英语专业八级满分听力 6

[00:24.06]Test Six

[00:28.55]SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

[00:28.54]In this section,you will hear a mini-lecture.

[00:31.72]You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY.

[00:34.34]While listening, take notes on the important points.

[00:37.84]Your notes will not be marked,

[00:39.81]but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture.

[00:43.97]When the lecture is over,

[00:46.27]you’ll be given two minutes to check your notes,

[00:48.56]and another 10 minutes to complete the gap-filling task.

[00:51.84]Now listen to the mini-lecture.

[00:54.25]Good morning.

[00:56.76]Today’s lecture is about the motivation for words.

[01:00.27]First, what is motivation?

[01:02.56]Motivation deals with the connection between name and sense.

[01:06.72]In the previous lecture,

[01:08.47]we have mentioned two rival schools of thought:

[01:11.31]one school is the Naturalists,

[01:13.39]who believed that there was an intrinsic connection between sound and sense;

[01:17.65]the other school is the Conventionalists,

[01:20.28]who held that the connection between sound and sense was purely a matter of tradition and convention.

[01:25.64]The first motivation is the onomatopoeic motivation.

[01:29.25]The word onomatopoeia is derived from the Greek word onomatopoeia,

[01:33.85]which means “word-making”.

[01:35.81]Onomatopoeic motivation means defining the principle of motivation by sound.

[01:41.28]The sounds of such words as cuckoo,

[01:44.24]ding-dong, buzz seem to be appropriate to their senses.

[01:48.06]But it has to be pointed out that onomatopoeic words

[01:51.89]constitute only a small part of the vocabulary.

[01:54.73]According to Stephen Ullmann,

[01:56.95]onomatopoeic formation can be divided into primary onomatopoeia

[02:00.78]and secondary onomatopoeia.

[02:02.53]Primary onomatopoeia means the imitation of sound by sound.

[02:06.90]Here the sound is truly an “echo to the sense”.

[02:10.40]Terms like crack, growl, hum, roar, squeak,

[02:15.65]whiz and a great many fall into this category.

[02:19.04]Secondary onomatopoeia means that certain sounds and sound-sequences

[02:23.74]are associated with certain senses in an expressive relationship.

[02:27.79]In this form, the sounds evoke a movement,

[02:30.42]as in such words: quiver, wriggle, slither.

[02:34.03]The sound may also evoke some physical or moral quality,

[02:37.75]usually unfavorable.

[02:39.39]For example, gloom, slimy, sloppy, sloth.

[02:43.21]Some of these onomatopoeic terms have certain elements in common.

[02:47.04]For example, the sound /sn/ may express three types of experiences.

[02:52.18]They are, first, “breath-noise” as in sniff, snuff, snore, snort,

[02:58.77]second,“quick separation or movement” as in snip, snap, snatch,

[03:04.79]and third, “creeping” as in snake, snail, sneak.

[03:09.83]Final groups have similar functions.

[03:12.88]For example, the combination of –

[03:15.14]are at the end of a word suggests “big light or noise”

[03:18.74]as in blare, flare, glare, stare;

[03:22.90]the combination of -ump at the end of a word suggests “heavy fall”

[03:28.15]as in dump, crump, plump, slump, thump.

[03:32.75]Another interesting feature of onomatopoeic patterns

[03:36.79]is that they often work by vowel alternation.

[03:39.54]By substituting one vowel for another, one can express different noises.

[03:44.35]For example: snip---snap, sniff---snuff, flip---flap---flop.

[03:50.81]Closely connected to this tendency are reduplicated words and phrases,

[03:55.84]such as wishy-washy, tit-tat, tick-tock, click-clack.

[04:01.09]It should be noted that many onomatopoeic forms are based on alternations

[04:06.95]of not vowels but of initial consonants,

[04:09.68]such as higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, namby-pamby, roly-poly etc.

[04:15.92]The second motivation is semantic motivation.

[04:19.53]Semantic motivation means that motivation is based on semantic factors.

[04:23.90]It is a kind of mental association.

[04:26.85]When we speak of the bonnet of a car, a coat of paint,

[04:30.79]or when we speak of potatoes cooked in their jackets,

[04:33.75]these expressions are motivated by the similarity

[04:36.81]between the garments and the objects referred to.

[04:39.21]In the same way, when we say the cloth for the clergy,

[04:42.38]“town and gown” for “town and university”,

[04:45.01]there is semantic motivation due to the fact

[04:47.74]that the garments in question are closely associated

[04:50.65]with the persons they designate.

[04:52.17]Both types of expressions are figurative:

[04:54.79]the former are metaphoric and the latter are metonymic.

[04:58.84]We can see that semantic motivation is closely connected with figures of speech.

[05:02.99]Here I’ll name three of them.

[05:05.29]First, metaphor.

[05:06.60]Metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison.

[05:10.32]For example: “he has a heart of stone”.

[05:13.06]“The curtain of night has fallen.”

[05:15.57]Another figure of speech is metonymy.

[05:18.30]It is a device in which we name something by one of its attributes,

[05:22.13]as in crown for king, the turf for horse-racing,

[05:26.51]the White House for the US president.

[05:29.46]Similar to metonymy is synecdoche,

[05:32.63]which means the substitution of a part for a whole or a whole for a part,

[05:36.68]as in bread for food, the army for a soldier, etc.

[05:40.97]Apart from onomatopoeic motivation and semantic motivation,

[05:45.13]there is also logical motivation.

[05:47.32]Logical motivation deals with the problem of defining a concept by means of logic.

[05:52.46]A definition has two forms.

[05:54.76]A common form of definition

[05:56.43]is“This means such and such.”

[05:58.94]“Fat” means “having much flesh”.

[06:01.57]Another form of definition is

[06:03.65]“This means the same as that”

[06:05.41]or“This is equivalent to that”.

[06:07.38]“Fat” means “the same as obese’.

[06:10.00]These two forms of the definition show that a definition has two parts:

[06:14.70]the word being defined,

[06:16.46]and the definition that is being made.

[06:18.43]Giving a definition involves two steps to be taken.

[06:22.03]One step is to identify the concept of a genus,

[06:24.99]that is, a class of things made up of two or more subordinate classes or species.

[06:29.80]The other step is to identify the attributes distinguishing

[06:33.52]one species from other similar species in the same genus.

[06:37.13]A combination of these two approaches helps to define a concept.

[06:41.07]For example, in the 1950’s,

[06:44.13]there appeared a new crisis gripping the minds of part of the American youth.

[06:48.07]These young people felt disturbance and anxiety

[06:51.24]about their personality development and adjustment.

[06:53.97]This crisis is called an identity crisis.

[06:57.14]The word “crisis’ is a genus,

[06:59.55]which consists of two or more species,

[07:02.29]such as spiritual crisis, economic crisis, political crisis, etc.

[07:08.19]The expression “identity crisis” is used to distinguish itself from other crisis.

[07:13.33]So far we have covered the three motivations for words:

[07:17.05]onomatopoeic motivation, semantic motivation, and logical motivation.

[07:22.74]However, it is not always easy to identify clearly the motivation

[07:26.35]for each word in our vocabulary.

[07:28.20]In such case, we may say the motivation is lost.

[07:31.70]There may be two factors which lead to loss of motivation.

[07:34.88]One is a change in the morphological structure of a word,

[07:38.37]and the other factor is change of meaning.

[07:40.78]In next lecture, we’ll discuss these two changes in detail.

[07:44.06]This is the end of today’s lecture. Thank you for your attention.