词汇学复习资料.doc

1. What is the publicly accepted definition of a word?     
(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 , we can say that ‘a word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function’.
2. What accounts for the differences between sound and form?   
four major reasons. The internal reason for this is that there are more phonemes than letters in English. Another reason is that the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling. The third reason is that some of the differences were created by the early scribes. The fourth reason is borrowing.
3. What is the relationship between sound and meaning? Give examples to illustrate it.
The relationship between sound and meaning is almost always arbitrary and conventional, and there is no logical relationship between sound and meaning. The same concept can be represented by different sounds in different languages. For example, ‘woman’ es ‘Frau’ in German and ‘femme’ in French. On the other hand, the same sound /mi:t/ is used to mean ‘meat’, ‘meet’, and ‘mete’.
4. How are English words classified?
English words can be classified by different criteria and for different purposes. They may fall into the basic word stock and nonbasic vocabulary by use frequency, into content words and functional wor