集美大学外国语学院词汇学的名词解释.doc

1. word A word may be defined as a fundamental unit of speech and minimum free form; with a unity of sound and meaning (both lexical and grammatical meaning), capable of performing a given syntactic function. Therefore, from the lexicological point of view, a word is a combination of form (phonological) and meaning (lexical and grammatical). In addition, a word acts as a structural unit of a sentence. 2. reference (P20) The relationship of reference holds between an expression and what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance. Reference depends on concrete utterances, not on abstract sentences. It is a property only of expressions and cannot relate single lexemes to extra-linguistic objects. Furthermore, reference is not generally applicable to single word forms and it is never applicable to single lexemes. 3.semantic field Semantic field is a term to refer to the phenomenon that vocabulary is an integrated system interrelated in sense and can be divided into semantically related sets or fields. Words in each semantic field define one another. A semantic field would be constituted by a group of words that are related by its meaning, which shares certain common or referential characteristics. 4.monolingual and bilingual dictionaries (P108) Monolingual dictionaries are those in which the language of the description is the same as the language being described. They give information about a language we already know and want to know better. Bilingual dictionaries give information about equivalences between two languages. A bilingual dictionary uses two different languages—one as the object of description and one as the instrument of description. We often use it when learning or translating a language we do not know well. 5.conversion Conversion is a word-formation whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another without the addition of an affix. It is also called zero derivation(零位派生). There are four major kinds of