Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Development of the English vocabulary 7
1.1 The Indo-European Language Family 8
1.2 A Historical Overview of the English Vocabulary 10
1.2.1 Old English(450-1150) 12
1.2.2 Middle English(1150-1500) 15
1.2.3 Modern English(1500-up to now) 17
1.3 Growth of Present-day English Vocabulary 19
Chapter 2 Basic Concepts of Words and Vocabulary 21
2.1 What Is a Word 21
2.2 Sound and Meaning 23
2.3 Sound and Form 24
2.4 Vocabulary 26
2.5 Classification of Words 27
2.5.1 Basic Word Stock and Nonbasic Vocabulary 27
2.5.2 Content Words and Function Words 34
2.5.3 Native Words and Borrowed Words 35
Chapter 3 Origins of Words 39
3.1 Where English Words Come From 39
3.2 Words from the Old English 41
3.3 Words from Scandinavian 42
3.4 Words from French 43
3.5 Words from Latin and Greek 45
3.6 Words from Other Languages 46
Chapter 4 Word-formation Ⅰ 48
4.1 Morphemes 48
4.2 Allomorphs 49
4.3 Types of Morphemes 52
4.3.1 Free Morphemes 52
4.3.2 Bound Morphemes 52
4.4 Root and Stem 54
Chapter 5 Word-formation Ⅱ 56
5.1 Affixation 57
5.1.1 Prefixation 57
5.1.2 Suffixation 62
5.2 Compounding 64
5.2.1 Compounds and Phrases 65
5.2.2 Compounds in Word Classes 66
5.2.3 Compound Nouns 68
5.2.4 Compound Adjectives 69
5.3 Conversion 70
5.4 Back-formation 73
5.5 Blending 75
5.6 Clipping 76
5.7 Acronymy 77
Chapter 6 Word meaning and motivation 79
6.1 The Meanings of'Meaning' 79
6.1.1 Reference 79
6.1.2 Concept 80
6.1.3 Sense 81
6.2 Motivation 82
6.2.1 Onomatopoeic Motivation 83
6.2.2 Morphological Motivation 84
6.2.3 Semantic Motivation 84
6.2.4 Etymological Motivation 85
6.3 Types of Meaning 85
6.3.1 Grammatical Meaning and Lexical Meaning 86
6.3.2 Conceptual Meaning and Evaluative Meaning 87
Chapter 7 Sense Relations and Semantic Field 95
7.1 Synonymy 95
7.1.1 Definition of Synonyms 96
7.1.2 Types of Synonyms 97
7.2 Antonymy 98
7.3 Homonymy 100
7.4 Polysemy 102
7.5 Hyponymy 103
7.6 Semantic Field 104
Chapter 8 Changes in Word Meaning 107
8.1 Categories of Semantic Change 107
8.1.1 Generalization 108
8.1.2 Specialization 109
8.2 A Taxonomy of Semantic Change 109
8.2.1 Metonymy 110
8.2.2 Metaphorical Extension 111
8.2.3 Radiation 112
8.2.4 Contextual Specialization 113
8.2.5 Shift 113
8.2.6 Amelioration 115
8.2.7 Pejoration 116
8.3 Causes of Semantic Change 117
8.3.1 External History 117
8.3.2 Euphemism 118
8.3.3 Intensification 119
8.3.4 Collocation 120
Chapter 9 English Idioms 121
9.1 Idioms and Culture 121
9.2 Common Features of English Idioms 123
9.3 Classification of idioms 124
Chapter 10 English Dictionaries 130
10.1 Early English Dictionaries 131
10.1.1 The American Dictionaries of Webster and Others 131
10.1.2 Illustrative Examples and the Oxford Dictionaries 133
10.2 Notable Recent Dictionaries 134
10.3 Word Order 135
10.4 Coverage 136
10.5 Variations between Dictionaries 138
Glossary of Some Linguistic Terms 142
Bibliography 144