第一章

1. Word —— A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function.

2. There is no logical relationship between sound and meaning as the symbolic connection between them is arbitrary and conventional. E.g. ―woman‖ means ’Frau’ in German，’Femme’ in French and ’Funv ’in Chinese. On the other hand，the same sound /rait/ can mean right，rite and write，though denoting different things，yet have the same sound.

3. The difference between sound and form result from 4 major factors.

（At least 80%of the English words fit consistent spelling patterns）

a）. the internal reason is English alphabet does not have a separate letter to represent each sound in the language.

b）. Pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling

c）. Influence of the work of scribes/printing freezes the spelling of words in 1500

d）. Borrowing of foreign language

4. Vocabulary —— Vocabulary is most commonly used to refer to the sum total of all the words of a language. It can also refer to all the words of a given dialect， a given book， a given subject and all the words possessed by an individual person as well as all the words current in a particular period of time in history.

The general estimate of the present day English vocabulary is over 1 million words.

5.Classification of Words—by use frequency，by notion，by origin

1）. Basic word stock – the foundation of the vocabulary.

1. all national character （most important）– natural phenomena

most common things and phenomena of the human body and relations

world around us names of plants and animals

action，size，domain，state

numerals，pronouns，prep. ，conj.

2. stability – they donate the commonest thing necessary to life，they are like to remain unchanged. Only relative，some are undergoing some changes. But the change is slow.

e.g. arrow，bow，chariot，knight – past

electricity，machine，car，plane —— now