Key to Test yourself Chapter 3

Key to Test yourself Chapter 3-4

I．Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement.

1-5： A B C B A 6-10： C D D A D 11-15: C C B D C 16-20: C A D C C 21-25: A B A A D

II. Complete the following statements with proper words or expressions according to your understanding of the course book.

1. zero derivation 2. alphabetisms 3. stress 4. onomatopoeic 5. word formation

6. scientific vocabulary; American English; New Englishes 7. Metanalysis

8. copulative; appositional 9. nominalizers 10. last element 11. grammatical category 12. Syntactically

III. What do these roots and affixes mean? Please choose the given definitions that best explain the them.

1. put 2. throw 3. send 4. carry 5. push 6. hold 7. twist 8. away 9. around 10. throughout

IV. Answer the following questions

1. Why did Midland become the chief ancestor of Modern English? There are several reasons:

1. The midland included London, which was then the capital of England, naturally the political,

economical and cultural center.

2. Two great writers Wycliff and Chaucer employed the Midland dialect in their writings.

3. Midland is an intermediate dialect, as its name implies, and intelligible to Northerners and

Southerners alike, whereas these speakers could not often understand each other using their own dialects respectively.

4. When Caxton introduced the printing press in 1477, the printers patronized the Midland

dialect, and any English man who wanted to be published had to write in that dialect.

2. What are the chief characteristics of English vocabulary during the different periods of English history?

Old English Period (450-1066)

First, the Anglo-Saxon preference for expressions that are synonymous, or nearly so, far exceeds that found in Modern English, as does their ingenuity in the construction of compounds like kennings.

Second, the absence of a wide-ranging vocabulary of loanwords also forces them to rely more on word-formation processes based on native elements.

Third, the later period of OLD English was characterized by the introduction of a number of “loan-translation”.

Fourth, grammatical relationships in Old English were expressed mainly by the use of inflectional

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endings.

Finally, Old English is believed to contain about 24,000 different lexical items. However, this lexicon is fundamentally different from the one that we find in Modern English, for example, Old English vocabulary was predominantly Germanic, which is no longer the case for Modern English.

The Middle English Period (1066-1500)

The Middle English period was marked by extensive changes that affected both grammar and vocabulary. In grammar, English changed from a highly inflected language to an analytical one. The English vocabulary was characterized by the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of thousands of words from French and Latin. The leveling of inflectional endings was due partly to phonetic changes and partly to the operation of analogy. The decay of inflections made it necessary to depend less on formal indication of gender, case and number, and to rely more on juxtaposition, word order, and the use of prepositions to make clear the relation of words in a sentence.

Middle English is particularly characterized by intensive and extensive borrowing from other languages. The process of word formation, such as compounding and affixation established in Old English continued to be used, and were extended in various ways. Modern English Period (1500-1800-present)

The advent of the printing revolution marked the beginning of Modern English Period. In this period, William Shakespeare introduced or popularized thousands of new words in the language through his works and the King James Bible of 1611 also exerted an important influence on the literacy level of the people in general. In addition to massive borrowing and the application of different types of word formation using native sources, there were also a great many semantic changes, as old words acquired new meanings and the language become increasingly more standard. The Industrial revolution started in Britain marked the beginning of Modern English period. During this time, a large part of the original inflectional system has disappeared. English has become an analytic language with most of its inflections lost. The rapid developments in modern science and technology in 20th century lead to an unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary; the rise of American English as a dominant variety of the language greatly enhanced the status of English as lingua franca and brought a new source of foreign elements to the language. With the independence of former British colonies and developing countries becoming more assertive political powers, in nations of the outer and expanding circles developed varieties known as “New Englishes”.

3. What are the criteria by which to differentiate compounds from free phrases? What do you think of these criteria?

The three criteria are 1. stress pattern, that is, stress in a compound falls on the first element but on the second in a free phrase;2. meaning, that is, the meanings of a compound is usually not the combination of the meaning of the component parts, but the free phrase is, e.g. hot line vs. hot potato;3. grammatical unity, that is, the different elements form a grammatical unit, which does not allow internal change, e.g. easy chair vs. easier chair.

However, every rule has exceptions. The same is true of he criteria. There are examples against each of the three rules.

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