______ is a process by which a word of wider meaning acquires a specialized sense. For example，the original meaning of the word“meat” was food and the modern meaning is edible flesh.

Analyze and comment on three adjectives used in the following sentences based on synonym difference in connotation.

[A] Look at that little boy.

[B] Look at that small boy.

[C] Look at that tiny boy.

What are the four main sources of English synonyms?

What are contextual clues? Guess the meaning of the words underlined in the following sentences and tell what contextual clues have helped you in arriving at the meaning.(a) Their greatest fear was of a (conflagration), since fire would destroy their flimsy wooden settlement before help could arrive.(b) As the fighting on all fronts reached its peak, the economy neared its (nadir).

Comment on the following groups of words to illustrate types of meaning of words and their relationship.

Group 1: “took, taught, became”

Group 2: “have, has, had, had, having”

Please illustrate the logical relationships of the following terms: free morphemes, bound root, derivational affixes, affixes, morphemes, inflectional affixes, bound morphemes.

Prefixation and suffixation are two subclasses of affixation. Please define prefixation and suffixation and explain the difference between them. Use “polite—impolite”, “happy—happiness” to illustrate your point.

deletion of idioms

lexical context

homonymy

conversion