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Key to chapter 1
1 .What is a word? 1.A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function.
2. In what way are words related to vocabulary?
Vocabulary refers to the sum total of all the words in a language. In other words, vocabulary is composed of words and words make up vocabulary. If we compare vocabulary to a family, words are family members. 3. Illustrate the relationship between sound and meaning with examples .
Sound is the physical aspect of a word and meaning is what the sound refers to. Sound and meaning are not intrinsically related and their collection is arbitrary and conventional. For example, tree/tri:/ means 树in English because the English-speaking people have agreed to do so just as Chinese people use/shù/(树) to refer to the same thing. This explains why people of different languages use different sounds to express the same concept. However, in the same languages, the same sound can denote different meanings, e.g. /rait/ can mean right, rite, and write. 4 .Enumerate the causes for the differences between sound and form of english words
There are generally four major causes of the differences between sound and form.⑴There are more phonemes than letters in English, so there is no way to use one letter to represent one phoneme.⑵The stabilization of spelling by printing, which breaks the synchronized change of sound and spelling. ⑶Influence of the work of scribes, who deliberately changed the spelling of words and ⑷borrowing, which introduces many words which are against English rules of pronunciation and spelling.
5 .Give examples to show the influence of early scribes on english spelling
Early scribes changed the spelling of many words while copying things for others because the original spelling forms in cursive writing were difficult for people to recognize, such as sum, cum, wuman, munk and so on. Later, the letter u with vertical lines was replaced with o, resulting in the current spelling forms like some, come, woman, monk. The changed spelling forms are more distinguishable to readers. 6. What are the characteristics of basic word stock
Words of the basic word stock form the common core of the English language. They are the words essential to native speakers’ daily communication. Such words are characterized by all national character, stability, polysemy, productivity and collocability.
7. choose the standard meaning form from the list on the right to match each of the slang words on the left A tart loose woman b. bloke fellow c.gat pistol d. swell great e. chicken coward F.blue fight g. smoky police h full drunk i. dame woman j.beaver girl 8. given the modern equivalents for the following archaic words
haply = perhaps albeit= although methinks = it seems to me eke= alsobade= bid
smooth= truth morn= morning troth= pledge ere= before quoth = said hallowed= holy billow= wave/ the sea 9. Explain neologisms with examples
Neologisms refer to newly-coined words or old words with new meanings. For example, euro(欧元),e-book(电子书),SARS(非典), netizen (网民), are newly-coined words. Words like mouse(鼠标),web(网络),space shuttle(航天飞机) etc. are old words which have acquired new meanings.
10. What is the fundamental difference between content and functional words
By notion, words fall into content words and functional words. Content words include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and numerals, which have clear notions; whereas functional words are void of notions but are mainly used to connect content words into sentences. Content words are numerous and changing all the time, while functional words are small in number and stable. But functional words have much higher frequency in use than content words. 11. How do you account for the role of native words in english in relation to loan words ?
Native words form a small portion of the English vocabulary, but they make up the mainstream of the basic word-stock
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which belongs to the common core of the English language. Compared with most loan-words, native words are mostly essential to native speakers’ daily communication and enjoy a much higher frequency in actual use.
12. Categorize the following borrowed words into denizens , aliens translation loans and semantic loans Denizens Aliens Translation loans Semantic loans kettle confrere chopsticks dream die pro patria black humour skirt parvenu long time no see wall Wunderkind typhoon husband Mikado Key to chapter 2
1. Why should students of english lexicology study the In-European language family?
The Indo-Europe Language Family is one of the most important language families in the world. It is made up of the languages of Europe, the Near East and India. English belongs to this family and the other members of the Indo-European Language Family have different degrees of influence on English vocabulary. A knowledge of the Indo-European Language Family will help us understand English words better and use them more appropriately. 2.make a tree diagram to show the family relations of the modern language given below
Indo-European Language Family
Balto-Slavic Lithuanian Prussian Polish Slavenian Russian Bulgarian
Roumanian
Indo-Iranian Hindi Perian
Celtic Breton Scottish Irish
Italic Spanish French Italian Portuguese
Hellenic Greek Germanic English Swedish German Icelangic Danish Dutch
3. What are the fundamental differences between the vocabularies of the 3 periods of development ? Do you think we can divide the historical development in other ways ? Defend your argument.
The vocabularies of the three periods differ greatly from one anther. OldEnglish has (1) a small vocabulary (50 000—60 000), (2) a small number of borrowings from Latin and Scandinavian only and (3) the words full of endings. Middle English has (1) a comparatively large vocabulary, (2) a tremendous number of foreign words from French and Latin and (3) word endings leveled. Modern English has (1) a huge and heterogeneous vocabulary, (2) tremendous borrowings and (3) words with lost endings.
Yes, we can divide the developments in other ways, for example, Old English period can be called Anglo-Saxon
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period. And Middle English might start from 1066, the time of Norman Conquest. But in doing so, the logical continuation of thee three phases of the original division is lost.
4. what characteristics of english make the english language heterogeneous ?
it is receptivity and adaptability of the English language that make it possible for English to borrow heavily from other major
languages of the world, so that the English vocabulary eventually has become heterogeneous. 5. Account for the popularity of english in the present world from a linguistic perspective.
The popularity of English lies in the fact that English is ready to borrow from other languages and to adapt itself to new situations and new developments, that it has accepted elements from all other major languages and that it has simple reflection and a relatively fixed word order. All these make the language comparatively easy to learn and to use.
6course human events necessary people
dissolve political connected assume powers separate equal station nature entitle decent respect opinions requires declare causes impel separation
From the words picked out, we can see that most of the content words are either of Greek or Latin origin. What we left are mostly functional words. This shows that Greek and Latin play a very important part in the English vocabulary.
7. Give a brief account of the 4 phases of Latin borrowing with 2 or 3 examples for each period.
Latin borrowing can be divided into four phase: (1) Pre-Anglo-Saxon period,(2)Old English period, (3) middle English period and(4) Modern English period. Borrowings in the first period are mainly common words such as wall, wine, kettle and so on; Words borrowed in the second period are mainly religious terms such as candle, nun, church; the third period saw word borrowed often via French such as frustrate, history, infancy and so on and in the forth period Words borrowed from Latin are usually abstract formal terms like status,nucleus, minimum. 8.tell the difference elements that make up the following hybrids.
eventful [Latin + English] hydroplane [Greek +Latin Falsehood [Latin +English ] pacifist [Latin +Greek ]
Saxophone [German +Greek ] heirloom [French +English ]Joss house [Portuguese +English ] television [Greek + Latin ]
9.put the following French loan word into 2 groups , one being early borrowings and the other late ones . amateur (late) finace (late) Empire (late) peace (early) Courage (early) garage (late)Judgement (early) chair (early)
Chaise (late) grace (early)Servant (early) routine (late)Jealous (early) savate (late) Genre (late) gender (early)
Debut (late) morale (late) State (early) chez (late)Ballet (late)
10. Comment on Jespersen's remark on Scandinavian element in english \without Scandinavian words, they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare.
Jespersen’s comment reveals the importance of Scandinavian words in English. Just as people cannot live without bread and eggs,so English language cannot operate properly without Scandinavian words. 11.Match the Italian musical terms with the proper definitions
allegro f. 轻快Alto i. 女低音Andante j 行板Crescendo b.渐强 Diminuendo g. 渐弱 Forte e.强
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英语词汇学复习_题。。。。
