评论
打印
Test Six
SECTION A MINI-LECTURE
In this section, you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you'll be given two minutes to check your notes, and another 10 minutes to complete the gap-filling task. Now listen to the mini-lecture.
Good morning. Today's lecture is about the motivation for words. First, what is motivation? Motivation deals with the connection between name and sense. In the previous lecture, we have mentioned two rival schools of thought: one school is the Naturalists, who believed that there was an intrinsic connection between sound and sense; the other school is the Conventionalists, who held that the connection between sound and sense was purely a matter of tradition and convention. The first motivation is the onomatopoeic motivation.
The word onomatopoeia is derived from the Greek word onomatopoeia, which means "word-making". Onomatopoeic motivation means defining the principle of motivation by sound. The sounds of such words as cuckoo, ding-dong, buzz seem to be appropriate to their senses. But it has to be pointed out that onomatopoeic words constitute only a small part of the vocabulary. According to Stephen Ullmann, onomatopoeic formation can be divided into primary onomatopoeia and secondary onomatopoeia. Primary onomatopoeia means the imitation of sound by sound. Here the sound is truly an "echo to the sense". Terms like crack, growl, hum, roar, squeak, whiz and a great many fall into this category.
Secondary onomatopoeia means that certain sounds and sound-sequences are associated with certain senses in an expressive relationship. In this form, the sounds evoke a movement, as in such words: quiver, wriggle, slither. The sound may also evoke some physical or moral quality, usually unfavorable. For example, gloom, slimy, sloppy, sloth. Some of these onomatopoeic terms have certain elements in common. For example, the sound /sn/ may express three types of experiences. They are, first, "breath-noise" as in sniff, snuff, snore, snort, second, "quick separation or movement" as in snip, snap, snatch, and third, "creeping" as in snake, snail, sneak. Final groups have similar functions. For example, the combination of — are at the end of a word suggests "big light or noise" as in blare, flare, glare, stare; the combination of -ump at the end of a word suggests "heavy fall" as in dump, crump, plump, slump, thump.
Another interesting feature of onomatopoeic patterns is that they often work by vowel alternation. By substituting one vowel for another, one can express different noises. For example: snip---snap, sniff---snuff, flip---flap---flop. Closely connected to this tendency are reduplicated words and phrases, such as wishy-washy, tit-tat, tick-tock, click-clack. It should be noted that many onomatopoeic forms are based on alternations of not vowels but of initial consonants, such as higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, namby-pamby, roly-poly etc.
The second motivation is semantic motivation. Semantic motivation means that motivation is based on semantic factors. It is a kind of mental association. When we speak of the bonnet of a car, a coat of paint, or when we speak of potatoes cooked in their jackets, these expressions are motivated by the similarity between the garments and the objects referred to. In the same way, when we say the cloth for the clergy, "town and gown" for "town and university", there is semantic motivation due to the fact that the garments in question are closely associated with the persons they designate. Both types of expressions are figurative: the former are metaphoric and the latter are metonymic. We can see that semantic motivation is closely connected with figures of speech. Here I'll name three of them.
First, metaphor. Metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison. For example: "he has a heart of stone". "The curtain of night has fallen." Another figure of speech is metonymy. It is a device in which we name something by one of its attributes, as in crown for king, the turf for horse-racing, the White House for the US president. Similar to metonymy is synecdoche, which means the substitution of a part for a whole or a whole for a part, as in bread for food, the army for a soldier, etc.
Apart from onomatopoeic motivation and semantic motivation, there is also logical motivation. Logical motivation deals with the problem of defining a concept by means of logic. A definition has two forms. A common form of definition is"This means such and such." "Fat" means "having much flesh". Another form of definition is "This means the same as that" or"This is equivalent to that". "Fat" means "the same as obese'. These two forms of the definition show that a definition has two parts: the word being defined, and the definition that is being made.
Giving a definition involves two steps to be taken. One step is to identify the concept of a genus, that is, a class of things made up of two or more subordinate classes or species. The other step is to identify the attributes distinguishing one species from other similar species in the same genus. A combination of these two approaches helps to define a concept. For example, in the 1950's, there appeared a new crisis gripping the minds of part of the American youth. These young people felt disturbance and anxiety about their personality development and adjustment. This crisis is called an identity crisis. The word "crisis' is a genus, which consists of two or more species, such as spiritual crisis, economic crisis, political crisis, etc. The expression "identity crisis" is used to distinguish itself from other crisis.
So far we have covered the three motivations for words: onomatopoeic motivation, semantic motivation, and logical motivation. However, it is not always easy to identify clearly the motivation for each word in our vocabulary. In such case, we may say the motivation is lost. There may be two factors which lead to loss of motivation. One is a change in the morphological structure of a word, and the other factor is change of meaning.
In next lecture, we'll discuss these two changes in detail. This is the end of today's lecture. Thank you for your attention.
