Conceptual Meaning Of English Word And Its Formation

Vocabulary is one of the three essential elements of language. The famous linguist Wilkins said, "Without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed." As an important component of language as well as the basis of linguistic abilities; vocabulary study is very important in language teaching. As one of the indispensable components of language system, it is considered as the most difficult component of language knowledge for a learner to grasp. Students can learn a word pronunciation and its grammatical rules in a restricted period of time. It is because either of them is relatively stable, but it is not the same case with word meaning, which has become a difficult point for students to acquire. This is confirmed by our poll of the students in Changchun University of Science and Technology. With the question "What is the most difficult to learn, pronunciation, grammatical rules or word meaning?", 74.07% of the students answered that word meaning is the most difficult part for them to acquire. Therefore, it is crucial to find an effective way to teach English word meaning, which is the purpose of the present thesis.In Semantics the Study of Meaning, Geoffrey Leech divides word meaning into seven kinds: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning and thematic meaning. The diversity of word meaning makes it more difficult for the students to acquire. They belong to different levels or exist in the form of multidimensionality. Among them, conceptual meaning is the basic meaning. This article focuses on the conceptual meaning and the analysis of its formation. Firstly, the article carries the analysis from the semantic, the pragmatic and the psycholinguistic angles. Secondly, it summarizes the organization of concept and characteristics of conceptual meanings. Thirdly, it puts forward correlative proposals.