandal), Irangate, Camillagate,
computerspeak, netspeak, artspeak, biz-speak, collegespeak, newspeak, oldspeak, Clintonspeak…
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Socio-economic, political and
cultural changes

TV dinner, megavitamin, soy milk, discotheque,
soul music, rock music, folk music, talk shows
CD (compact discs), VCD (video compact disk)
open classroom, open university, distance
education
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Socio-economic, political and
cultural changes

Chairperson,
chairwoman,
spokeswomen,
saleswoman, feminism, sexism (the women’s
liberation movement); sit-in, swim-in, black
power (the civil rights movement); teach-in (the
campaign against the Vietnam War)…
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

Socio-economic, political and
cultural changes


The lost generation, the beat generation, the X
generation, hippies, yippies, yuppies, baby
boomers, the Vietnam generation
The Third World (developing countries,
undeveloped countries), the Fourth World,
shuttle diplomacy, trade war, psywar
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3.2 The Growth of Present-day English
Vocabulary

The Influence of other cultures and
languages


Examining the English vocabulary in its historical
perspective, on can see that English is characterized by
a marked tendency to go outside her own linguistic
recourses and borrow from other languages.
Karaoke (Japanese), discotheque, extraordinaire, avantgarde, black humor (French),cosmonaut,sputnik
(Russian), paper tiger, Red Guards, open-door policy,
Kungfu, Renminbi, Mao suit, tofu, wok, typhoon,
brainwashing (Chinese).
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3.3 Percentage of Each Source of New
Words
14%
56%
30%
science and technology terms
life-style terms
social and economic terms
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3.4 Modes of English Vocabulary
Development

Modern English vocabulary develops
through three modes




Creation (by word-formation)
Semantic change (by adding new meaning to existing
words)
Borrowing (By borrowing words from other languages)
We shall discuss these modes later in
word-formation
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Chapter 4
Morphological Structure
4.1 Morphemes
4.2 Types of Morphemes
4.3 Allomorphs
4.1 Morphemes

The definition of a morpheme

The morpheme(词素) is the smallest meaningful linguistic
unit of language, not divisible or analyzable into smaller
forms. A word is the smallest unit of a language that stands
alone to communicate meaning. Structurally, however, a
word is not the smallest unit because many words can be
separated into smaller meaningful units. Words are
composed of morphemes. What is usually considered a
single word in English may be composed of one or more
morphemes:
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4.1 Morphemes

The definition of a morpheme

Example




One morpheme: nation
Two morphemes: nation-al
Three morphemes: nation-al-ize
Four morphemes: de-nation-al-ize
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

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. Therefore, we might as well say
that free morphemes are content morphemes or
free roots(自由词根).

man, earth, wind, faith, red, write….
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

Bound Morphemes(粘着词素)

Morphemes which cannot occur as separate words
are bound. They are so named because they are
bound to other morphemes to form words. Unlike
free morphemes, they do not have independent
semantic meaning; instead, they have attached
meaning (un-kind, hope-ful) or grammatical
meaning (cat-s, slow-ly, walk-ing, call-ed). They are
also called grammatical morphemes.
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

Types of bound morphemes



Bound roots(粘着词根): 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. For
example:
dict- conveys the meaning of ‘say or speak’-----contradict,
predict, contradiction, prediction, dictate, diction,
dictionary….
dur-: continuous, during, duration, durable, endure
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

Types of bound morphemes

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.
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

Inflectional
affixes(曲折词缀)


Affixes attached to the
end of words to indicate
grammatical
relationships are
inflectional, thus known
as inflectional
morphemes. For
example: cats, walked,
walking, John’s book…
Derivational
affixes(派生词缀)

Affixes added to other
morphemes to create
new words. They can be
further divided into
prefixes and suffixes
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
Prefixes(前缀)
Suffixes(后缀)
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4.2 Types of Morphemes

Diagram of morphemes
Free
Bound root
Morphemes
Inflectional
Bound
Affixes
Prefix
Derivational
Suffix
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4.3 Allomorphs

An allomorph(词素变体) is any of the
variant forms of a morpheme as
conditioned by position or adjoining
sounds. For example:


The morpheme of plurality {-s}: /s/ after the sounds
/t, p, k/; /z/ after /d, b, g, l/; /iz/ after /s, z, …/
go: went, gone
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4.3 Allomorphs





-ion/-tion/-sion/-ation are the positional variants of the same
suffix.
Verbs ending with the sound /t/ usually take –ion (as in
invent, invention);
verds ending with consonants other than /t/ take –tion (as
in describe, description);
verbs ending in –ify and –ize take –ation (as in justify,
justification; modernize, modernization);
verbs ending in –d, -de, or –mit, take –sion (as in expansion,
decision, omission); there are exceptions: attend, attention;
convert, conversion, etc.
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4.3 Allomorphs




A prefix like im- occurs before p, b, or m
(imperfect, imbalance, immobile); its allomorphs
are
ir- before r (irregular, irresponsible);
il- before l (illogical, illegal);
in- before all other consonants and vowels
(inflexible, incomplete).
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Exercises







Decentralization
Specialize
Individualistic
Half-hearted
A man of letters
Downfall
Power-drunk
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Exercises







Decentralization
Specialize
Individualistic
Half-hearted
A man of letters
Downfall
Power-drunk







de-, center, -al, -ize, ation
species, -al, -ize
in-, divide, -al, -ist, -ic
half, heart, -ed
a, man, of, letter, -s
down, fall
power, drink, an
allomorph of –ed
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Exercises









Ecocrisis
Meaningfulness
Prediction
Inequality
understatement
Undeveloped
Downsizing
Moonscape
supernatural
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Exercises









Ecocrisis
Meaningfulness
Prediction
Inequality
understatement
Undeveloped
Downsizing
Moonscape
supernatural









eco-, crisis
mean, -ing, -ful, ness
pre-, -dict-, -ion
-in, equal, -ity
-under, state, -ment
-un, develop, -ed
down, size, -ing
moon, -scape
-super, nature, -al
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