Chapter One
A GENERAL SURVEY OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY
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Outline
1.1 An overview of English vocabulary 1.2 Development of English vocabulary 1.3 Classification of English vocabulary Summary
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1.1 An overview of English vocabulary
• What is a word?
– The minimal free form of a language, which has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function.
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1.2 Development of English vocabulary
• The World Languages
– It is estimated that there are about 5000 languages all over the world, which can be grouped into about 300 language families, such as Sino-Tibetan Family, IndoEuropean Family, Altaic Family, and so on.
sБайду номын сангаасntences clauses phrases words morphemes
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• All the words in a language together constitute what is known as its vocabulary.
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Lexicology: What is lexicology?
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1.2.1 Historical development of English vocabulary
• The history of the English language is divided into three periods. – Old English (449-1100) – Middle English (1100-1500) – Modern English (1500-present)
lexicology
lexic-
-ology
Lexicon lexis
vocabulary
eg. biology psychology …
Briefly, it is the “science of the word”, and a branch of linguistics dealing with vocabulary of a language.
• Words are formed by morphemes
– Bloomfield distinguishes between two types of linguistic forms: free form and bound form ( 自由形位 和粘附形位）
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• The term word refers to the fundamental unit of a given language, with sound and meaning( lexical and grammatical) , capable of performing a given syntactic function(句 法功能)(a word acts as a structural unit of a sentence).
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• The Old English (450-1100)
– 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. The language they spoke was Anglo-Saxon, which replaced the Celtic spoken by the former inhabitants Celts.
study the lexis in a special language
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Notes: lexis
• “词汇学” 可以定义为 “对某一种语言的词汇 (lexis)的研究” 。
• “词汇” 在英语里可以用vocabulary、 lexis和 lexicon来表示 ,三个术语大致上是同义的 ,但是 ,vocabulary比较口语化、lexicon比较学术化、 而 lexis界乎两者之间。(汪榕培)
– The vocabulary of the Old English consisted mainly of Anglo-Saxon words, 85% of which was no longer in use now.
– Old English was rather different from Modern English in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
– Chinese is a member in the Sino-Tibetan Family, while English is a member in the Indo-European Family.
• the criteria to divide language families ?
– 1. the basis of similarities in their basic word stock – 2. grammar
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Lexicology
the study of the lexis in human language
(Howard Jackson & Etienne Zė 2001, 陆国强 1999， et.al)
general lexicology & special lexicology
study the universal principles