英语词汇学系列讲座（英）

　　Chapter 2

　　The Development of the English Vocabulary

　　1．The Indo-European Language Family

　　2．A Historical Overview of the English Vocabulary

　　1） Three Historical Periods of English Development

　　（1） Old English （450-1150）

　　The beginning of Old English is marked by the arrival of the Germanic tribes called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. People generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as Old English.Old English is a highly inflected language. In this period, many latin words and Scandinavian words came into the English language.

　　（2）Middle English （1150-1500）

　　Middle English period began with the Norman conquest. In this period, many words of French and Dutch origins were borrowed into English. Middle English was charaterized by its losses of many inflectional endings so that it was a language of levelled endings.

　　（3）Modern English（1500-Now）

　　Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. Because of the influence of the Renaissance Movement, many words of Latin and Greek origins, etc came into English. Also because of the fast development in science and technology, many new words were created. Though borrowing remained an important means of English vocabulary expansion, yet more words were created through word formation

　　3．Growth of Present-day English Vocabulary

　　1）Major Causes of Present-day English Vocabulary Expansion

　　（1） the rapid development of modern science and technology

　　（2）the social, economic and political changes

　　（3）the influence of other cultures and languages

　　4．Modes of Vocabulary Development

　　1） creation: It refers to the use of existing materials such

　　as the word-forming stems to create new words.

　　2） semantic change: It means that an old form picks up a new

　　meaning.

　　3）borrowing: It means borrowing words from other languages.

　　Chapter 3

　　Word Formation I

　　1．Morphemes

　　Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of a language.

　　2．Allomorphs

　　Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph. Such alternative morphs of a morpheme are called allomorphs.

　　3．Types of Morphemes

　　1） Free Morphemes

　　Free morphemes are those which usually have complete meanings in themselves and can be used freely or independently as words.

　　2） Bound Morphemes

　　Bound morphemes have to be bound with other morphemes to form words and can not be used independently as words.

　　3） Free Roots

　　Free roots are free morphemes. They are identical with root words.

　　4）Bound Roots

　　A bound root, like a free root, is that part of the word that carries the fundamental meaning of a word, but unlike a free root, it is a bound form and has to be bound with other morphemes to form words.

　　5）Affixes

　　Affixes are forms that are attached to stems to modify meaning or function. Almost all the affixes are bound.

　　6）Inflectional Affixes

　　An inflectional affix is one attached to the end of a word to convey grammatical meaning or grammatical relation, such as tense, case, number, comparative or superlative degree, etc.

　　7）Derivational Affixes

　　A derivational affix is one that is added to the beginning or the end of a word in order to create a new word. Derivational affixes can be divided into prefixes and suffixes.

　　8）Prefixes

　　Prefixes are the morphemes that occur at the beginning of a word. They modify the meaning of a stem, but usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.

　　9）Suffixes

　　Suffixes occur at the end of stems. Though they can modify the meanings of the original words, their chief function is to change the parts of speech of words.

　　4．Root and Stem

　　1） Root

　　A root is the basic form of a word which can not be further analysed without total loss of identity. It carries the main component of the meaning of a word. It can also be defined as that part of a word which remains after all the inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed.

　　2） Stem

　　A stem can be defined as a any form to which an affix can be added.