英语词汇学复习题.doc

《英语词汇学》第一次作业参考答案 1. translation loans: Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal morpheme-for-morpheme translation. Examples are “land-reform”, “mutual-aid” team, “national bourgeoisie”, etc. 2. relative synonyms: Relative synonyms denote different shades of meaning or different degrees of a given quality, e.g. beautiful ― good-looking ― handsome ― pretty. 3. specialization of meaning: Specialization of meaning is a process whereby a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower sense, in which it is applicable only to some of the objects it had previously denoted, or a word of wide usage is restricted in its application and comes to be used only in a special sense. For example, “meat” originally meant food and drink in general but it presently means flesh of animal used as food. 4. elevation of meaning: Elevation of meaning is a process where by words rise from humble beginnings to positions of greater importance. For example, “marshal” originally meant horse servant and presently it means an officer of high rank in the army. 5. metonymy: Metonymy is one way of meaning transference whereby the name of one thing is changed for that of another, to which it is related by association of ideas. For example, when I say “I am reading Shakespeare (meaning Shakespeare’s works), I am using metonymy. 6. dialect: Dialect refers to a variety of a language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. For example, Shanghai dialect is spoken peculiarly in Shanghai but there’s no literary work peculiarly written in Shanghai dialect. 7. jargon: Jargon are terms peculiar to a class, sect, trade or profession. For example, when the chemist says “Chlorophyll makes food by photosynthesis.” he is talking jargon, which in plain language means “green leaves build up food with the help of light”. 8. conversion: Conversion is the word f