DOCSLIB.ORG

English Vocabulary Elements

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
English Vocabulary Elements www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com ENGLISH VOCABULARY ELEMENTS www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com This page intentionally left blank www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com ENGLISH VOCABULARY ELEMENTS Keith Denning Brett Kessler William R. Leben www.IELTS4U.blogfa.comSecond edition 1 2007 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 1995, 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.comLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Denning, Keith M. English vocabulary elements / Keith Denning, Brett Kessler, William R. Leben.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-516802-0; 978-0-19-516803-7 (pbk.) ISBN 0-19-516802-X; 0-19-516803-8 (pbk.) 1. Vocabulary. 2. English language—Grammar. I. Kessler, Brett, 1956– II. Leben, William Ronald, 1943– III. Title. PE1449.D424 2006 428.1—dc22 2006049863 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Preface Intended Audience for This Book This book is intended for use in college-level courses dealing with English word structure. It also aims to provide an introduction of how units of a language— sounds, word elements, words—function together and how a language functions in society over time. Part or all of the text may also be used to good effect in Englishwww.IELTS4U.blogfa.com for Foreign Students and English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. It is also recommended for those interested in preparing for educational aptitude tests and other postsecondary admissions tests (including the PSAT, SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and MAT) that test vocabulary skills. If this list seems broad, it is because nearly every field of study or work requires a facility for comprehen- sion or expression in the English language. The list is, of course, not meant to exclude those who are merely afflicted with the kind of curiosity about language that has motivated many an amateur and professional linguist in the course of a lifetime of joyful pursuit. The book’s first goal is to expand vocabulary skills by teaching the basic units of learned, specialized, and scientific English vocabulary, but its reach extends far beyond this. To make sense of current English word structure and to build word analysis skills that will continue to prove useful, the book pres- ents basic principles of word formation and word use and shows how these have affected English since its beginnings. This in turn leads to further topics including phonetics and the relationship of English to other Indo-European languages. As a result, the book provides an introduction to some of the most important concepts of modern linguistics by showing their role in the devel- opment of English vocabulary. vi PREFACE Using This Book Key concepts are shown in boldface when introduced (e.g., gloss and doublet). Learning definitions of these terms is important, but a bigger goal is to gain an idea of the role of these concepts in the overall system of language. Lists of word elements to be memorized accompany most chapters. Following them are a variety of exercises to choose from. Some help build familiarity with word elements by putting them to use in words. Others apply principles from the chapters to new cases. We hope these will encourage you to master the material as it is encountered instead of saving memorization until the end. Vocabulary-building Techniques Students may find flashcards useful for memorizing word elements. Thanks to Suzanne Kemmer, an excellent set is available on the Web at http://dacnet.rice .edu/projects/ling215/FlashCards/. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.comA more low-tech method is to cover one side of the list of elements and glosses and, going from top to bottom and then from bottom to top, to try to recall the element for each gloss and then the gloss for each element. Other approaches to the task of self-drilling for memorization include repeating word elements and glosses to yourself until you cannot internally hear one without the other, or finding a rhyme or mental picture that helps to associate elements with their glosses (e.g., “aster reminds me of the flower having the same name, which looks like a star,” or “viv reminds me of my friend Vivian, who is very lively”). Using a Dictionary As a companion to this text, we strongly recommend a bound dictionary de- signed for the collegiate level or above (i.e., one containing 150,000 or more entries), such as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language1 or Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.2 You may also find it useful to consult 1. Fourth ed. (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 2000). Also accessible through http://bartleby.com/. 2. Eleventh ed. (Springfi eld, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2003). Also accessible at http://www.m-w.com/. PREFACE vii a larger dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)3 or Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged4 or such specialized dictionaries as Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary5 or Stedman’s Medical Dictionary.6 Using a dictionary effectively is a skill that must be learned. It is important to become familiar with the basic layout of any dictionary you use. Most good dictionaries make this task easier by presenting explanations of entries, lists of abbreviations, and so forth, in the introductory pages. We recommend that students take the time to read this material before trying to use a new dictionary, thereby avoiding frustration later on. Most dictionaries are also accessible online or in CD or DVD formats. These are invaluable for many kinds of searches (e.g., finding all words that end in -archy, or words whose definition contains the word government). We recom- mend these not as a substitute but as a supplement to a print version, if only because printed pages permit a level of browsing that can’t yet be duplicated on computer screens. One of the best ways to attack the bewildering variety of English vocabulary is to refer to a collegiate-level dictionary when you confront unfamiliar, difficult, orwww.IELTS4U.blogfa.com interesting words. When you come across an unfamiliar word or element, it is a good idea either to make a note of it for later reference or to take a moment to look it up. Learning to look for and recognize the elements and words you learn in the course (as well as those you acquire on your own) will eventually minimize the time you will spend with a dictionary—unless, of course, you enjoy reading dictionaries, in which case you may find yourself spending more time on other words than on the one you originally meant to look up! Moving beyond the Final Chapter This book doesn’t contain one percent of what the authors find interesting about English vocabulary. We will judge the text as successful if the groundwork laid 3. Second ed. (20 vols.; Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1989; micrographic 1-vol. ed., 1991). Three supplementary volumes have been published as well (1993–1997). All are incorporated in the CD-ROM and in the online version at http://www.oed.com/. 4. Springfi eld, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1961. See also http://www.m-w.com/. 5. Thirtieth ed. (Philadelphia: Saunders, 2003). 6. Twenty-eighth ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2005). Also accessible at http:// www.stedmans.com/. viii PREFACE here motivates readers to explore further and provides enough skills to undertake such explorations. More comprehensive lists of Latin and Greek word elements than those pro- vided in the glossary can be found in the works listed at the end of this book. These works list elements according to different principles, but the student can, with a little searching, use them to find and identify many less frequently used word elements not found in our glossary. The World Wide Web is a rich source of lists of words and word elements. One constantly growing resource we recommend is Professor Suzanne Kemmer’s Rice University Neologisms Database, which contained some 5,500 entries at the time this book was published: http://esa4.rice.edu/~ling215/. We owe profound thanks to our students and teaching assistants over the years for many helpful and insightful suggestions. The course that led to this book owes its development to the textbook Structure of English Words, by Clarence Sloat and Sharon Taylor,7 and to course materials prepared by Robert Stockwell, and we are indebted to these sources for first showing the way. We are also grateful to many colleagues for generous and helpful comments and corrections: to John J.www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com Ohala, J. David Placek, Robert Vago, and the late R. M. R. Hall, who offered extensive suggestions for the first edition. Special thanks to Suzanne Kemmer, Joan Maling, Joe Meyers, Nasreen Sarwar, and many students over the past eleven years for corrections to the first edition. Thanks also to Daniel Leben-Wolf for doing the art.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Studying Word-Formation in English
    VYTAUTAS MAGNUS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY Jūratė Ruzaitė Studying Word-Formation in English A resource book Vytautas Magnus University Kaunas, 2012 UDK 811.111(075.8) Ru218 This resource book was approved for publication at the meeting of the Department of English Philology, Faculty of Humanities on 23 May 2012 (Protocol No. 2) and the meeting of the Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, Vytautas Magnus University on 19 June 2012 (Protocol No. 3). Reviewed by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Violeta Kalėdaitė ISBN 978-9955-12-801-4 e-ISBN 978-9955-12-802-1 © Jūratė Ruzaitė, 2012 © Vytautas Magnus University, 2012 Table of Contents Introduction ...............................................................................................4 Part 1: Theoretical and methodological preliminaries .........................9 1.1. Abstract morphological facts, background, and beliefs .......10 1.2. Morphology in action ...........................................................15 1.3. Studying word formation: an introduction to morphological analysis ....................................................17 1.3.1. Important distinctions in studying word formation ....17 1.3.2. What is a word? ..........................................................21 1.3.3. Analytic principles of morphological analysis .........25 Part 2: Inflectional morphology ............................................................29 Part 3: Studying complex words ...........................................................33 3.1. Analysis of complex
    [Show full text]
  • Make a Word with My Letters
    Make A Word With My Letters Hubert is acetic and sparklings participially while isochronal Keil rape and impasted. Abbey often misread haphazard when thatinvertebrate Haskell hookWilley her keypunches mezzo-soprano? disobligingly and confusing her romanticisation. Which Kincaid relearned so penitentially Longest word in English Wikipedia. How you Create Printable Block Letters in Microsoft Word. Mac and dozens more serious crossword sets of whatever type each time that you a word with my letters make a sentence out. Word Unscrambler UnscrambleDescramble letters and words It helps you win lots of word games such as Scrabble Words with Friends Text. This tool rearranges all kinds of word with references or even the heart. You get better still shows the sentence with a word game, vous savez donc le defi consiste a picture with. All perfect pangrams of English An English pangram is imperative sentence. This makes little longer connected to show host and letters make with a word search to design: a words with fellow players, no clues can adjust your day. KIDS' SQUIGGLES LETTERS MAKE WORDS Learn write Read. 13 Letter Words You Go Words. The computer will always have accomplished more letters make with a word my computer. Could find words in them easy with visual basic english word off the word with a my letters make one from these letters to place an unnamed computer generated words. Which word takes 3 hours to say? Oversized Letter Cards for Spelling This Reading Mama. KIDS' SQUIGGLES LETTERS MAKE WORDS Learn to watch Sound Out. Words Created Using the Letters in 'daily' Word Game Helper.
    [Show full text]
  • Language Trivia
    Language Trivia "Euouae," a medieval music term, is the longest word in English that contains only vowels. It’s also the word with the most consecutive vowels. "Screeched," which means to make a harsh sound, is the longest one-syllable word in English. "Unprosperousness", meaning not wealthy or profitable, is the longest word in English in which each letter is used at least two times. The words "facetiously," "abstemiously," and "arseniously," each contain all six vowels (including “y”) in alphabetical order. The word "duoliteral" contains all five vowels (not including “y”) in reverse alphabetical order. At 45 letters, "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis," which refers to a lung disease, is often considered the longest word in English. "Feedback" is the shortest word in English that has the letters a, b, c, d, e, and f. "Floccinaucinihilipilification," is the longest word in English that does not contain letter “e” No words in English rhyme with: "month," "orange," "silver," or "purple." “Q” is the only letter that does not occur in any of the U.S. state names. "Maine" is the only U.S. state whose name is just one syllable. "Bookkeeper" is the only English word that has three consecutive double letters. The word “therein” contains only seven letters, but it contains 10 words that can be formed using consecutive letters: the, there, I, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, herein. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a pangram, which is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet. "United Arab Emirates," a small country in the Middle East, is made up of alternating vowels and consonants.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure
    An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy Edinburgh University Press 01 pages i-viii prelims 18/10/01 3:42 pm Page i An Introduction to English Morphology 01 pages i-viii prelims 18/10/01 3:42 pm Page ii Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language General Editor Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics (University of Edinburgh) Editorial Board Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington) Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh) Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam) Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh) Donka Minkova (UCLA) Katie Wales (University of Leeds) Anthony Warner (University of York) An Introduction to English Syntax Jim Miller An Introduction to English Phonology April McMahon An Introduction to English Morphology Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy 01 pages i-viii prelims 18/10/01 3:42 pm Page iii An Introduction to English Morphology Words and Their Structure Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy Edinburgh University Press 01 pages i-viii prelims 18/10/01 3:42 pm Page iv To Jeremy © Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, 2002 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Janson by Norman Tilley Graphics and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1327 7 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1326 9 (paperback) The right of Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements viii
    [Show full text]
  • Amazing, Interesting, Wonderful, Weird, Funny
    A-PDF Watermark DEMO: Purchase from www.A-PDF.com to remove the watermark INTERESTING FACTS Tuesday is considered as the most productive day of the week. In human body the right lung takes in more air than the left one. The sun is 330330 times larger than the earth. Bill gates house was designed using Macintosh computer which is a brand of the microsoft’s rival company. Almost all varieties of breakfast cereals are made from grass. In the 1930’s America track star Jesse Owens used to race against horses and dogs to earn a living. There is a great mushroom in Oregon that is 2,400 years old. It Covers 3.4 square miles of land and is still growing. Jimmy Carter is the first USA president to have born in hospital. Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump. Cleopatra married two of her brothers. It is illegal to own a red car in shanghai china. Tru to spin an egg, Its strange that a hard-boiled egg will spin but an uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not. Astronauts cannot burp in space. People with blue eyes see better in dark. The snowiest city in the USA is Blue Canyon, California. Lake Nicaragua in Nicaragua is the only fresh water lake in the world that has sharks. Kite flying is a professional sport in Thailand. The gasoline cannot freeze no matter how cold the temperature falls. Human stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself. Every person has a unique tongue print.
    [Show full text]
  • Syllable Identification
    The University of Birmingham School of Computer Science MSc in Advanced Computer Science Summer Project Syllable Identification Norshuhani Zamin Supervisor: Dr. W H Edmondson September 2004 Abstract Syllabification is part of the linguistic problems and developing computer software to predict the syllable boundaries is a challenging task. In practice, it is easier to determine the syllable boundaries manually especially in a syllabic spelling system with the fact that we know the linguistic element of the language. Identifying syllable boundaries for English is a daunting process because English is an alphabetic spelling system. To write software, it is traditionally assumed that various sources of linguistic knowledge should be incorporated in order to convert words into their syllable structure with reasonable accuracy. The linguistic knowledge is important to define the graphotactic and phonetic rules. The purpose of this project has been to investigate the problem in English syllabification and to represent 2 different approaches to automatic detection of syllable boundaries. The first approach syllabifies a text from its grapheme or symbol while the second approach syllabifies a text from its sound. It was found that, many existing research on syllabification adopted the second approach. Although different researchers propose different knowledge structure but most of them used the typical architecture for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion while to go from text to grapheme or symbol is a new technique. In this project, I demonstrate the use of hand-written rules for English syllabification and knowledge structures trained on both approaches and compare the performance and accuracy of these approaches. The evaluation shows that going from text to symbol is easier and it performs better on finding the syllable boundaries than going from text to sound.
    [Show full text]
  • The Book of Word Records
    www.ZTCprep.com THE BOOK OF WORD RECORDS A Look at Some of the Strangest, Shortest, Longest, and Overall Most Remarkable Words in the English Language Asher Cantrell www.ZTCprep.com For my grandfathers, Benjamin J. Lisle and C. Thomas Cantrell. I wouldn’t have done this without your constant encouragement. www.ZTCprep.com Contents Introduction Twelve of the Most Popular Passwords (and Why They’re Awful) The Fifteen Longest Words in the Dictionary Words That Just Might Win You a Game of Scrabble Eleven of the Longest Books Ever Written The Eight Longest Album Titles Ever The Seven Longest Messages Sent Into Space The Fifteen Longest One-Syllable Words in the English Language The Thirty Grossest Words in the English Language The Thirty Prettiest Words in the English Language The Four Greatest Historical Contributors to the English Language How a Meme Became the Most Popular Word in the Whole World Six Gibberish-Sounding Sentences That Are Grammatically Correct Ten Everyday Words That Have No Rhyme The Most Common Words in the English Language Three of the Largest Publications Ever Created Three of the Smallest Publications Ever Created The Seven Longest Speeches Ever Given The Five Varieties of Shortest Stories Ever Written The Five Longest Words in English That Can Be Typed One-Handed Twenty of the Longest Words Without A, E, I, O, or U The Five Longest Names in the World Ten of the Craziest Auto-Antonyms in the English Language The Six Longest Song Titles Ever The Five Longest English Palindromes The Five Longest Sentences Ever Published The Five Longest Brand Names in the English Language The Eight Longest Made-Up Words in Fiction The Six Best-Selling Novels of All Time The Five Oldest Curse Words We Still Use The Ten Most Common English Names in Movies www.ZTCprep.com Introduction The greatest invention in human history is language.
    [Show full text]