2012年4月英语词汇学自考试题

Ⅰ. Each of the statements below is followed by four  alternative answers. Choose the one that best completes  the statement and put the letter in the bracket. (30%)
1. Words of the basic word stock denote the most common things and phenomena of the world around us. Which of the following words is related to the natural phenomena? (　　　)
A. Father. B. Fire.
C. Evil. D. Old.
2. The differences between sound and form are due to the following EXCEPT ______. (　　　)
A. the fact of more phonemes than letters in English
B. stabilization of spelling by printing
C. influence of the work of scribes
D. innovations made by linguists
3. There are______ functional words in the following sentence: It is fun to play with children. (　　　)
A. 3 B. 4
C. 5 D. 6
4. The surviving languages fall into eight principal groups. Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Albanian belong to the set. (　　　)
A. Eastern B. Southern
C. Western D. Northern
5. With the growth of______, British tentacles began stretching out to every corner of the  globe, thus enabling English to absorb words from all major languages of the world. (　　　)
A. civilization B. revolution
C. colonization D. industrialization
6. Which of the following statements is NOT true? (　　　)
A. English is more closely related to German than French.
B. Scandinavian languages refer to Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.
C. Old English vocabulary was in essence Germanic with a small quantity of words borrowed  from Latin and Scandinavian.
D. Middle English absorbed a tremendous number of foreign words but with little change in  word endings.
7. The word “recollection” comprises ______morpheme(s). (　　　)
A. 1 B. 2
C. 3 D. 4
8. The following words have inflectional affixes EXCEPT______. (　　　)
A. happier B. worker
C. harder D. taller
9. Which of the following words is a root? (　　　)
A. International. B. Nation.
C. National. D. Internationalists.
10. The expansion of vocabulary in modern English depends chiefly on ______. (　　　)
A. borrowing B. semantic change
C. word-formation D. reviving archaic words
11. The word “brainstorming” belongs to ______ .(　　　)
A. adjective compounds B. noun compounds
C. verb compounds D. adverb compounds
12. ______does not generally change the word-class of the stem but only modifies its meaning. (　　　)
A. Prefixation B. Suffixation
C. Affixation D. Derivation
13. A word is the combination of form and______. (　　　)
A. spelling B. pronunciation
C. meaning D. sound
14. ______ is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the human mind.(　　　)
A. Reference B. Concept
C. Sense D. Motivation
15. The meaning given in the dictionary and forming the core of word-meaning is ______. (　　　)
A. grammatical meaning B. lexical meaning
C. conceptual meaning D. associative meaning
16. The opposite of semantic elevation in meaning change is called ______. (　　　)
A. derivation B. deterioration
C. purification D. pejoration
17. One of the interesting features about a language is that there are a great many more ______ than ______ in it. (　　　)
A. hyponyms ... homonyms B. homonyms ... hyponyms
C. synonyms ... antonyms D. antonyms ...synonyms
18. Relative synonyms also called______ are similar or nearly the same in denotation, but  embrace different degrees of a given quality. (　　　)
A. close-synonyms B. respondent-synonyms
C. near-synonyms D. dependent-synonyms
19. Angel, martyr and paradise have their meaning______ because of the influence of Christianity. (　　　)
A. elevated B. degraded
C. narrowed D. extended
20. Word-meaning changes by modes of extension, narrowing, degradation, elevation and______.(　　　)
A. sense B. reference
C. association D. transfer
21. The well-known semanticist Ullmann notes, “language is more______ than civilization, material as well as moral.” (　　　)
A. creative B. conservative
C. radical D. constructive
22. Which of the following is NOT one of the types of context? (　　　)
A. Linguistic context. B. Non-linguistic context.
C. Extra-linguistic context. D. Intra-linguistic context.
23. Which of the following may NOT lead to ambiguity? (　　　)
A. Grammatical structure. B. Polysemy.
C. Antonymy. D. Hyponymy.
24. Which of the following is NOT true about linguistic context? (　　　)
A. It can be subdivided into grammatical context and lexical context.
B. It embraces the people, time and place.
C. It refers to the words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears.
D. It may cover a paragraph, a whole chapter and even the entire book.
25. The idiom “live by one’s pen” is a ______as far as figures of speech are concerned.(　　　)
A. simile B. metaphor
C. metonymy D. personification
26. “Cut and driect” is an idiom ______in nature. (　　　)
A. verbal B. nominal
C. adjectival D. adverbial
27. The change of idiom “A round peg in the squarest of holes” from the original form is ______.(　　　)
A. dismembering B. position-shifting
C. addition D. shortening
28. According to the textbook, the best-known unabridged dictionary is______. (　　　)
A. The Word Book Dictionary
B. The Encyclopedia Americana
C. Webster’s New World Dictionary
D. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
29. Which of the following dictionaries is NOT a bilingual dictionary? (　　　)
A. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation.
B. A New English-Chinese Dictionary.
C. Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.
D. A Chinese-English Dictionary (1995).
30. Which of the following is true about an American Dictionary? (　　　)
A. It is always better than a British dictionary.
B. It contains more encyclopedic information in the main body.
C. One can never expect to find British usages in it.
D. It includes more grammatical information.

Ⅱ. Complete the following statements with proper words  or expressions according to the course book. (15%)
31. A word is a ______ form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic  function.
32. In the Middle English period, the Norman Conquest started a continual flow of ______  words into English.
33. The basic form of a word which cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity is  called a ______.
34. The method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes is called ______.
35. Words such as “vicious, tyrant, determined, famous, notorious” usually indicate the speaker’s  attitude towards the person or thing in question. They have ______ meaning in themselves.
36. A word which is related to other words is related to them in ______.
37. Car which used to be a “two-wheel cart drawn by horses and used in ______ ”has taken on  the meaning “automobile” with the development of modern car industry.
38. In the sentence “Copernicus believed in a heliocentric universe, rather than in the geocentric  theory.”, the word “heliocentric” is explained by the clue of ______ structure.
39. Due to structural ______ of idioms, the word order of the idiom “by twos and threes”  cannot be turned into “by th