83Motivation.pptVIP

Chapter 3 Motivation Definition: P312 Motivation deals with the connection between name and sense. Motivation accounts for the connection between the linguistic symbol/word form and its meaning. Two points of view about the relation between sound and meaning of a word: (Chapter One) Generally speaking, people hold that the relationship between the word-form and meaning is conventional and arbitrary. There is no way to explain why this or that sound-symbol has this or that meaning beyond the fact that the people of a given community have agreed to use one to designate the other. So most words can be said to be non-motivated. Nevertheless, English does have words the meanings of which are transparent and reasonably explicable. Words made up of derivational affixes are morphologically motivated, for a direct connection can be observed between the morphemic structures of the words and their meanings. E.g. read+-able→ eatable (the base-word read and the suffix -able are themselves conventional.) Compound words may be morphologically motivated, too. The meanings of words like good-looking, headache, daydream and many others can be obtained from the combined meaning of the component parts (the component parts of these compounds are conventional). However, not all compounds are motivated; we can not infer the meanings of words like bigwig (要人), egghead(有知识者), and Indian summer (A period of mild weather occurring in late autumn.小阳春) from their component parts. Three main types of motivation: Onomatopoeic motivation (拟声理据) Semantic motivation (语义理据) Logical motivation (逻辑理据) I. Onomatopoeic motivation In modern English one may find some words whose phonetic forms suggest their meanings as the words were created by imitating the natural sounds or noises. All the words based on the sounds made by birds, animals, insects and so on belong to the category. P60 1. Primary onomatopoeia (基本拟声) Primary onomatopoeia means the