英语专业八级满分听力 test-2

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[00:28.49]Test Two
[00:29.81]SECTION A  MINI-LECTURE
[00:33.05]In this section, you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY.
[00:38.05]While listening,take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked,
[00:43.74]but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture.
[00:47.56]When the lecture is over,you’ll be given two minutes to check your notes,
[00:52.49]and another 10 minutes to complete the gap-filling task.
[00:55.66]Now listen to the mini-lecture.
[00:58.18]In this lecture, we’ll discuss English vocabulary. First, let’s define the term “vocabulary”.
[01:05.06]What is vocabulary? It usually refers to a complete inventory of the words in a language.
[01:10.98]But it may also refer to the words and phrases used in the variants of a language, such as dialect, register,
[01:17.64]terminology, etc. The vocabulary can be divided into active vocabulary and passive vocabulary.
[01:24.43]The active vocabulary refers to lexical items which a person uses.
[01:28.80]The passive vocabulary refers to the words which he understands.
[01:33.06]The English vocabulary is characterized by a mixture of native words and borrowed words.
[01:38.21]First, about the native words. Most of the native words are of Anglo-Saxon origin.
[01:43.56]They form the basic word stock of the English language. In the native stock,
[01:48.38]we find words denoting the commonest things necessary for life,
[01:52.05]such as those words denoting natural phenomena,divisions of the year, parts of the body,
[01:57.96]animals, foodstuffs, trees, fruits, human activity.
[02:02.23]And also other words denoting the most indispensable things.
[02:05.68]The native stock also includes auxiliary and modal verbs,
[02:09.61]pronouns, most numerals, prepositions and conjunctions. Though they are small in number,
[02:17.38]these words play no small part in linguistic performance and communication.
[02:20.77]Next, we come to borrowed words. Borrowed words are also known as loan-words.
[02:27.00]They refer to linguistic forms taken over by one language or dialect from another.
[02:31.93]The English vocabulary has replenished itself by continually
[02:36.08]taking over words from other languages over the centuries.
[02:39.04]The adoption of foreign words into the English language began even before the English came to England.
[02:45.27]We know that the Angles and Saxons formed a part of the Germanic people.
[02:49.21]Long before the Anglo-Saxons came to England,
[02:52.38]the Germanic people had been in contact with the civilization of Rome.
[02:55.98]Thus, Words of Latin origin denoting objects belonging to
[03:00.60]the Roman civilization gradually found their way into the English language.
[03:04.22]For example, wine, butter, cheese, inch, mile, mint, etc.
[03:11.88]When the English, or the Anglo-Saxons, were settled in England, they continued to borrow words from Latin,
[03:18.10]especially after Roman Christianity was introduced into the island in the sixth and seventh centuries.
[03:23.90]A considerable number of Latin words were adopted into the English language.
[03:28.06]These words chiefly signify things connected with religion or the services of the church,
[03:33.53]such as bishop, candle, creed, monk, priest, and a great many others.
[03:40.20]The English vocabulary also owes a great deal to the Danes and Northmen.
[03:46.55]From these settlers, English adopted a surprising number of words of
[03:50.04]Scandinavian origin that belong to the core-vocabulary today.
[03:53.87]Such as they, them, their, both, ill, die, egg, knife, low, skill, take, till, though, want, etc.
[04:08.53]The Norman Conquest in 1066 introduced a large number of French words into the English vocabulary.
[04:15.53]French adoptions were found in almost every section of the vocabulary.
[04:19.24]For example, in the section of law, there are such words as justice, evidence, pardon;
[04:25.48]in the section of warfare, there are conquer, victory; in religion, there are grace, repent, sacrifice;
[04:33.69]in architecture, there are castle, pillar, tower; in finance, there are pay, rent, ransom;
[04:42.65]in rank, there are prince, princess; in clothing, there are collar, mantlet; in food,
[04:51.29]there are dinner, feast, sauce, etc. In the first 43 lines of the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,
[04:59.99]there are 39 words of French origin. We can see the English vocabulary takes in so many words from French.
[05:06.98]And in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance swept Europe.
[05:12.56]It was a revival of art and literature based on ancient Greek learning.
[05:16.39]The Renaissance opened up a new source for the English vocabulary to enrich itself.
[05:21.09]And English borrowed many words from Greek through the medium of Latin, such as crisis, topic, coma, etc.
[05:29.30]a wide range of learned affixes are also from Greek, such as
[05:34.22]bio-, geo-, hydro-, auto-, homo-, para-, -ism, -logy, -graph, -meter, -gram and many others.
[05:45.92]From the sixteenth century forward, there was a great increase in the number of languages,
[05:50.73]and English borrowed many words from these languages.
[05:53.26]French continued to provide a considerable number of new words, for example,
[05:58.29]trophy, vase, moustache, unique, soup. English borrowed a lot of words from Italian in the field of art,
[06:06.28]music and literature, for example, model, sonnet, opera, quartet, etc.
[06:11.96]there was also a Spanish element in English,
[06:15.32]for example, potato, cargo, parade, cigar.
[06:19.81]Besides, German, Portuguese and Dutch were also fertile sources of loan words,
[06:24.62]for example, dock, zinc and plunder are from German; cobra, buffalo and pagoda are from Portuguese;
[06:32.72]tackle, buoy and skipper are from Dutch.
[06:36.11]At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a growth of international
[06:40.91]trade and the urge to colonize the known world,
[06:43.87]English made a number of direct adoptions from languages spoken outside Europe.
[06:48.36]Some examples are: sultan and ghoul from Arabic, lichi and typhoon from Chinese,
[06:55.14]shah and shawl from Persian, yoghurt from Turkish, czar from Russian.
[07:02.14]Since the end of the Second World War, still more loan words have been incorporated into the English vocabulary
[07:09.07]For example, cuisine from French, sushi from Japanese, mao tai from Chinese, and many others.
[07:16.39]In the twentieth century,
[07:17.98]it should be observed that English has created many words out of Latin and Greek elements,
[07:22.36]especially in the field of science and technology,
[07:25.09]such as antibiotic, astronaut, auto-visual, autolysis, etc.
[07:32.52]Although all these Latin and Greek derived words are distinctly learned or technical, they do not seem
[07:39.75]and, in this respect, they are very different from the recent loanwords from living languages,
[07:44.56]such as cappuccino, angst, and sputnik.
[07:48.27]Thus, for the Modern English period a distinction must be made
[07:52.09]between the adoptions from living languages
[07:54.29]and the formations derived from the two classical languages.
[07:57.34]That’s the end of today’s lecture. Next time we’ll concentrate on English word formation.
[08:02.49]Thank you for your attention!