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3
Chapter 3 Lexicon
I. What is word
Three senses of word
1） the physically definable unit: between pauses in speech and between blanks in writing
but “can’t”, “doesn’t”, “for ever”
2） the common factor underlying a set of forms: work, works, worked, working
but “if”, “and”, “the”, “very”
3）a grammatical unit: sentence, clause, word group / phrase, word, morpheme
but “nation”, “fast”
Identification of word
1) stability: the constituent parts of a word have little potential for rearrangement
Playboy: *boyplay; John loves Mary: Mary loves John
2) relative uninterruptibility: new elements and pauses are not to be inserted into a word
nationalization: *nationinteralization, *nation alization
(even) John doesn’t love Mary.
3) a minimum free form: the minimal unit that can constitute an utterance by itself
- Is Jane coming this evening? – Possibly.
- What is missing in a sentence such as ‘Dog is barking’? – A.
Lexeme: basic abstract units of the lexicon on the level of language which may be realized in different grammatical forms such as the lexeme “work” in work, works, worked, working. A lexeme may also be a part of another lexeme, e.g. worker, workbook, workday. Idioms are also considered lexemes, e. g. the works of God: nature. Lexemes are the units which are conventionally listed in dictionaries as separate entries.
II. Classification of words
Variable vs invariable words
Variable words are words which have different grammatical forms.
Invariable words are words which do not have different grammatical forms.
Grammatical vs lexical words
Grammatical words are words which express grammatical meanings, e.g. pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. function words
Lexical words are words which have lexical content, e.g. nouns, verbs, etc. content words
Closed-class vs open-class words
Closed-class words are words whose membership is fixed or limited, e.g. conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, etc. But even though prepositions are closed class words, they have been increasing in number slowly.
Open-class words are words whose membership is infinite or unlimited, e.g. nouns, verbs, etc.
Word classes: categories of words classified according to their grammatical, semantic, phonological properties or on the basis of formal similarities in terms of inflections and distribution. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, articles
New word classes identified
Particles: the infinitive marker ‘to’ and the negative marker ‘not’ and the subordinate element in phrasal verbs, e.g. ‘at’ in look at and ‘out’ in knock out.
Auxiliaries: the traditional auxiliary and modal verbs such as ‘do’ and ‘can’
Pro-forms: There are other pro-forms in English in addition to pronouns.
pro-adjectives: Your pen is red. So is mine.
Pro-verbs: He knows English better than I do.
Pro-adverbs: He runs very fast and so do I.
pro-locative: Jane’s hiding there, behind the door.
Determiners: words preceding the head noun and determining the kind of reference the noun phrase has, e.g. the (definite) student, a (indefinite) student, some (partitive) students, all (universal) students.
Pre-diterminers: all, both, half, double, twice, one-third, etc.
Central determiners: (articles) the, a, (demonstrative pronouns) this, that, these, those, (indefinite pronouns) every, each, some, any, no, either, neither, (possessive pronouns) my, our, your, his, her, its, their, etc.
Post-determiners: (cardinal numerals) one, two, etc. (ordinal numerals) first, second, etc. (general ordinals) next, last, past, other, additional, etc. (quantifiers) many, several, much, little, a lot of, a great deal of, etc.
Determiners follow the order pre-determiner + central determiners + post determiners, e.g. all the students, half a year, etc.
The members of each subclass are usually exclusive of each other. But ordinal numerals and general ordinals may occur before cardinal numerals, e.g. the first two days, the past three weeks, etc.
III. Formation of words
Morpheme and morphology
Morphemes: minimal units of meaning
Types of morphemes:
free morphemes: can stand alone as words, e.g. dog, map, nation
bound morphemes: have to appear with at least another morpheme, e.g. international, pre cede, etc.
roots: that part of the word left when all the affixes are removed, e.g. internationalism, antidisestablishmentarianism
free roots: roots that can be used as words, e.g. hopeful, interpersonal
bound roots: roots that have to be appear with affixes, e.g. precede, receive, submit, retain, recur
some roots in English have both free and bound variants, e.g. sleepy, slept; childlike, children; goes, went
affixes: formative elements that have to be attached to at least another morpheme
prefixes: paragraph, miniskirt, unemployed, incorrect
suffixes: national, socialist, physics
infixes: foot / feet, man / men, in Cambodian /sepolah/ (field), /segepolah/ (fields)
stems: a morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be attached, e.g. national, internationalism
inflectional affixes and derivational affixes
1) inflectional affixes are productive across an entire category, e.g. –s to all regular plural count nouns, but derivational affixes are not, e.g. production, connection, *maktion, increastion.
2) inflectional affixes often add only a grammatical meaning to the stem, but derivational affixes often change the lexical content, e.g. maps, worker.
3) Inflectional affixes do not change the word class of the stem, whereas derivational affixes may or may not change the word class of the stem, maps, smoker, incorrect.
4) Inflectional affixes are often conditioned by non-semantic linguistic factors, e.g. John loves Mary. whereas derivational affixes are more often based on simple meaning distinctions, correct vs correctness.
5) In English, inflectional affixes are normally suffixes, whereas derivational affixes can be prefixes as well.
6) In English inflectional affixes are very small in number, whereas derivational affixes are much larger in number.
Inflection and word formation
Inflection: the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached.
Word formation: the process of word variations signaling lexical relationships. It can be further classified into the compositional type (compounding) and the derivational type (derivation).
Compound: words that consist of more than one free morpheme or the way to join two or more separate words to produce a single form.
Compounds can be completely united: playboy, hyphenated: mother-in-law, separated: high frequency.
There are noun compounds, e.g. daybreak, haircut, verb compounds, e.g. brainwash, lip-read, adjective compounds, e.g. man-eating, heartfelt, prepositional compounds, e.g. into, throughout. Compounds can be classified into endocentric （向心的） and exocentric （离心的） compounds. In endocentric nominal and adjectival compounds, the head is derived from a verb. Nominal: self-control, pain-killer, core-meaning; adjectival: eye-entertaining, bullet-resistant, machine-washable. In exocentric nominal and adjectival compounds, the first word is derived from the verb. Nominal: playboy, scarecrow, breakthrough, get-together; adjectival: take-home, runaway, drive-ins.
Derivation: showing the relationships between roots and affixes and changing or not changing the word class of the original words, e.g. unconscious, booklet, disobey, lengthen, foolish.
Phonology and morphology
1) morpheme and phoneme
A single phoneme may represent a morpheme, but they are not identical, e.g. /z/: goes, boys, boy’s, is.
2) morphemic structure and phonological structure
Morphemes may also be represented by morphemic structures other than a single phoneme, e.g. love ly (monosyllabic), tobacco (polysyllabic). The syllabic structure of a word and its morphemic structure do not necessarily correspond.
3) allomorph
Some morphemes have a single form in all contexts, e.g. dog, cat, etc. other morphemes may have different shapes or phonetic forms, e.g. {z}: maps, dogs, watches, oxen, teeth, criteria, craft; {in}: incorrect, impossible, irregular, illegal.
4) morphophonology or morphophonemics: the study of the relationship between phonology and morphonology.
(1) phonologically conditioned
assimilation: maps, dogs, incorrect, impossible
dissimilation: peregrinus (Latin) → pilgrim, marbre (French) → marble
(2) morphologically conditioned
three requirements:
a. All the allomorphs should have common meaning, e.g. maps, dogs, watches.
b. All the allomorphs should be in complementary distribution, e.g. maps, dogs, watches.
c. Allomorphs that share the common meaning should be in parallel formation, e.g.
ox → oxen, cow → cows
IV. lexical changes
New words (neologisms, coinages) are created in the following ways:
Invention: Kodak, coke, nylon, fax, etc.
Compounding: moonwalk, chairperson, etc.
Derivation: semiconductor, supersonic
Blending: transfer + resister → transistor, smoke +fog → smog
tele-printer +exchange → telex, modulator + demodulation → modem
Fusion ( a special type of blendings): spaddle ← spank（拍）+ paddle（打）, riffle ← ripple（波纹）+ ruffle（波纹）, rampacious ← rampageous（暴跳的） + rapacious（掠夺的）
Abbreviation: Clippings. Cutting the final part: advertisement → ad, mathematics → math; cutting the initial part: aeroplane → plane omnibus → bus; cutting both the initial and final parts: influenza → flu, refrigerator → fridge
Acronym: the initial letters of the words in a phrase or idiom or the name of an organization: EEC ← European Economic Community, CIA ← Central Intelligence Agency, Aids ← acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Radar ← radio detecting and ranging
Backformation: a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form: televise ← television, edit ← editor, diagnose ← diagnosis
Borrowings: from many different languages, especially Greek (electricity, atom), Latin (tumor, alibi), French (table, pork), Spanish (armada, ranch) etc.
Loanwords: both form and meaning are borrowed with only a light adaptation, e.g. coupon (French), sputnik (Russian), kung-fu (Chinese), Judo (Japanese).
Loanblends: part of the form is native and part is borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed, e.g. coconut (Spanish), Chinatown (Chinese),
loan shifts: the meaning is borrowed, but the form is native, e.g. bridge (a card game from Italian), artificial satellite (from Russian)
loan translation: each morpheme or word is translated from the equivalent morpheme or word in another language, e.g. free verse ← verse libre (Latin), black humour ← humour noir.
V. Phonological change
Loss: the disappearance of the sound as a phoneme in the phonological system, e.g. /x/ (the voiceless velar fricative) was lost between the times of Chaucer and Shakespeare: hit → it, niht → night. Sound loss may also occur in utterances at the expense of some unstressed vowels: temperature, postscript, the pen and pencil
Addition: Sounds may be added to the original sound sequence, e.g. rascal → rapscallion, lier → liaison
Metathesis: the alternation in the sequence of sounds, e.g. brid → bird, middel → middle, lytel → little.
Assimilation: the change of a sound as a result of the influence of an adjacent sound (contact or contiguous assimilation), e.g. immobile (n → m), support (b → p). Sometimes assimilation may occur between two sounds that are not too far apart (distant or non-contiguous assimilation), e.g. discussing shortly (s → ∫), confound it (∂ → au).
VI. Semantic change
Broadening: to extend or elevate the meaning of a word from its original specific sense to a relatively general one, e.g. offend (to strike against → to create or excite anger), bird (young bird → any kind of bird), companion (a person with whom you share bread → a person who accompanies you), etc.
Narrowing: the original meaning of a word is narrowed or restricted to a specific sense, e.g. girl (young person of either sex → young woman), deer (beast → a particular kind of animal), queen (wife → wife of a king or a female king), etc.
Meaning shift: the departure of a word from its original domain as a result of its metaphorical usage, e.g. bead (prayer → prayer bead → small, ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood), etc.
Class shift: conversion: the process in which a word changes from one word class to another, e.g. must (have to → an indispensable item), word (a language unit → to express in words), etc. |
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发表于 2010-11-6 13:41
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