第三章 英语词汇学.ppt

Chapter 3 Word Formation Ⅰ It seems to be generally agreed that a word is the smallest unit of a language that stands alone to communicate meaning. However, structurally, a word is not the smallest unit because many word can be separated into even smaller meaningful unit. What is the smallest unit of a language? 3.1 Morphemes 1. Morpheme —— A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. （The smallest functional unit in the composition of words.） 词素是最小的有意义的语言单位。（最小的功能单位） 比较：a word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function. 3.2 Allomorphs 2. Morph—— A morpheme must be realized by discrete units. These actual spoken minimal carriers of meaning are morphs. 词素（形位）是个抽象单位，形素是实际说出来的最小的意义携带体。 3. Monomorphenic words 单语素词——morphemes are realized by single morphs. e.g. bird, tree, sad, want…… 4. Allomorph——Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph according to their position. Such alternative morphs are allomorphs. 词素变体——有些词素根据他们在词中的位置不同可以有一个以上的不同形素实现，这些不同的形素叫词素变体。 E.g. the morpheme of plurality “-s” has a number if allomorphs in different sound context， e.g. in cats /s/， in bags /z/， in matches /iz/. 3.3 Types of Morphemes morpheme Free morpheme =free root Bound morpheme Bound root Affix Derivational Inflectional Prefix Suffix 3.3.1 Free morphemes 5. Free morphemes or Free root —— The morphemes have complete meaning and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. 自由词素（或者自由根词）本身具有完整的意义，在句子中可以用作自由语法单位。 e.g. cat, walk. They are identical with root words, morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free. 3.3.2 Bound morphemes 6. Bound Morphemes —— The morphemes cannot occur as separate words. They are bound to other morphemes to form words. Bound morphemes are found in derived words. 粘附词素——它们主要粘附在别的词素上才能构成词。粘附词素主要出现在派生词里。 e.g. recollection （re + collect + ion） collect – free morpheme re-and –ion are bound morphemes