Chapter 2 he development of the English Vocabulary.doc

Lexicology: is a branch of linguistics, inquiring into the origins and meanings of words. ? The Nature and Scope of English lexicology： English lexicology aims at investigating and studying the morphological structures of English words and word equivalents, their semantic structures, relations, historical development, formation and usages. ? The subjects that English Lexicology correlated with and extent to： English Lexicology is correlated with such linguistic disciplines as morphology(形态学), semantics(语义学), etymology(词源学),stylistics（文体论） and? lexicography(词典学) ? The reason for a student to study English lexicology： According to the textbook, English Lexicology will definitely be beneficial for students of English. A good knowledge of morphological structures of English words and rules of word-formation will help learners develop their personal vocabulary and consciously increase their word power. The information of the historical development and the principles of classification will give them a deeper understanding of word-meaning and enable them to organize, classify and store words more effectively. The understanding and their sense relations will gradually raise their awareness of meaning and usage, and enable them use words more accurately and appropriately. A working knowledge of dictionaries will improve their skills of using reference books and raise their problem-solving ability and efficiency of individual study. ? Chapter 1--Basic concepts of words and vocabulary Word: A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. (1)a minimal free form of a language (2)a sound unity (3)a unit of meaning (4)a form that can function alone in a sentence sound and meaning: almost arbitrary, “no logical relationship between the sound which stands for a thing or an idea and the actual thing and idea itself” sound and form: the sound should be similar to the form ? Vocabulary: all the words in a language make up its vocab