问题解答

1. How are English words classified?
English words may be classified according to different criteria. Word may be classified by Their origin into native and loan words. By level of usage, words may be classified into common words, literary words, colloquial words, slang words and technical words. By notion, words can be classified into content words and function words.


2.What are the fundamental features of the basic word stock?
1) national character : words of the basic word stock belong to the people as a whole, not to a limited group.
2)stability:as words in the basic word stock denote the commonest things necessary to life, changes take place in it very slowly.
3) word-forming ability: Basic words are very active in forming new words.
4) Ability to form collocation: Basic words combine readily. with other words to form habitual expressions and phrases.


3. What are the differences between function words and content words?
l) In kind of meaning: Function words serve grammatically more than anything else. They do not have much lexical meaning and some of them have no lexical meaning of their own Content words are used to name objects, qualities, actions,processes or state, and have independent lexical meaning.
2) in number : The number of function words is small while the number of content words is large.
3) in stability: Function words are stable; they do not come and go with changing fashions and ideas. Content words belong to an open list. New lexical items are constantly being created while old ones may drop out of use.
4) In frequency of occurrence : Content words as a class are characterized by low frequency of occurrence in comparison with function words.

4. How many periods. Is the history of English divided into? state briefly the special
features of each period. (from the angle of the vocabulary)
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. There are three periods in the history of English:
1)The Anglo-Saxon Period: The vocabulary contains some fifty or sixty thousand words with a small mixture of old Norse and Latin words.
2) The Middle English period: The vocabulary is characterized by the strong influence of French following the Norman conquest in 1066.but the core of the vocabulary ramained English, and Latin words continued to come in.
3) The modern English period : At the early stage of this period. The Renaissance led to the 'wholesale borrowing from Latin and the direct introduction of some Greek Words. And then,English gradually expanded its scope of borrowing. up till now, English has adopted words from almost every known language in the course of its historical development. The result is synonyms and idioms.

5.What are the causes of the rapid growth of present-day English vocabulary?
Generally, the main reasons for the rapid growth of present-day English vocabulary are three: Marked progress of science and technology ; socio-economic, political and cultural changes and the influence of other cultures and languages.


6. How are English morphemes classified?
Morphemes may be classified as free or bound morpheme is one that can stand by itself as a complete utterance, while a bound morpheme cannot exist on its own; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound.
Morphemes can also be classified into roots and affixes. A root carries the main component of
meaning in a word. Roots can be free or bound morphemes. Free roots can stand alone as words and provide the language with a basis for the formation of new words. Bound roots can not appear as words in modem English, although they were once words nor can they be used to form new words.


7. What are the differences between inflectional and derivational affixes?
1) In meaning Inflectional affixes have only their particular grammatical meaning while many derivational affixes have one or more specific lexical meanings.
2) In application : Inflectional affixes can only be affixed to words of the same word-class while derivational affixes may be attached to words of different word-classes.
3) In number: The number of derivational affixes, although limited, is much larger than that of inflectional affixes.
4) In stability: Inflectional affixes are fixed. No new ones have been added since 1500.New derivational affixes are coined from time to time. At the same time old ones have dropped out of use. And a few"dead"derivational morphemes are sometimes revived.


10. How are the various processes of word-formation classified?
By and large, the various processes of word-formation are classified on the basis of frequency of usage, into major or minor processes. The major processes are three, namely, compounding, derivation and conversion. The minor processes are eight, namely, acronym, blending,clipping,  words from proper names, back-formation, reduplication, neo-classical formation and miscellaneous.


11.What are the relative criteria of a compound?
1) orthographic criterion : Compounds can be written in various ways : solid, hyphenated or open. It is 山 difficult to decide which form should be used as criterion. When a compound is
written in the open way, it is difficult to distinguish it from a phrase. Thus, the orthographic criterion is relative.
2) Phonological criterion: phonologically many compounds have a so-called compound accent, i.e. a single stress on the first element or a main stress on the first element and a secondary stress on the second element. Compound accent is different from normal phrase accent, which has a secondary stress on the first element and the main stress on the second element. But accent does not work so neatly. Sometimes a compound may have a phrase accent. It is also common for both components of a compound to have level stress. Hence,stress is not a very reliable indicator of compound status.
3) semantic criterion: Many linguists define a compound as a combination forming a unit expressing a single idea. when we examine the meaning of a compound, we will find tow cases : first, the meaning of a compound is derived from the combined lexical meanings of its components, which as a rule, retain their lexical meanings; second, the meaning of a compound cannot be inferred from the meaning of its component parts. In the first case, it is difficult to distinguish a compound from a phrase. Thus, the concept of expressing a single idea is very vague.




13.What are the main types of word meaning?
Word meaning can first be divided into two major types: grammatical meaning and lexical meaning. Grammatical meaning is the grammatical role a word plays, e.g. The number nouns (the singular"Cat” as against the plural"cats", etc), the tense of verbs ( the present tense “write"as against the past tense 'wrote"etc. ), the degree of some adjectives and adverbs ("fast,faster, fastest' etc). Obviously the. Total number of grammatical meanings in English is very limited, and the same grammatical meaning is shared by a great number of words.
On the contrary, lexical meaning is the meaning proper, the word as a lexical item. In other words, every word may have similar ones. The lexical meaning may be subdivided into:
1) Denotative meaning. Also called conceptual meaning, it is the definition given in a dictionary, e.g. 'water---liquid made up of hydrogen and oxygen".
2) Connotative meaning. This is the emotional association a word suggests in one's mind.For instance, 'Mother' connotes 'love, care and tenderness".
3) Social/stylistic meaning. This has to do with the social relations between the speakers (e. g. "sir” suggest that the two persons have a superordinate-subordinate relationship), the occasion (e.g.'adjourn"suggests a formal meeting), the subject matter (e.g 'upheaval"suggests that politics is being talked about). and the mode of discourse (e.g. "peruse"suggests that the discourse is a written one.)
4) Affective meaning. This is concerned with the expression of feelings and attitudes of the speaker or writer. For instance,'thrifty' show the speaker's approval of the quality n question and "stingy”'shows the speaker's negative view on the same quality.



14. How is the lexical meaning of a word different from its grammatical meaning?
Lexical meaning and grammatical meaning are two main types of word meaning the former comprises of denotative meaning, connotative meaning. Social/stylistic meaning and affective meaning. But By grammatical meaning we mean the word class and inflectional paradigm.the lexical meaning is dominant in content words, whereas the grammatical meaning is dominant in function words. And each word has its own lexical meaning and the lexical meaning is the same in all the forms of one and the same word while the grammatical meaning varies from one word-form to another and is the same in identical sets of individual forms of different words. Hence we may describe lexical meaning as that component of meaning proper to the word as a lexical item while grammatical meaning as the knowledge about the position a word normally occupies in a sentence, or about the syntactic distribution of a word, which usually determines its word class.


15. There are 3 kinds of sense relationships between English words, namely similarity, oppositeness and inclusion. illustrate this point.
The relationship of similarity is usually called synonymy. If two English words have broadly the same denotative meaning, e.g. “Big" and"large'', or “beautiful"and" pretty' we say they are synonyms, though they may differ in connotative, affective, stylistic meaning or in nuance. The relationship of oppositeness is usually called antonymy, if two words have contrary meaning, e.g. “big' and “small", or "beautiful" and 'ugly', we say they are antonyms. The relationship of inclusion is also called hyponymy, which obtains between specific and general lexical items, such that the former is included in the latter, e.g."Apple'' is included in ''fruit' and "fruit': is included in"food".


16. Context is very important for the understanding of word meaning. How is context classified?
Meanings of words may be viewed as determined by two major kinds of contexts: linguistic
context and extra-linguistic (or non-verbal) context.
Linguistic context can be subdivided into three types: lexical context, grammatical context and verbal context in its broad sense. Lexical context refers to the lexical items used before and/or after a given polysemous word. For example, the word “Make"used with different lexical items has different meanings:
1. We made a good breakfast before leaving. ("had")
2. My father made 10, 000 yuan a year. (“earned")

3. The train was making 70 miles an hour. ("going at a speed of')
Grammatical context refers to the syntactic structure which determines various meanings of a polysemous word. Take the verb"get' for example ; its meaning varies, in different syntactic structures:
1. Get+n. (="receive"), as in "I got a letter today".
2. Get +adj. (="become"), as in"He’s getting better".
3. Get+n.+inf. (="cause to do"), as in' I’ll get him to repair my watch".
Verbal context in its broad sense refers to an entire passage or even an entire book which may determine the complete significance of an important term.
Extra-linguistic context is also called context of situation. It can be subdivided into two types:
A) The actual speech situation in which a word ( or an utterance, or a speech event) occurs. Sometimes the meanings of a word is determined not by linguistic factors but by the speech situation in which a word is used. For example, it is hard to tell the meaning of the word "operation" in "it 's difficult operation.' Only the actual speech situation will make it clear.
B) the entire cultural background against which a word or an utterance or a speech event has to be set. Because of cultural differences, the same lexical item may not mean the same thing to people of different countries. For example, the English word 'peasant' has a definite derogatory connotation, while its Chinese equivalent 'nongmin (农民)" is appreciative or neutral in affective meaning.




17. What is componential analysis'and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
Componential analysis refers to the analysis of word meanings in which the sense of a word is broken down into its minimal components, which are known as semantic features or sense components. A particular characteristic of this analysis is that it attempts as far as possible to treat components in terms of binary opposites. For example, the words 'man",'woman"and "child" can be analyzed as follows:

man [+ Human +Adult'+ Male]
woman [+ Human + Adult + Female]
child [+ Human-Adult ]

Componential analysis has some advantages. First it enables us to have an exact knowledge of the conceptual meaning of words. It is useful in characterizing meaning relations such as synonymy, polysemy, antonymy, and hymonymy Two words are synonymous if they contain all the same semantic features ; e.g. Both "father" and "male parent" have the semantic features
[+ Human + Adult + Male + Married], so they can be seen as synonyms. Secondly a knowledge of the semantic features of words helps us to choose the right word or collocation. For example, we can say"John forgave your rudeness", but not "The tree forgave your rudeness" (unless used metaphorically), because"forgive"requires a nun with the semantic feature [+Human]as its subject.

Componential analysis, however, has its disadvantages. First it is very difficult to find a set of features that capture, what is common in meaning across lexical items. Second, the analysis of word meaning into its sense components is not enough. For instance, the componential definition of 'Man" as [+ Human +Adult + Male】 can hardly explain the meaning of 'man" in "Be a man!". Third, although a knowledge of semantic features may help one to make an acceptable sentence or to tell why a sentence is anomalous, yet it does not always work, because many words are often used figuratively without observing the normal 'usage rules". For example, 'to threaten one's enemy' is semantically correct because"threaten"requires an animate object but 'to threaten someone's security"is also acceptable.

18. What is the difference between polysemy and homonymy?
polysemy refers to the phenomenon of one lexical item having two or more meanings. For example, the word"board"has the senses of 'meal supplied"and "a committee", depending on the particular context it is used in, Homonymy refers to the phenomenon of two or more words having the same spelling and pronunciation, though different in meaning. For example, "lie'' meaning "deliberately make an untrue statement' and"lie"meaning"put oneself flat on a horizontal surface"are homonyms. The difference between the two cases lies in whether such a pair is etymologically one and the same word or two different words of origins.



19. What are the characteristics of English idioms?
The English idioms have two major characteristics: one is the semantic unity;
the other is the structural stability.
Being phrases or sentences, idioms each consist of more than one word, but each is a semantic unity. Though the various words which make up the idiom have their individual identity, i.e. Their meanings are not often recognizable in the meaning of the whole idiom. Likewise, the part of speech of each element is no longer important. Quite often the idiom functions as one word. The semantic unity of idioms is also reflected in the illogical relationship between the literal meaning of each word and the meaning of the idiom. Many idioms are semantically inexplicable.
Unlike free phrases, the structure of an idiom is to a large extent unchangeable. First the constituents of idioms cannot be replace. Secondly the word order cannot be inverted or changed. Thirdly the constituents of an idiom cannot be deleted or added to, not even an article. Finally, many idioms are grammatically un-analyzable.



20. How are idioms classified by structural criterion?
By structural criterion, idioms may be classified into three groups:
(1) Phrase idioms. All phrase idioms have a noun, verb, adjective, preposition or an adverb as the central word; they correspond to the familiar parts of speech, and are capable of a given syntactic function. In sentences. The phrase idioms are subdivided by grammatical function into verb phrase idioms, noun phrase idiom, adjmtive · phrase idiom, pirepositioml phrase
idioms. And adverbial phrase idioms.
(2)Clause idioms. These idioms are also called subject-less clause patterns.
(3) Sentence idioms. Sentence idioms are mainly proverbs or sayings and typical conversional expressions. 1hey may be in full or elliptical forms.



21. What are the sources of English idioms?
There are two main sources of English idioms: people's experience in life, and literary works.
Many English idiomatic expressions come from the everyday life of the English people, e.g.
to keep one’s shirt, to give somebody the cold shoulder, and to make (both) ends meet, etc.
Agricultural life, Nautical and military life, business life, student life are all rich sources of
English idioms. Me Bible is one of the chief sources from which idiomatic expressions have
sprung, e.g. a thorn in the flesh, to tum the other cheek, the apple one’s eye. after the Bible, Shakespeare's play are the richest literary source of English idioms, e.g. To flutter the dovecotes, to give the devil his due, to wear one's heart on one' sleeves etc. Many other idioms come from fables, myths. or legends, such as sour grapes, sweat lemon, the tion’s shar, etc.


22. What are the points that we must pay attention to in order to use idiomatic expressions appropriately?
In order to use idiomatic expressions appropriately. we must pay attention to the following points:
(1)Syntactic function. The syntactic function of a phrase idiom usually corresponds with its central word and/or components. However sometimes the syntactic function of a phrase idiom can vary. Besides, idioms may be identical in structure, yet different in syntactic function.Hence, in learning an idiomatical expression, one should first find out what grammatical category it belongs to,and then see how it functions in a sentence.
(2) Transformational restrictions. Transformation mainly involves a change of word order and voice of verb in a sentence. The word order of an idiom can be changed in some sentences. However,  the transformation of word order cannot be applied to every idiom. Similarly, some
verb phrase idioms may be used in the passive voice as well as in the active voice. But not all
verb phrase idioms can be passivized. information about transformational restrictions of certain
idiomatic expressions is of special importance to learners because they might modify sentence
structure in an unacceptable way, otherwise.
(3) collocative restrictions. some idioms have a wide range of collocates while some have a
limited choice. The non-native speaker should be aware of the limited choice of collocates of
certain idioms in order to avoid making unidiomatic sentences.
(4)structural variability. Idioms are structurally fixed, and as a rule one is not supposed to
change any element in an idiomatic expression. However a certain amount of alteration is
possible in some ways.
(5) Stylistic features. Most idioms are stylistically neutral, but quite a number of them belong to
informal spoken English. Stylistic features of idioms are constantly change. Only with the
knowledge of stylistic features of idioms can one use them appropriately and effectively.



23. Trace briefly the growth of American English.

The growth of American English can be divided into three stages: before independence, from
independence to the early nineteenth century, from the early nineteenth century to the present
time. Before independence, colonization by the British resulted in the settlement of large
numbers of English people in America. they brought with them the Elizabethan English and
made modifications and additions to it as they adapted to the new environment. From
independence to the early nineteenth century, the emergence of a sense of nationality led to
the argument for the recognition of the American variety or standard of English. The
American English had taken root and began to influence British English by the early 19'th
century. From the early nineteenth century, the divergence between American English and
British English has multiplied as the language develops simultaneously under different
situations. American English has become not only a variety or national standard of English in
its own right with its own peculiarity in spelling, pronunciation, grammatical usage and
vocabulary, but also the language which has most affected British English.



24. Wart main factors contribute to the ready acceptance of American words and phrases by British people?
(1) the two varieties of English are basically the same in phonetic and morphemic structure.
(2)American movies, popular songs, newspapers, magazines, novels, and radio and television programs are so popular in England that they serve as effective media through which the British people accept.



25. What are the characteristics of American English?
the characteristics of American English are marked by apparent contradictions : creativeness
in enriching the language versus conservativeness in preserving a number of archaic features;
the use of short and poignant expressions, including slang, versus fondness of big words,
heterogeneity manifested by heavy borrowings from other tongues versus relative uniformity
which is, in a sense, close to homogeneity, and the use of verbose style in official papers
versus plain language in popular writing.




26. What is the relationship between lexicology and the dictionary?
Lexicology is closely related to dictionaries in the following aspects :
(1)Lexicology is mainly concerned with the form, meaning, and usage of words and other
lexical unis, and dictionaries list these units and provide materials in connection with
(2) The principles of modem dictionary-making and the contents of each entry are based on
the findings of lexicology, while the materials provided in dictionaries are widely used by lexicologists in their research.
(3) The lexical information required by learners and users of a language is furnished by dictionaries.