A Study Of English Lexical Blocking

Lexical pragmatics, as a new branch of linguistics, focuses on the process by whichlinguistically specified meanings of words in use are modified, and concerns on the interfacestudy among pragmatics, semantics, lexicon and cognitive linguistics. Lexical blocking is theobserved phenomenon where the existence of one form prevents the creation and use ofanother form that would otherwise be expected to occur. This phenomenon is one hot field oflexical pragmatics, and quite a few scholars have shown strong interest by doing constantresearch.However, there exist shortcomings in the previous studies. First, the classification oflexical blocking is not clear, and there is no criterion to obey. Second, the interpretation oflexical blocking is not very systematic and comprehensive. Based on the lexical pragmatics,this thesis focuses on lexical blocking, discusses and analyzes lexical blocking that occurs atall categories of English vocabulary in depth, aiming at giving a detailed description of thephenomenon. In addition, this thesis uses the related theories of pragmatics, historicallinguistics and sociolinguistics to provide a systematical explanation from the perspective ofcommunicative psychology, recognition mechanism, understanding path, the history oflanguage changes, and the rules of language acquisition, and thus help English learners have amore profound understanding of them. The significance lies in: theoretically, theinterpretation of lexical blocking with the help of some linguistic theories broadens thehorizon of research, and deepens language learners’ understanding of English vocabulary.Practically, this thesis is full of significance in the study and teaching of vocabulary, and theachievements of this thesis can be applied into the vocabulary teaching and make studentshave good understanding of English words, meanwhile, it is helpful in the study of vocabularyand compiling dictionaries.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter1is the introduction to the thesis. It mainlygives an introduction to the background, the purpose and significance of the thesis, and themethodology and data collection. Chapter2is the literature review. It mainly introduces the history and current status of lexical pragmatics and lexical blocking in detail. Chapter3is therelevant theoretical framework. It mainly involves theories of pragmatics, economy oflanguage, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Chapter4is the systematic description oflexical blocking occurring in all categories of English, such as collocation and word meaning.Through a large amount of examples, this chapter discusses lexical blocking systematically.Chapter5is the detailed explanation for English lexical blocking from the perspective ofcommunicative psychology, recognition mechanism, understanding path, the history oflanguage changes, and the law of language acquisition under the help of related theories.Chapter6is the conclusion of this thesis. Major findings, implications for English teachingand limitations of the study are presented.