TOPIC 6:0 Vocabulary Building and

Dictionary Reference

Words Recognition
 Word History
Words have histories, the study of the history or
origin of a word, also known as etymology is a
very resourceful technique of learning
vocabulary.
The histories of many words in current English are
associated with myths of Ancient Greeks and
Romans.
One can not boast of being a panjandrum of English
usage without the possession of capacious
knowledge of Ancient Greeks and Roman
mythologies.
 Words Recognition
• As your vocabulary grows, your pleasure in
reading and your ease in writing grows.
• Various methods are used:
• Using a vocabulary notebook
• Using context
• Using structure
• Word analysis: word building
 Words Recognition
• Using a Vocabulary Notebook
• Setting up a vocabulary notebook. Have a
vocabulary notebook with for each subject. When
reading jot down new words. After reading use a
dictionary to find out their meanings.
• Using other study methods:
Reviewing new words with flash cards.
Reviewing new words with tape recorder.
Reviewing new words with a partner.
 Words Recognition
• Using Context
Context is the textual environment in which the
word is found. Textual environment provides
sufficient clues in the way in which the word is
used in text.
• Consider the word: *pad*
• eg.Do not pad your answer, save your time &
effort.
 Words Recognition
• Reread the sentence living out unfamiliar word.
• Examine the surrounding words if they provide
any clue.
• Use the clues to get the meaning of the word.
• Read the sentence again substituting your guess.
• Check your guess by looking up the word in a
dictionary.
• Write the word & the dictionary meaning in your
notebook.
 Words Recognition
• Using context in interpreting meaning
• A word out of context can have several shades
of meanings.
• It is context that restricts a word to particular
meaning.
• Therefore, using context to interpret a word is
learning a word in its real action.
 Words Recognition
• Using Structure
Involves looking at the grammatical relationship
between the word concerned & other words
around it.
Enables to know the grammatical category of given
word.
Helps to understand grammatical collision of given
words.
eg. Fond  fond of
Agree agree with
 Word Building
• Involves seeking how the word was built up by
breaking it into parts to get the base form.
• Definition of Terms
• Base is a form to which a rule of word
formation is applied.
• Stem is the part of a word remaining after
every affix has been removed.
 Processes of Word Formation
Chief processes
Affixation
Conversion ( Zero affixation )
Compounding

Minor processes
Clipping
Blending
Acronym
 Affixation
a) Prefixes: changes word class.
eg: en  enrich, enlarge, endanger.
re  redo; reappear; remake
Pilot → co-pilot
Operate → cooperate
Prefixation Processes
1) Negative prefixes
2) Reversative prefixes
3) Prefixes of degree or size
4) Prefixes of attitude
5) Locative prefixes
 Prefixation Processes
• Negative Prefixes
un “the opposite of” adj unfair
“not” participles unassuming
unexpected

dis (as for un) adj disloyal

verb dislike
nouns disfavour
 Prefixation Processes
• Reversative Prefixes
un “to reverse act.” verb untie
“ to deprive of “ unhorse

de (as for un) verbs defrost

deform

dis (as for un) verbs disconnect

participles discoloured
Nouns discontent
 Prefixation Processes
• Prefixes of Degree or Size
Arch “ highest ‘ noun archbishop
“ worst” (mainly human) archenemy
archrivals

over ‘ too much’ verb overreact

participles overdressed
adjectives overconfident

hyper ‘extremely’ adj. hypersensitive

hypercritical
 Prefixation Processes
• Prefixes of Attitude
co ‘with’, ‘joint’ verb cooperate
Noun copilot

anti ‘against’ noun antimissile

Adverbs anticlockwise.
 Prefixation Processes
• Locative Prefixes
sub ‘beneath’ nouns subway
submarine
‘Lesser in rank’ adjectives subconscious
verbs sublet.

trans ‘across’, ‘from

1 plc-athr’ denominal adj transatlantic
verbs transplant
transform
transfigure
 Suffixation Processes
b)Suffixes: changes meanings and functions
(inflectional & derivational)
eg: Engine → Engineer
London → Londoner
Suffixation processes:
1) Noun = noun suffixes
2) Verb = noun suffixes
3) Verb suffixes
4) Adj = noun suffixes
5) Noun = adj . suffixes
 Suffixation Processes
• Noun = Noun Suffixes
-er (person engaged in an occupations/activity) Engineer

(Inhabitant of x) Londoner
-let (Small, unimportant) Booklet, piglet
-hood (Status) Boyhood
Adulthood
-ship (as for hood) (Status) Friendship
(Condition) Dictatorship
-dom (as for hood) (Domain) Kingdom
 Suffixation Processes
• Verb→Non Suffixes
- er, or V→N ‘agentive and instrumental’ Driver
- Receiver
Actor

- ant V→N Inhabitant

Disinfectant

- ee V→Pn ‘passive’ Employee

Addressee

-al V→N ‘action’ Refusal

Dismissal
 Suffixation Processes
• Verb Suffixes
-ify N/Adj→Verbs causative Simplify

-ise (as for -ify) causative Popularise

-en Adj→Verbs causative Deafen

become x Sadden
 Suffixation Processes
• Adj→Noun Suffixes
-ness Adj→N ‘state, Happiness
‘quality’

-ity ( As for -ness ) Sanity

•
 Suffixation Processes
• Noun→Adjectives Suffixes
-ful N→Adj. ‘having…’ useful
‘giving…’ helpful

-less N→Adj ‘without…’ childless

-ly N→Adj ‘having the

qualities of …’ cowardly

-like ( as for -ly) childlike

 Conversion ( Zero affixation )
This is the derivational process whereby an item
changes its word class without the addition of an
affix. Assigning the base to a different word class
without changing its form.
eg. They released him (V)
They ordered his release (N)
They walk fast
She has gone just for an evening walk.
They love each other.
Yes, that’s an example of a true love.
 Conversion ( Zero affixation )
• Verb = Noun
i) John expressed his private doubts about
Lawrence's sanity .
You can complain, but I doubt if it will make any
difference

ii) Cover the pan when the sauce boils

Put a cover on the bowl.
•
 Conversion ( Zero affixation )
• Noun = Verb
i) Shake the bottle before you open it
The wine is bottled at the vineyard .
It is far better to cry than to bottle up your feelings.

ii) Babies have soft skins

Add the skinned and sliced tomatoes

iii)The nurse is coming to give you an injection.

He is supposed to nurse his wife
•
 Conversion ( Zero affixation )
• Adjective = Verb
i) They remained on the terrace after dinner,
enjoying the calm of the evening (N).
Charles tried to calm the frightened children (V)
As you enter the exam room, keep calm and try
not to panic (Adj)
ii) It’s an empty box (Adj)
Your glass is empty – can I fill it up? (Adj)
I had to completely empty out my bag to find the
keys (V) .
 Compounding
A compound is a unit consisting of two or more
bases. Adding one base to another.
eg:
Noun compounds
Beesting
Earthquake
Headache
Flashlight
Firingsquad
 Compounding
V & Object Compound.
Washing machine
Air conditioning
Brain washing
Verbless compounds
Hydrogen bomb
Oil well.
 Clipping
Denotes taking away of one or more syllables
from a word.
At the initial
eg. Telephone – phone
At the final
eg. Photograph – photo
At both ends.
eg. Influenza – flue
 Blends
Two words joined with a subtraction of some
letters or syllables.
eg. Brunch Breakfast + Lunch
Motel Motor+ hotel
Smog Smoke + fog
 Acronyms
Words formed from the initial letters (or larger parts) of
words

eg. TV television.
CUF Civic united front
UN United Nations

Others pronounced as words

eg. radar (Radio detecting and ranging)
 More about Vocabulary Building
English vocabulary has loan words from other
languages. Learning meanings of new words also
entails recognising the origins of English foreign
words in order to make correct interpretation of
such words.
Examples of loan word from Latin:
Inter alia  among others
Modus operandi  manner or way of working
(doing things)
Quid pro quo  something given or received
for something else
Prima facie  based on first consideration,
seems to be true.
 Examples of loan words from French
Amour-propre  self love, self esteem, vanity.
Bete noire  a person who is hated and
detested.
Bisto  a small or simple bar, restaurant or
night club
 What is a Dictionary?
• A dictionary is a reference book with a list of
words which are usually in alphabetical order
together with a guide to their meanings,
pronunciation, spelling or their equivalents in
other languages.
• Dictionary Typology
• There is no single approach used to tell the
number of dictionaries produced in all human
life history.
 Types of Dictionaries
• The following are the approaches used to classify
dictionary:
• The number of languages used to compile the
dictionary. From it, there are three types of
dictionaries as follows:
• Monolingual dictionary: made up of one
language.
• Bilingual dictionary: made up of two languages
• Multilingual dictionary: made up of more than
two languages.
 Types of Dictionaries
• The age of the users approach gives us two
types of dictionaries:
• Children’s dictionaries: this type of dictionary
has the following characteristics like big font
size, attractive colour and few citation forms
with pictures
• School dictionaries: dictionaries of different
subjects used by school going age children.
 Types of Dictionaries
• The size- based approach/type:
• Unabridged dictionary: it is a big dictionary and
consists of all words in that language at that
particular time. It cannot be carried easily, usually
are put on the table.
• Desk dictionary: it is relatively big but not as
unabridged .Consists of about 60000 words to
100,000 words
• Concise dictionary: it is a little bit big with less
than 60000 words
 Types of Dictionaries
• Compact dictionary: it is relatively small but
bigger than pocket dictionary
• Pocket dictionary: it is small and portable
dictionary
• Vest dictionary: a very small and portable
dictionary
• Mini dictionary: it is the smallest one,
normally with words of specialized fields
 Dictionary Information
• Information in a Dictionary
• Any good dictionary will provide you with the
following information:
• Lexical Entry
• This is a headword appearing in its
appropriate alphabetical place in a dictionary.
It is always in black ink and is the word with
minimal affixation
 Dictionary Information
• Spellings
• A good dictionary shows the conventional
spellings of the words as well as the spellings
of irregular verb forms and plurals in both
varieties of English (AmE and BrE).e.g.
• Colour- color
• Programme- program
• Center - centre
 Dictionary Information
• Pronunciation
• Any good dictionary has a special way showing
how words are pronounced and stressed,
including differences in pronunciation
between AmE and BrE. For example in the
words like bird, park the sound / r/ is
pronounced AmE while in BrE the sound /r/ is
pronounced.
 Dictionary Information
• Word class
• A good dictionary will show whether the word is
commonly used as a noun, pronoun, verb,
adjective, adverb, conjunction or preposition,
although this is largely determined by actual use
in a sentence.
• Labels: as words are used in different situations &
in different varieties of Eng., labels like: BrE, AmE,
Infml, fml, euph, are used.
 Dictionary Information
• Syllable division: for entries which have more
than one syllables, small dots are used in b/n
syllables to indicate boundaries.
• Grammatical correlation: this is word
association in usage. Words usually co-occur
with certain other words to have natural
grammatical pattern. eg “fond of”, “agree
with”, “strong coffee”,
• Homographs: words that have the same
spelling but are different in some other way.
eg meaning, origin, grammar.
 Dictionary Information
• Meaning
• Since almost every word has more than one
meaning, a good dictionary will provide a full
range of meanings that a word has in use. To
show this meanings are always numbered. In
cases where the word changes word class, say
from verb to adjective to assume a new
meaning, such changes are also indicated
 Dictionary Information
• Usage
• A good dictionary shows how word is put to use whether
the word is used as a dialect, colloquial, a slang, taboo or
euphemism
• Idioms
• Are fixed phrases usually made up of a verb followed by a
noun phrase. An idiom has its own special meaning and it is
often impossible to guess meaning of the word phrase by
looking at the separate words that it is formed from. Or
these are phrases where by the meaning of it does not
associate or correlate with the words that form it. For
example, kick the bucket- to die, Rub shoulders with- be
friendly with, Hit a snag- be faced with a problem.
 Dictionary Information
• Phrasal verbs
• These are groups of words usually made up of a
verb followed by an adverb and or a preposition.
These groups of words act like verbs and have
special meanings which are different from the
meanings of individual words which make up the
phrases. For example look down upon- despise,
look up to – respect, put up with- tolerate
without complaining
• Phrasal verbs like idioms have separate entries
listed in alphabetical order in the dictionary.
 Dictionary Information
• Inflections
• This is a change made in the form of a word in
relation to its use. For example, the pronoun ‘he’
changes to ‘ him’ in the object position, ‘crisis’
changes to ‘crises’ when it is in plural form and
the word ‘swim’ changes to ‘swam’ it is past
tense. A good dictionary will usually show
inflections of words whose written forms or
pronunciation is irregular or when there is a
likelihood of confusion.
 Dictionary Information
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Abbreviations are shortened forms such as:
• NB- for note well
• PhD – Doctor of Philosophy
• cf – for compare
• Acronyms on the other hand, are a group of
letters of the name of something. New acronyms
are freely produced especially by scientist and
administrators and particular for names of
organisation
 Dictionary Information
• UDOM- University of Dodoma
• COD- Cash on Delivery
• UNICEF- United Nations International
Children’s Fund
• RADAR- Radio Detecting and Ranging