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II. The Features of English Vocabulary
The definition of a word comprises the following points: (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 sentence. That is to say, a word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function, so a language must first and foremost have sound.
2.1 Features of Vocabulary in Pronunciation and Spelling
Symbolic connection is almost always arbitrary and conventional in English. It is the most irregular thing in spelling and pronunciation of all the world languages. To some extent, English does not belong to the kind of language which is pronounced by its spelling, namely, many English letters and letter chunks pronounce the same, and the same sound can be made by different letters and letter chunks. For instance, letter “A” has eight different types of pronunciations; “TH” letter chunk has three kinds of pronunciation, and Thailand, Thyme, and Thames are pronounced irregularly, and the letter chunk “OUGH” has nine ways of pronunciation, the words are ①though [ðəu] ②thought [θɔ:t] ③enough [inʌf], rough [rʌf] ④thorough [θʌrə] ⑤cough [kɔf] ⑥through [θru:] ⑦ hiccough [hɪkʌp] ⑧ plough [plau] ⑨slough [slu:, slaʊ]. There is an interesting sentence to explain the different sounds. “Though the rough cough and hiccough plough me through, I ought to cross the slough.” In this sentence, the letter chunk “OUGH” has eight kinds of pronunciation, which are [əu] ,[ ʌf] ,[ ɔf], [ʌp], [ au], [u:], [ɔ:], [ə]. There are also some letters which have no sounds in the word, such as debt, comb, ptarmigan, viscount, island, hour, indict. For many English words, there are no fixed rules to follow. We don’t know how to pronounce these words without the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). And where to put the stress on the syllables is also not fixed. However, there still exist some rules to follow, for example, usually some letters or letter chunks have several kinds of pronunciations. In the teaching process, teachers can remind the students to pay much attention to this and to bear the universal rules in mind. In addition, there are so many words that comes from other countries, especially those from China, and some relationship exists between the spelling and pronunciation, such as salad [sæləd], sandwich [sænwidʒ], clone [kləun], sauna [sɔ:nə, saʊ], so with close attention to the regularities, it will be much easier to master the pronunciation and spelling of words.
2.2 Features in Word-Formation
Morpheme is “the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words”(Wang &Lu 108). Both free morphemes and bound morphemes play important roles in word-formation. Word-formation is the most important rule to formulate English words. Affixation is the most common used methods of word-formation. It adds prefixes, infixes or suffixes to the root of other words to form new words. For example, “super” is a prefix usually to be used nowadays. When it is added onto an adjective, it means that the quality described is present to an unusually large degree, but while it is added onto a noun, it means a bigger, more powerful, or more important version of a particular thing. Supermarket, superpower, supercomputer, super-model, and super-rich are the words formed by affixation. While many old affixes sill play an important role in word-formation, lots of new affixes are coming into being. Alcoholic is formed the way in which a noun “alcohol” plus an adjective ending “ic”. At the present time people break “holic” away from “alcoholic” and add it to other words to form new English words. Workaholic, beeroholic, colaholic, teleholic, and movie-holic are some good examples. Clipping is also a commonly used way in word-formation. It is used to delete or omit some parts of two English words and combine the leftover parts of these two words to form a new one which can express a new meaning. Telelecture, comsat, airtel, chinglish are examples. Acronym is another kind of word-formation, which takes the first letters of some words and put these letters together. Usually, it reads by the order of the letter, but sometimes it reads by the IPA. This kind of word-formation is simple and brief, so it is used in a large scale. VCD (video compact disk), SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) are the words which illustrate this very clearly. Conversion or zero-derivation also is a way of word formation. It dose not change the outer appearance of the word or its general meaning, but change its part of speech or word class. “Right” and “stand” are derived from this kind of word-formation. Many other kinds of word-formations remain to be discovered.