英语论文网

1.1 Rationale of the Study研究的基本原理
Words for language are just as the bricks for building. Without words we would beunable to convey our thoughts. When we talk about English word, we usually mean theword used in our daily life and listed in our dictionaries. They are so-called actual words.However, there also exist a large number of words out of our dictionaries, but in ourmental lexicon, which is called potential words (or possible words). In our thesis, wechoose the term potential words in order to avoid ambiguity. So English words arecomposed of actual words and potential words. Former constitute only a subset of thelatter. However, since the difficulty of confirming actual words and potential words, it isnecessary to know the definition of actual words and potential words.According to Plag (2002), a possible, or potential, word can be defined as anonexistent word whose semantic, morphological or phonological structure is inaccordance with the rules and regularities of a given language. It also can be calledpermissible word, distinct from impermissible words which do not follow semantic,morphological or phonological constraints of that language. An actual, occurring wordis a subset of permissible words. When the form of a potential word is endowed with ameaning, it becomes an actual word, or in other words, it becomes an entry in themental lexicon, part of our linguistic knowledge. Potential words without meaning aresometimes referred to as accidental gaps in the English lexicon, or empty frames of agrid in actual-potential word atlas.So people might ask, what is the use of studying potential words, since actualwords have not been studied thoroughly; what contributions the study of potential worddoes to historical linguistics. However, our answers are: just as knowing the backgroundof an event can help hold the event itself, to comprehend the potential wordsscientifically can help deepen the understanding the system of actual words. In otherwords, we can get a clearer picture of actual word system in the background of potentialwords. Moreover, language is in the process of changing. It is the same with words.Some of the potential words yesterday have become actual words today; whereaspotential words today are likely to be actual words tomorrow. The atlas ofactual-potential words will change with the appearance and disappearance of someactual words. People are enabled to observe the changes by comparing two atlasesdrawn at two different points of time. By drawing actual-potential words atlas, we canfind the changes of language and in the process of confirming actual and potentialwords, we can study the history of some words and etymology. So study of potentialwords will make great contribution to historical linguistics.We take an example, say, the word blog is a computing term which means that afile storing a detailed record of requests handled (and sometimes also errors generated)by a web server. It is a shortened form of weblog. But blog is an actual word now sinceit is now known and used by speakers in daily life. When we check the etymology of it,we find that the word blog first appeared in 1999 and entered into OED as a lexicalentry in March 2003. That is to say, before 1999, the word blog is a potential word sinceit is in accordance with the pho本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。