英语词汇学复习 题

between linguistic symbols and their senses ?

Motivation explains the relationship between the linguistic symbol and its meaning, or the logical reason why a certain word has a certain meaning.

As mentioned earlier, the relationship between sound and meaning is arbitrary and conventional. Motivation seems to contradict the theory. The answer is ―yes and no‖. By ―yes‖, we mean all the mono-morphemic words in a language are non-motivated except a few onomatopoeic words which imitate the natural sounds or noises. By ―no‖, we mean many multi-morphemic words are motivated, for in many cases the meaning of the whole word is the combination of the morphemes. The morphemic structure explains the meaning.

5. What are the 4 types of motivation? Explain them with examples

The four types of motivation are onomatopoeic motivation, morphological motivation, semantic motivation and etymological motivation. Onomatopoeic motivation explains onomatopoeic words whose meaning is based on the pronunciation of the words such as miaow, thump, peng, etc. ; morphological motivation explains the words whose morphological structure throws light on their meaning, such as profiteer (profit+eer), darkroom (dark+room), deconstruction (de+construct+ion), etc. ; semantic motivation explains the figurative meaning of words whose literal meaning suggests the figurative meaning such as the tongue of fire, the mouth of the river, the face of the earth; etymological motivation explains the words whose meaning is closely related to their origins such as banting(therapy for keeping slim by going on a diet discovered by Doctor Banting) and Brille(language used by the blind created by Brille).

6. apes-gibber birds-sing/twitter cattle-low crickets-chirp doves-coo foxes-yelp

geese-gabble sheep-bleat wolves-howl monkeys-chatter pigs- grunt hyenas-laugh turkeys-gobble swans-cry 7. What is the difference between grammatical meaning and lexical meaning?

Grammatical meaning refers to the part of meaning which shows grammatical relationship such as part of speech of words, plural forms of nouns, tense of verbs, etc. and lexical meaning includes all the rest of the meanings of a word apart from the grammatical meaning, i.e. conceptual meaning and associative meaning.

8. What ar ethe characteristics of conceptual meaning and associative meaning?

Conceptual meaning is fundamental, universal and stable whereas associative meaning is secondary, contextual, open-ended or indeterminate, thus changing.

9. What connotations do you think we word atomic might have for each of the following people ?

a. A scientist working in a project to develop industrial uses for nuclear power might have all the positive associations with atomic, such as ―benefit‖, ―energy‖, etc.

b. A Japanese resident of Hiroshima, victim of the atomic explosion at the end of World War Ⅱ, might have all the negative associations with atomic, such as ―suffering‖, ―killing‖, ―death‖, ―horror‖, etc.

c. To a student of nuclear physics, atomic might be associated with ―mystery‖, ―science‖, ―knowledge‖, etc. 10. talkative: implying a fondness for talking frequently and at length (neutral) articulate: expressing oneself easily and clearly (positive) gossip: indulging in idle talk or rumours about others (negative) rambling: talking aimlessly without connection of ideas (negative) fluent: speaking easily, smoothly and expressively (positive)

gabby: inclined to chatter (negative)

mouthy: overtly talkative, especially in a rude way (negative)

11.

No Appreciative Neutral Pejorative

a. particular fastidious/fussy b. critical fault-finding/picky

c. vogue/style fad d. artful cunning/sly e. unstable fickle/capricious f. developing backward/underdeveloped g. encourage/promote instigate h. group clique/gang 12. What are semantic features?

Semantic features are the minimal semantic components of words which are abstracted from the words, These features are used to describe te sense of each words.

13. What are the merits and demerits of componential analysis?

Componential analysis (CA) is useful mainly in three aspects. First, CA reveals the semantic features of the sense of a word and helps one grasp the conceptual meaning of the word. Second, CA can help show the synonymy of two words by giving them both the same components. Third, CA can help tell whether a collocation or syntactic structure is acceptable or not.

However, problems are obvious. First, CA is applicable only to concrete words which have definite referents, but not to abstract

words or words expressing abstract ideas or concepts. Second, CA is useful in revealing the conceptual meaning, but helpless in showing the figurative meaning of words.

14. bull [-HUMAN+MALE+ADULT+BOVINE] cow [-HUMAN-MALE+ADULT+BOVINE] calf [-HUMAN±MALE-ADULT+BOVINE] rooster[-HUMAN+MALE+ADULT+GALLINE] hen [-HUMAN-MALE+ADULT+GALLINE]

chicken[-HUMAN±MALE±ADULT+GALLINE] Key to Chapter 6 Polysemy

1. What is polysemy ? Polysemy is a sense of relation that deals with words of more than one meaning. It is the result of semantic change.

2. When a word is created ,it is monosemous . Then how does the word acquire its new meanings and become polysemous ? Illustrate your point with examples

Take neck for example. It has five senses：（1）that part of a man or animal joining the head to the body；（2）that part of the garment；（3）the neck of an animal used as food；（4）a narrow part between the head and body or base of any object；（5）the narrowest part of anything. Of these five meanings，（1）is the meaning given to the word when it was created and all the rest were derived later in the process of development.

3. What is the fundamental difference between radiation and concatenation?

A word develops its meaning through the process of either radiation or concatenation, and in many cases, of both.

Radiation is a semantic process which shows that the primary meaning and each of the derived meanings are directly connected. Concatenation is a semantic process which shows that the primary meaning gives birth to a second meaning and this second meaning in turn gives birth to a third meaning and so on. Each of the derived meaning is related only to the previous meaning and there is no direct connection between the primary meaning to the latest developed meaning.

4. The word board developed mainly through the process of concatenation but radiation also performed. It first denoted ―a table‖ and later acquired two very divergent senses. Each of them has given rise to another sense from which the Original notion has

disappeared as illustrated in the diagraph below.

Homonymy

1What are the 3 types of homonyms ? Define each type with examples

Homonyms fall into three types: (1) perfect homonyms. (2) homographs and (3) homophones. Homonyms of type (1) are words with the same spelling and pronunciation, e.g. bank （银行）-----bank(岸) ;words of type (2) are bow/???（/n.弓）---bow/???/(ν.鞠躬);those of type (3) are found /?????/(?.)-- found /?????/(past form of find ), ad/??/--add/??/ and so on.

2. How do homonyms come about? Specify the major sources

English homonyms came about mainly (1) by change in sound and spelling, i.e. words originally different in sound and spelling later coincided in sound and spelling through change (2) by borrowing, i.e. a native word forming homonyms with a borrowed word; (3)by shortening , i.e. a common word forming homonyms with a form shortened from another word.

3. We can distinguish polysemants from homonyms by reference to the source and semantic relatedness. A polysemant has a single source whereas homonyms come from two different sources. A polysemant has different meanings which are related to one another while the meanings of the homonyms are not related at all.

4. (1) Make both ends meat is a parody of make both ends meet which means ―have enough money for one’s needs‖. Here the butcher cleverly uses the pair of homonyms meat and meet to make a pun. It makes a proper answer to the lady’s question.

1) Butchers cannot make both ends meat (make sausages with all meat) because they cannot make both ends meet (If they made sausages with all meat, which is more costly, they would not earn enough money to survive)

2) Don’t complain. I am not the only one who is making sausages with bread. All the butchers do the same.

(2) Swallow is a bird who is seen in summer. But by one swallow we see, we cannot deduce that it is already summer time. Swallow can also mean a mouthful of wine. On a cold winter day, if one has a swallow of wine, one may feel warm.

(3) Arms has two meanings: 1) weapons; 2) the human upper limbs. Since ―a cannon-ball took off his legs‖, the soldier was not able to fight on, so he ―laid down his arms‖, which means ―surrender‖. It can also mean he laid down his upper limbs. Synonymy

1. How do you understand the statement that 'true synonymy is non-existent'?

Synonyms are the same in meaning. As mentioned before, meaning is a composite concept; there are different kinds of meaning. Even absolute synonyms may differ in one or more aspects, for example, one word may be more frequently used than the other such as word-building—word-formation, compounding—composition. The two words of each pair are interchangeable, but some people prefer the first word of the pair and others like the other. In this sense, we can say there is no true synonymy in a natural language.

2. What are the major sources of english synonyms?

Synonyms come from different sources, namely, (1) borrowing, i.e. native words forming synonyms with borrowed words or one foreign word becoming synonymous with another foreign word; (2) figurative and euphemistic use of words, i. e. some words forming synonyms with other words used figuratively or euphemistically, etc.

3. avaricious: greedy courteously: politely emancipate:set free customary: usual Width :breadth adversary: opponent gullible:deceived remainder: residue innocent: sinless Obstacle ;obstruction Vexation; annoyance 4differentiate the following groups of synonyms

a. cautious: implying a careful guard against possible dangers or risks

careful: paying close attention so as to guard against error, injury etc .

shrewd: showing good judgment gained from practical experience (not synonymous with the other two)

b: calm free from excitement or nervous activity or strong felling peaceful: quite and calm

serene: completely calm and peaceful c. decline: implying a polite denial

refuse: a more direct, even blunt term implying an emphatic denial

object: feel or show opposition or disapproval ( not synonymous with the other two) d. postpone: arrange for an event to take place for a later time

adjourn (often passive) stop a meeting or a official process for a period of time, especially in a court of law

delay: put off to a later time, interchangeable with postpone

e. powerful :( of people) able to control or influence people or event influential: having a lot of influence on sb or sth f. boy: a male child or young male person

youth: (often derogatory)a young man ;a young people ,male or female lad: (old fashioned or informal)a boy or a young man g. bachelor；a man who has never married

widower: a man whose wife has died and not married again man: an adult man

h. zealous: ( formal, usually imperative) showing great energy and enthusiasm eager: felling or showing great desire; keen enthusiastic: showing lively interest

i. fear: anxiety or distress caused by the awareness of danger or expectation of pain horror: great fear or disgust panic: a sudden feeling of great fear

j. summary: a short account outlining the main points précis: (French borrowing) a summary

digest: a summary or shortened version; a collection of short reports k. abuse: rude or insulting words said to or about sb; bad or cruel treatment insult: a rude or offensive remark

slander: a false statement intended to damage sb. l. amend: make changes in a rule or law

rectify: (formal) put right something that is wrong