英语构词 | 历史形态与演变机制

注：本文为 “英语构词” 相关合辑。 英文引文，机翻未校。 如有内容异常，请看原文。

A Brief History of English, with Chronology

英语简史及年表

by Suzanne Kemmer © 2001-2005 作者：苏珊娜·凯默 © 2001-2005

The English language is a West-Germanic language which originated in England and has since spread throughout the British Isles and into various regions where Britain held overseas colonies. English is the third most popular world language, as measured by the number of native speakers, which was around 402 million in 2002. It is also the most popular non-native acquired language in the world, as the cultural, economic, military, political and scientific importance of the United States of America and the United Kingdom for the last two centuries has given English pre-eminent status as a language of international communication. 英语属于西日耳曼语支，起源于英格兰，此后扩散至整个不列颠群岛，并传播到英国海外殖民的各个地区。以母语者数量计算，英语是世界第三大语言，2002 年约有 4.02 亿母语者。它也是世界上最受欢迎的第二语言，过去两个世纪中，美国与英国在文化、经济、军事、政治和科学领域的重要地位，使英语成为国际交流中地位突出的语言。

This website is a resource for those who want to learn more about this fascinating language – its history as a language, the origins of its words, and its current modern characteristics. 本网站为希望深入了解这门魅力语言的人提供资料——包括其语言发展史、词汇起源以及现代特征。

The language we call English was first brought to the north sea coasts of England in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., by seafaring people from Denmark and the northwestern coasts of present-day Germany and the Netherlands. These immigrants spoke a cluster of related dialects falling within the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Their language began to develop its own distinctive features in isolation from the continental Germanic languages, and by 600 A.D. had developed into what we call Old English or Anglo-Saxon, covering the territory of most of modern England. 我们所称的英语，最早于公元 5—6 世纪由来自丹麦、今德国西北部及荷兰的航海族群带到英格兰北海沿岸。这些移民使用一组属于印欧语系日耳曼语支的亲属方言。他们的语言在与大陆日耳曼语隔绝的环境中逐渐形成自身特征，到公元 600 年发展为我们所说的古英语（盎格鲁‑撒克逊语），覆盖现代英格兰大部分地区。

New waves of Germanic invaders and settlers came from Norway and Denmark starting in the late 8th century. The more violent of these were known as Vikings, sea-faring plunderers who retained their ancient pagan gods and attacked settlements and churches for gold and silver. They spoke a northern Germanic dialect similar to, yet different in grammar from Anglo-Saxon. In the 11th century, the attacks became organized, state-sponsored military invasions and England was even ruled for a time by the kings of Denmark and Norway. The Scandinavian influence on the language was strongest in the north and lasted for a full 600 years, although English seems to have been adopted by the settlers fairly early on. 8 世纪末开始，来自挪威和丹麦的日耳曼入侵者与定居者形成新一波浪潮。其中更为凶悍的被称为维京人，他们是信奉古老异教神祇的海上劫掠者，为金银劫掠定居点与教堂。他们使用北日耳曼方言，与盎格鲁‑撒克逊语相近但语法不同。11 世纪，袭击演变为有组织、国家支持的军事入侵，英格兰一度由丹麦与挪威国王统治。斯堪的纳维亚对语言的影响在北部最为强烈，持续整整 600 年，尽管定居者似乎很早就接受了英语。

The Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 was a cataclysmic event that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and linguistic influences to the British Isles. The Norman French ruling minority dominated the church, government, legal, and educational systems for three centuries. The Norman establishment used French and Latin, leaving English as the language of the illiterate and powerless majority. During this period English adopted thousands of words from Norman French and from Latin, and its grammar changed rather radically. By the end of that time, however, the aristocracy had adopted English as their language and the use and importance of French gradually faded. The period from the Conquest to the reemergence of English as a full-fledged literary language is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late 1300s. 1066 年诺曼入侵与征服是一场巨变，为不列颠群岛带来新统治者与新的文化、社会、语言影响。讲诺曼法语的统治少数群体掌控教会、政府、法律与教育体系长达三个世纪。诺曼上层使用法语与拉丁语，英语成为文盲与无权多数群体的语言。这一时期英语从诺曼法语与拉丁语中吸收数千词汇，语法发生相当大的变化。但到末期，贵族阶层转而使用英语，法语的使用与重要性逐渐消退。从征服到英语重新成为成熟文学语言的这段时期被称为中古英语。杰弗里·乔叟在 14 世纪末用中古英语创作了代表作《坎特伯雷故事集》。

William Caxton set up the first printing press in Britain at the end of the 15th century. The arrival of printing marks the point at which the language began to take the first steps toward standardization and its eventual role as a national language. The period from 1500 to about 1650 is called Early Modern English, a period during which notable sound changes, syntactic changes and lexical enrichment took place. The Great English Vowel Shift, which systematically shifted the phonetic values of all the long vowels in English, occurred during this period. Word order became more fixed in a subject-verb-object pattern, and English developed a complex auxiliary verb system. A rush of new vocabulary from the classical languages, the modern European languages, and more distant trading partners such as the countries of Asian minor and the Middle East entered the language as the renaissance influences of culture and trade and the emerging scientific community of Europe took root in England. 15 世纪末，威廉·卡克斯顿在英国建立第一座印刷所。印刷术的到来标志着语言开始迈向标准化，并最终成为民族语言。1500 年至约 1650 年被称为早期现代英语，这一时期发生了显著的语音、句法变化与词汇扩充。英语元音大转移（系统改变所有长元音音值）发生在这一时期。语序基本固定为主谓宾结构，英语发展出复杂的助动词系统。随着文艺复兴文化、贸易影响与欧洲新兴科学界在英格兰扎根，大量来自古典语言、现代欧洲语言以及小亚细亚、中东等更远贸易伙伴的新词进入英语。

Shakespeare wrote prolifically during the late 1500s and early 1600s and, like Chaucer, took the language into new and creative literary territory. His influence on English drama and poetry continued to grow after his death in 1616 and he has never been surpassed as the best known and most read poet/playwright of modern English. 莎士比亚在 16 世纪末至 17 世纪初创作颇丰，与乔叟一样，将语言带入全新的创造性文学领域。1616 年去世后，他对英语戏剧与诗歌的影响持续扩大，作为现代英语中最知名、读者最多的诗人与剧作家，至今无人超越。

The King James Bible was published in 1611, the culmination of at least a century of efforts to bring a Bible written in the native language of the people into the Church establishment and into people’s homes. Among the common people, whose contact with literature often did not go far past the Bible, the language of the scriptures as presented in this version commissioned by King James I was deeply influential, due in part to its religious significance, but also to its literary quality. Its simple style and use of native vocabulary had a surpassing beauty that still resonates today. 1611 年《钦定版圣经》出版，这是至少一个世纪以来将母语圣经引入教会与家庭的努力顶峰。对多数平民而言，接触文学往往仅限于圣经，由詹姆斯一世下令编纂的这一版经文语言影响深远，部分源于其宗教意义，也源于其文学品质。其简洁风格与本土词汇的运用具有极高美感，至今仍具感染力。

By the 1700s almost all of the modern syntactic patterns of English were in place and the language is easily readable by modern speakers. Colonization of new territories by the newly united Kingdom of Great Britain spread English to the far corners of the globe and brought cargoes of still more loanwords from those far-flung places. At this point English began to develop its major world dialectal varieties, some of which would develop into national standards for newly independent colonies. By the 21st century, as the language of international business, science, and popular culture, English has become the most important language on the planet. 到 18 世纪，英语几乎所有现代句法模式已定型，现代英语使用者可轻松阅读。新统一的大不列颠王国对新领土的殖民将英语传播到全球各地，并从遥远地区吸收大量借词。此时英语开始形成主要的世界方言变体，其中一些后来成为新独立殖民地的民族标准语。到 21 世纪，作为国际商务、科学与流行文化的语言，英语已成为世界上最重要的语言。

Pre-English Period (before 600 AD)

前英语时期（公元 600 年之前）

Old English Period (ca. 600-1100)

古英语时期（约 600—1100 年）

Middle English Period (ca. 1100-1500)

中古英语时期（约 1100—1500 年）

Modern English Period (ca. 1500-present)

现代英语时期（约 1500 年至今）

Terms and Definitions

术语与定义

LING 216 is about the systematic study of words in English. Such systematic study relies on a body of knowledge and concepts that are well established in the field of Linguistics. Although the course is not designed to teach the field of Linguistics, we need to rely on the terminology and associated concepts established in Linguistics to a certain extent, especially in the parts of the course dealing with word structure and analysis. LING 216 这门课程是对英语词汇的系统性研究。这类系统性研究依托语言学领域中已成熟的知识体系与概念。本课程并非讲授语言学整体领域，但在一定程度上仍需使用语言学中确立的术语及相关概念，尤其是在词汇结构与词汇分析部分。

There is a glossary in our textbook that starts on page 277. I decided to give my own definitions for many of the concepts because some of the book’s definitions are a little overly technical in my opinion, and there is more space out here on the web to explain and to give examples. You can use both glossaries, or whichever you find most helpful. Mine is less complete than the book’s. I am gradually adding more definitions. 我们的教材从第 277 页开始设有词汇表。我决定为很多概念给出我自己的定义，因为在我看来教材中的部分定义过于专业，而网络平台有更多空间进行解释和举例。你可以同时使用两份词汇表，或选择对你更有帮助的一份。我的这份不如教材完整，我会逐步补充更多定义。

So, the definitions below are designed to help with the acquisition of the concepts that the course introduces. I will not ask you to define the technical concepts yourself in the exams; but I may ask you to recognize the correct definition in a multiple choice type question. The most important thing is to understand the concept: recognize examples of it, reason about how concepts relate (e.g. morpheme and allomorph; root and affix), and recognize true vs. false statements about the concepts. 因此，以下定义用于帮助掌握课程所介绍的概念。考试中我不会要求你自行定义专业概念，但可能会以选择题形式让你识别正确定义。基础是理解概念：能识别对应例子，能分析概念间的关系（如语素与变体语素、词根与词缀），能判断关于概念表述的正误。

initialism. A word formation process in which the first letters of a phrase, often a title, are strung together and formed into a new word. Initialisms may be pronounced as a sequence of letters, as in FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) or BYOB (Bring Your Own Booze); or they may be pronounced as an ordinary word by the rules of English spelling, in which case they are acronyms (as in radar; see under acronym). Initialisms are the result of a shortening process turning phrases into words. Unlike abbreviations, they are not just shortenings of a written form that still has its full pronunciation (like cont. for ‘continued’). The pronunciation is actually shorter than the phrase. 首字母缩写词。 一种构词方式，将短语（常为名称）的首字母串联构成新词。首字母缩写可按字母序列发音，如 FBI（Federal Bureau of Investigation）、BYOB（Bring Your Own Booze）；也可按英语拼写规则读作普通单词，这类称为首字母拼音词（如 radar，参见 acronym）。首字母缩写是短语缩略成词的结果。与普通缩写不同，它们不只是书写形式的缩短但仍保留完整发音（如 cont. 表示 continued），其发音本身就短于原短语。

acronym. A word formation process in which the first letters (sometimes the first few letters) of the words in a phrase are extracted and put together to form a word, pronounced as a word by the usual rules of English spelling, with the same meaning as the original phrase. Acronyms provide a way of shortening phrases into words. Our book classifies acronyms as a subtype of initialism. Examples: radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging), snafu (Situation Normal All Fucked Up), and sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging). 首字母拼音词。 一种构词方式，提取短语中单词的首字母（有时为前几个字母）组合成词，按常规英语拼写规则发音，含义与原短语一致。首字母拼音词提供了将短语缩略为单词的方式。教材将其归为首字母缩写词的子类。例：radar（RAdio Detection And Ranging）、snafu（Situation Normal All Fucked Up）、sonar（SOund Navigation And Ranging）。

blend. A new word formed by joining the start of one word with the end of another. Example: Dunkretaries ‘Duncan secretaries’, formed from Duncan and secretaries. 混合词。 将一个词的开头与另一个词的结尾拼接而成的新词。例：Dunkretaries（Duncan 秘书），由 Duncan 与 secretaries 混合构成。

clipping. Another word formation process that shortens words. In this case, a longer word is made into a shorter one by dropping off part of the original word. Info, exam are examples. Sometimes people’s names are clipped to form nicknames, e.g. Jen from Jennifer. (Nicknames like Bill in which a different sound is substituted for one of the consonants are not technically clippings; but they are often historically old clippings based on baby talk/sound simplifications and/or old pronunciations, e.g. Bill; Dick for Richard.) 截短词。 另一种缩略构词方式，通过删去原词的部分片段将长词缩短。例：info、exam。人名有时也会被截短形成昵称，如 Jennifer 截为 Jen。（像 Bill 这样替换辅音的昵称严格不算截短，但在历史上常是源于儿语、语音简化或古发音的早期截短形式，如 Richard 对应 Bill、Dick。）

novel creation. A word formation process in which a new word is created ‘from scratch’, that is, without using other words to create it via other word formation processes. Occasionally slang words are formed this way (bling, krunk) and sometimes even words for new objects (blimp). Sometimes sound symbolism seems to play a role. The words either imitate sounds associated with the thing, or else they sound in part like some other word or words in the same concept family. 新词独创。 一种“从零开始”的构词方式，不借助其他词或其他构词法生成新词。俚语偶尔由此产生（如 bling、krunk），有时也用于创造新事物名称（如 blimp）。语音象征常会起作用：这类词要么模仿事物相关声音，要么在发音上接近同一概念范畴内的其他词。

conversion. A type of derivation in which a word usually used in one part of speech is converted to a word having another part of speech. The company name Google underwent conversion when it began to be used as a verb to mean ‘to search via Google’. Conversion is often called zero-derivation. The idea here is that it is a type of derivation in which no morphemes are added. 转类法。 派生法的一种，将通常用于某一词类的词转用为另一词类。公司名称 Google 被用作动词表示“用谷歌搜索”时就发生了转类。转类法常被称为零派生，即不添加任何语素的派生方式。

morpheme. A meaningful element in a word that cannot be broken down further into meaningful subparts. Morphemes are thus minimal units of meaning in a word. They are units that link a form, which is a distinctive string of sounds, with a meaning or a function. A morpheme is uniquely identified by its form and meaning together, e.g. bi ‘two’, or pol ‘community, city’, or bi ‘life’. So we can’t just say “the morpheme bi,” because that does not fully identify the morpheme. We need the meaning too. As it happens there are two morphemes that sound the same, bi ‘life’ and bi- ‘two’. (Because the second one is an affix, not a root, we write it with a hyphen showing its point of attachment to the roots it appears with.) 语素。 词中具有意义且不能再进一步拆分为有意义片段的最小单位。语素是词中最小的意义单位，将独特的语音形式与意义或功能相连。语素由形式与意义共同唯一确定，如 bi“二”、pol“社区、城市”、bi“生命”。因此不能只说“语素 bi”，必须同时说明意义。实际上存在发音相同的两个语素：bi“生命”与 bi‑“二”。（后者是词缀而非词根，故加连字符表示与词根的连接位置。）

Two different morphemes can have the same form, as in the case of bi and bi- above and libr ‘weigh, balance’ and libr ‘book’. Or, two morphemes can happen to have the same meaning, for example, the Latin morpheme uni ‘one’ and Greek mono ‘one’. So similarity or identity of form does not mean that two items are the same morpheme, nor does similarity or identity of meaning (if meanings can ever be identical) indicate that two items are the same morpheme. 不同语素可以形式相同，如上述 bi 与 bi‑，以及 libr“称量、平衡”与 libr“书”。两个语素也可能意义相同，如拉丁语素 uni“一”与希腊语素 mono“一”。因此形式相似或相同不代表是同一语素，意义相似或相同（即便意义完全一致）也不代表是同一语素。

The book distinguishes between morphs (“simple (minimal) meaningful components”) and morphemes (“simple (minimal) meaningful components that speakers understand as the same unit”). This means that a morpheme is a cognitive or psychological unit, and such a unit may have variants in pronunciation that speakers pretty much ignore, or are even unaware of. Morphs, on the other hand, are simple meaningful components without regard to whether or not they are grouped together as a single unit. 教材区分形素（“简单最小意义成分”）与语素（“说话者认知为同一单位的简单最小意义成分”）。这意味着语素是认知或心理单位，该单位可能存在发音变体，而使用者通常忽略甚至未意识到。形素则是单纯的意义成分，不考虑是否被归为同一单位。

We won’t focus on the difference between morphs and morphemes. The important concept for our purposes is the concept of morphemes. They are linguistic units and sometimes these units get expressed in different ways. The result is variant forms, called allomorphs. For example, the morpheme an- ‘not’ appears in two forms: a- and an-. These forms are allomorphs of the same morpheme. 本课程不重点区分形素与语素。对我们而言，语素是关键概念。语素是语言单位，这类单位有时以不同形式体现，这些变体形式称为语素变体。例如表示“非”的语素 an‑ 有 a‑ 与 an‑ 两种形式，它们是同一语素的变体。

compound. A word containing more than one root. In English, roots are typically free morphemes so compounds are composed of free morphemes: sandbox is composed of two free morphemes, sand and box. In Latin and Greek, most roots were bound: they could not appear by themselves, but had to have affixes of various kinds (inflectional or derivational) to form a whole word. So in many English words from Latin and Greek, two roots combine to form a compound, and these roots do not generally occur by themselves. 复合词。 包含一个以上词根的词。英语中词根通常为自由语素，因此复合词由自由语素构成：sandbox 由 sand 与 box 两个自由语素组成。拉丁语与希腊语中多数词根是黏着的，不能单独出现，必须搭配各类词缀（屈折或派生）才能构成完整单词。因此许多源自拉丁语、希腊语的英语词由两个词根组合成复合词，且这些词根通常不能独立存在。

Occasionally we find cases in which it appears as though a Latinate root occurs as a free morpheme. Generally in these cases some other process has occurred such as clipping, in which case the clipped item is no longer the same as the original bound morpheme. 偶尔会出现源自拉丁语的词根看似成为自由语素的情况，这类情况通常经过了截短等过程，截短后的单位已不同于原黏着语素。

For example, the English loanword photograph is a compound formed of two bound roots from Greek, phot/phos and graph, with a linking morpheme -o- between them. The allomorph phot- meaning ‘light’ is a bound root. However, the English word photo ‘a snapshot or image taken by means of photography’ is an independent word formed from a clipping of photograph. Neither phot nor photo occured as independent words in Greek. English photo has only become an independent root by acquiring a different meaning, and thus status as a different morpheme from phot/phos. A similar process has happened with auto ‘car’, and hyper ‘hyperactive’, both the result of clipping. With photo and auto, the linking morpheme was reanalyzed along with the prefix as a new root; in the case of hyper, the prefix hyper- and the new root hyper sound exactly the same. Nevertheless they are two morphemes, with different meaning and different function in a word (prefix vs. root). 例如英语借词 photograph 是由希腊语两个黏着词根 phot/phos 与 graph 加连接语素 -o- 构成的复合词。表示“光”的语素变体 phot‑ 是黏着词根。而英语词 photo（“照片”）是由 photograph 截短而来的独立词。phot 与 photo 在希腊语中都不是独立词。英语 photo 因获得新意义成为独立词根，与 phot/phos 属于不同语素。auto（“汽车”）、hyper（“亢奋的”）也经历了类似截短过程。photo 与 auto 中，连接语素与前缀被重新分析为新词根；hyper 中，前缀 hyper‑ 与新词根 hyper 发音完全相同，但仍是意义与功能不同的两个语素（前缀 vs 词根）。

compounding. the word formation device that creates compounds (see under compound): it puts two (or more) roots together. In some languages a linking morpheme is required between the roots. 复合法。 构成复合词的构词方式（参见 compound）：将两个或多个词根组合。部分语言要求词根间使用连接语素。

root. The most meaningful part of a word. It is the least dispensible part and also has a meaning more concrete than that of most affixes. See the page Roots and affixes. Roots can in some languages stand alone as a word, like the root giraffe in English. But in some languages roots need inflectional affixes to form whole words. 词根。 词中承载主要意义的部分，是词中不可缺少的片段，意义比多数词缀更具体。参见 Roots and affixes 页面。部分语言中词根可独立成词，如英语词根 giraffe。部分语言中词根需要搭配屈折词缀才能构成完整单词。

affix. A morpheme that cannot stand alone as a separate word and must be attached to a root. Because an affix is dependent on a root, it must be a bound morpheme by definition. Another important feature is that affixes do not have the kind of specific and concrete meanings that roots have. The meanings of affixes are generally grammatical meanings, like a part of speech (-y ADJ suffix), or noun grammatical categories like plural, or person and number categories on verbs. Such meanings depend semantically on the meaning of the root, so affixes are not only formally dependent, but also semantically dependent on roots. See Roots and affixes for a more complete characterization. 词缀。 不能独立成词、必须附着于词根的语素。词缀依赖词根，按定义属于黏着语素。另一特征是词缀不具备词根那样具体实在的意义，其意义多为语法意义，如词类标记（-y 形容词后缀）、名词复数、动词的人称与数等。这类意义在语义上依赖词根，因此词缀不仅形式上依附词根，语义上也依附词根。更完整说明参见 Roots and affixes 页面。

prefix. An affix whose position is preceding a root. Examples: de-, pre-, in-, ab-, infra-. Prefixes are conventionally written with a hyphen following. The hyphen shows where the root is attached. 前缀。 位于词根之前的词缀。例：de‑、pre‑、in‑、ab‑、infra‑。前缀习惯后加连字符，表示与词根的连接位置。

suffix. An affix whose position is following a root. Examples: -able, -ate, -ify, -ion, -er. Suffixes are written with a hyphen preceding them. The hyphen shows where the suffix attaches to its root. 后缀。 位于词根之后的词缀。例：-able、-ate、-ify、-ion、-er。后缀习惯前加连字符，表示与词根的连接位置。

free. Able to occur alone as a word. Term is used of morphemes. In English, and some other Germanic languages, many roots are free morphemes. In Latin and Greek, on the other hand, roots do not generally stand alone; they have to have some inflectional suffixes to make a complete word. 自由的。 可独立作为单词出现，用于描述语素。 英语及部分其他日耳曼语中，很多词根是自由语素。而拉丁语与希腊语中词根通常不能独立存在，需要搭配屈折后缀构成完整单词。

bound. Requiring another element to form a complete word. Bound elements are unable to stand alone. Roots in some languages, like English, are free morphemes; boundness is characteristic of some roots and all affixes and linkers. 黏着的。 需要依附其他成分才能构成完整单词，不能独立出现。部分语言（如英语）的词根是自由语素；黏着性是部分词根、所有词缀与连接语素的特征。

Sometimes elements that start out as bound can LOOK free, for example, words like hyper ‘hyperactive’, auto ‘automobile’, and photo ‘picture taken by photographic methods’. However, these cases come from larger words that have undergone clipping. The clipped form as the same meaning as the older, larger word, and that meaning is different from the meaning of the clipping. (Contrast the root phot ‘light’ in the word photograph, with the word photo, which not only was clipped with the linker morpheme from photograph, but actually now has the meaning ‘photograph’ and not ‘light’. In these clipped words, the free morpheme has become independent of the bound form and is no longer the same morpheme as the bound one.) 有些原本黏着的成分看似变成自由成分，如 hyper（“亢奋的”）、auto（“汽车”）、photo（“照片”）。但这些词都来自更长单词的截短，截短形式继承原长词意义，与原黏着语素意义不同。（对比 photograph 中表示“光”的词根 phot 与词 photo：photo 不仅是 photograph 截去连接语素的结果，且意义变为“照片”而非“光”。在这类截短词中，自由语素已脱离原黏着形式，成为不同语素。）

inflection. A lexical process that does not create another word, but merely another form of a word. Inflection is usually done by affixation (e.g. shoe vs. shoes, walk vs. walks vs. walking), but there are also cases of inflection where the new form of the word is created via vowel changing (ride vs. rode). Sometimes the word inflection can be used to mean inflectional affix, see next. 屈折变化。 不产生新词，只生成同一单词不同形式的词汇过程。屈折通常通过加词缀实现（如 shoe 与 shoes、walk 与 walks、walking），也可通过元音变化实现（如 ride 与 rode）。inflection 有时可指屈折词缀，见下一条。

inflectional affix. A bound morpheme used to signal some grammatical meaning such as plural or 3rd person singular. 屈折词缀。 用于表达复数、第三人称单数等语法意义的黏着语素。

derivation. A word formation process that involves turning one word into another. Most derivation is done by the addition of affixes (affixation), but other derivation processes include making no formal change at all (this is called zero-derivation or conversion, as in run (v.) becoming run (n.)) and changing the stress of a word (e.g. contract (n.), stressed on first syllable, vs. contract (v.), stressed on second syllable). 派生法。 将一个词变为另一个词的构词方式。多数派生通过添加词缀（词缀法）实现，也包括不改变形式（称为零派生或转类法，如动词 run 转为名词 run）与改变重音（如名词 contract 重音在第一音节，动词 contract 重音在第二音节）。

derivational affix. An affix that changes the meaning or the part of speech of a word. Example: Penury ‘poverty’ vs. penurious ‘impoverished’. -ous is the derivational affix added to penury to produce the derived word. 派生词缀。 改变词的意义或词类的词缀。例：penury“贫穷”与 penurious“贫困的”，-ous 是添加到 penury 上构成派生词的派生词缀。

parsing. Division of a word into its component morphemes. A good parsing indicates all morpheme boundaries, has each morpheme defined, and contains a definition of the whole word. See the examples on the page Parsing. 词素切分。 将词拆分为组成语素的过程。规范的切分应标出所有语素边界，给出每个语素的定义，并给出整词释义。参见 Parsing 页面示例。

etymology. The study of the history of words. Also, the particular history associated with a word. A full etymology is an attempt to trace a word back as far as we can get in history. The parsing of a word has some things in common with an etymology, namely an attempt to identify original meanings of its word parts; but a parsing does not give a full word history. It just focuses on how the word is constructed from parts. 词源学。 研究词汇历史的学科，也指某个词的具体演变历史。完整词源研究会尽可能追溯词汇的历史源头。词素切分与词源研究有共通之处，都试图识别词中成分的原始意义，但切分不提供完整历史，只关注词由成分构成的方式。

part of speech. the syntactic category of a word. Words have various functions in syntax, such as serving as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. Ancient grammarians already analyzed the words in a sentence into categories of these types. Each language has its own set of syntactic categories (and definitions of them), but there are some strong similarities at least across the European languages, so we use in large part the same terms for English as the Romans did for describing Latin. (The term “parts of speech” goes back to antiquity. “Parts” meant ‘kinds’ then.) Modern linguists have added more syntactic categories to describe English better, but these additions will not generally concern us. One I mentioned in class was verb particle which is the class of words that look like prepositions but actually form part of the verb they refer to. The second word in each of the following constructions is a verb particle: give up, spread out, goof off, look up, throw up, fool around, stand up. 词类。 词的句法范畴。词在句法中承担不同功能，如名词、动词、形容词、副词、介词、连词等。古代语法学家已将句子中的词归入这类范畴。每种语言有自身的句法范畴及定义，但至少欧洲语言间高度相似，因此英语所用术语与古罗马描述拉丁语的术语大体一致。（“词类”这一说法源自古代，parts 当时意为“种类”。）现代语言学家增加了更多句法范畴以更准确描述英语，但本课程一般不涉及。我在课上提到过动词小品词，这类词形似介词，实则为动词的一部分。下列短语中第二个词均为动词小品词：give up、spread out、goof off、look up、throw up、fool around、stand up。

linker or linking morpheme. A morpheme whose only function is to stand between other morphemes. There is no particular meaning to a linker, making it very unusual as morphemes go. The book uses the terms empty morph. 连接语素。 仅用于位于其他语素之间、无具体意义的语素，在语素中较为特殊。教材使用空形素这一说法。

stem. the part of a word that an inflectional affix attaches to. Stems include minimally a root, but they often have additional morphology such as derivational affixes; or they can include more than one root, as in a compound. 词干。 屈折词缀所附着的词的部分。词干至少包含一个词根，常带有派生词缀等附加形态，也可包含多个词根（如复合词）。

variety or language variety. a particular way of using language associated with a group of language users or with a type of context. If we think of a language as a system of norms for speaking or writing, then a variety is a subsystem within the language as a whole. “Norms” means ‘usual practices’. Norms are also thought of as observable features of the variety, like particular pronunciations or phonological rules, or use of particular sets of words or phrases or even spellings. Varieties are not sharply distinguished from other varieties, but are simply loose groupings of norms that tend to co-occur together. The defining features of a variety are generally stated in linguistic terms; but the variety also has as part of its definition who uses the variety and/or under what circumstances. For example, internet language (the variety of language that characteristically appears in email, chat, blogging, and text messaging) has particular words associated with it (LOL, BRB, etc.) and particular spelling conventions (substitution of numbers for homonymous parts of the spoken word, like 4get for forget). AND it is associated with internet usage. Varieties can partially overlap. So, for example, internet language partially overlaps with the language of computer gaming, which is understandable since a lot of gaming occurs over the internet. Yet the two varieties are not co-extensive. Many usages are specific to gaming (e.g. pwn ‘beat or destroy in a computer game’ and not characteristic of more general internet use.) 语言变体。 与特定使用者群体或使用场景相关的特定语言使用方式。若将语言视为一套言说或书写规范系统，变体就是语言整体中的子系统。“规范”指惯常行为模式，也体现为可观察的特征，如特定发音、音系规则、特定词汇、短语或拼写习惯。变体之间没有绝对清晰界限，只是倾向共现的规范集合。变体的界定通常使用语言学术语，同时也包含使用者与使用场景。例如网络语言（多见于邮件、聊天、博客、短信）有特定词汇（LOL、BRB 等）与拼写习惯（用数字替代同音部分，如 4get 表示 forget），且与网络使用场景相关。变体之间可部分重叠，如网络语言与电脑游戏语言部分重叠，因为大量游戏通过网络进行，但二者并不完全等同。很多用法为游戏特有（如 pwn“在游戏中击败对手”），不用于一般网络场景。

zero derivation. Another name for conversion. See also derivation. 零派生。 转类法的另一名称，参见 derivation。

Roots and Affixes

词根与词缀

Morphemes (minimal units of meaning) are of two basic kinds: roots and affixes. While there is not an absolutely sharp dividing line between them, due to the natural, gradual historical progression from root to affix, there are various properties that typically cluster together, thus allowing us to distinguish the two types. For most morphemes, it is clear which class they belong in. 语素（意义的最小单位）主要分为两类：词根与词缀。由于在历史发展中，词根会自然、逐步演变为词缀，二者之间并无绝对清晰的界限，但二者分别具备一系列典型特征，因此我们可以据此区分这两种语素。绝大多数语素的类别归属都是明确的。

Properties of roots:

词根的特征：

• main part of word 是单词的主要部分
• must be at least one in a word 一个单词中至少包含一个词根
• in English, limited to two in a word (simple words have one, compound words have two); where roots are bound, as in Latin or Greek, more can occur in a word, but the number of roots in a particular word is generally small; 英语中，一个单词里的词根数量最多为两个（简单词含一个词根，复合词含两个）；在拉丁语、希腊语等语言中，存在黏着词根，一个单词中可出现多个词根，但单个单词中的词根数量通常较少
• can occur independently (free roots)–although bound roots, particularly classical, occur 可独立使用（自由词根），也存在黏着词根，源自古典语言的词根多为黏着形式
• tend to have richer, more specific semantic content 通常具有更丰富、更具体的语义内涵
• position is relatively free with respect to other roots (cf. photograph vs. telephoto) 与其他词根搭配时，位置相对灵活（如photograph与telephoto）

Properties of affixes:

词缀的特征：

• subordinate part of word 是单词的附属部分
• not necessarily present–some words occur without any 并非单词的必备成分，部分单词不含任何词缀
• multiple affixes can occur in a word (e.g. in-divis-abil-ity) 一个单词中可出现多个词缀（如in-divis-abil-ity）
• are dependent (bound) elements (where independent form found, generally to some degree dissociated from the bound version) 属于黏着成分，无法独立使用（即便存在对应的独立形式，也与黏着形式在语义上存在不同程度的分离）
• have more “schematic” (non-specific) content; often grammar-like function 语义更具“概括性”（非具体性），常承担语法功能
• can either precede or follow their roots (prefixes and suffixes,respectively) 可置于词根前或词根后，分别为前缀和后缀
• position for a given affix with respect to root is fixed 特定词缀相对于词根的位置是固定的

Affixes are subclassified by where they attach to roots. Prefixes occur before roots, suffixes are placed after a root, and infixes occur inside a root. Some languages even have circumfixes, which surround a root. 词缀可根据与词根的结合位置进一步分类：前缀置于词根之前，后缀置于词根之后，中缀嵌入词根内部。部分语言中还存在环缀，即包裹在词根外围的词缀。

There is another type of affix called a linker or linking morpheme or filler. These don’t have any function other than linking one morpheme to another within a word. The most common linker in English is -o- which occurs between roots in Latinate compund words like in petr-o-glyph. 还有一类特殊的词缀被称为连接语素，也可称作填充语素。这类语素的唯一作用是连接单词内部的不同语素，无其他实际意义。英语中最常见的连接语素是-o-，多见于源自拉丁语的复合词中，用于连接两个词根，如petr-o-glyph。

Affixes are bound elements and roots are free. But there is another important type of free morpheme besides roots in English and these are called function words. Function words typically occur in languages like English which don’t have much inflectional morphology (bound morphemes that signal grammatical categories). 词缀属于黏着成分，而词根多为自由成分。但英语中除词根外，还有另一类重要的自由语素，即功能词。功能词常见于英语这类屈折形态较少的语言（屈折形态是指表达语法范畴的黏着语素）。

Function words, like inflectional morphology, primarily serve gramnatical functions. Function words are small units that have some independence, occuring with more freedom of position than affixes (thus they are somewhat root-like), but which have grammar-like meaning rather than concrete lexical content (which makes them more affix-like). Some function words in English are the, a, he, she, it, if, although, etc. 与屈折形态类似，功能词的主要作用是承担语法功能。这类语素是具备一定独立性的小单位，在句中的位置比词缀更灵活（因此具有一定的词根特征），但表达的是语法意义而非具体的词汇意义（因此又具有一定的词缀特征）。英语中的功能词包括the、a、he、she、it、if、although等。

Function words can be thought of as right in between roots and affixes. Prepositions (like English over, in, through) are sometimes classed as function words and sometimes as roots–because they are, again, intermediate. In form, they are free morphemes. In terms of function, they have (especially in their spatial meanings) more concrete lexical content than most grammatical elements, but their meaning is still rather abstract and relational. (Note that in Greek and Latin, the elements corresponding to the English prepositions are bound morphemes rather than free function words. These are the spatial prefixes such as circum-, meta-, sub-, etc.) 功能词可被视作介于词根与词缀之间的语素。介词（如英语中的over、in、through）有时被归为功能词，有时被归为词根，原因正是其兼具二者的特征。从形式上看，介词是自由语素；从功能上看，其语义（尤其是空间义）比大多数语法成分更具体，但仍具有抽象性和关系性。（需注意，在希腊语和拉丁语中，与英语介词对应的成分并非自由的功能词，而是黏着语素，即空间前缀，如circum-、meta-、*sub-*等。）

ROOT > PREPOSITION > FUNCTION WORD > AFFIX 词根 > 介词 > 功能词 > 词缀

The elements to the left are more lexical, those to the right are more grammatical. 该序列中，越靠左的成分词汇性越强，越靠右的成分语法性越强。

Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about the in-between cases! Probably 99% of all morphemes in English (and Latin and Greek for that matter) are easily identified by the criteria given above as either roots or affixes. Be sure you can tell the difference when looking at the morphemes in ordinary, garden-variety words. 所幸我们无需过度纠结这些中间情况！英语中约99%的语素（拉丁语和希腊语亦是如此）都能通过上述标准轻松判定为词根或词缀。在分析普通常用词的语素时，务必准确区分二者的差异。

© Suzanne Kemmer © 苏珊娜·凯默 Last modified Sept 2019 2019年9月最后修订

Reference

• Words in English :: History https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/history/index.html
• Words in English: Roots and Affixes https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/rootaffix.html
• Words in English: Types of Word Formation https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/defs.html