英语词汇学(全).ppt

But some obsolete words may be still used at the present time: A. obsolete words survived in some fixed phrases or idioms: such as, Many a little makes a michle (large amount) B. some obsolete words survive but different from it original meaning, such as, trident三叉戟：海神尼普顿或波塞冬手持的有三尖头的矛杖—三角叉, armour铠甲--装甲; 防具 albeit (all be it, though). Causes of Semantic Change： 1.Historical cause：It refers that a word retrains its original form,but its meaning has changed because the object which it denotes has changed. e.g. car means two-wheeled from Latin, now it means a modern transport. 2. Social cause：It refers that change in word meaning resulting from a constant verbal transfer between common words and various technical words. e.g. feeback originally is an electricity word, now changed to a common word means respond. 3. Foreign influences：It refers that the influences of foreign words cause the word meaning changed. e.g. pig means a kind of animal and its meat orginally, but after the Norman conquest, this word means a kind of animal only, pork is used to mean its meat. 4. Linguistic cause： 1）Towards ellipsis（向前省略）：It often occurs in habitual collocations, such as adjective +noun, or attributive noun+noun, in which the noun is often deleted and only the first element is left, but retaining the sense of the whole phrase. e.g. daily --daily newspaper; double—double room. 2）Towards analogy（向前类推）：New meanings developed in a part of speech are passed on to other parts of speech from the same lexical base. e.g. fruition originally from a Latin word fruitio means enjoyment, now it means fulfilment of （plans, desires, results, aims, etc）, possibly from connection with the word fruit. 5. Psychological cause： 1）Euphemism（委婉词）：It refers that the word changed after people use mild, agreeable language when speaking of an unpleasant or embarrasing fact and of taboo subjects as sex and the excretive processes of the boby. Such as death can be used as go west‘, barber