【正确答案】Semantic change plays a very important role in widening the vocabulary of a language. Since language is symbolic, each word serves as a symbol in relation to a specific meaning. In this sense, we need infinite numbers of words or symbols to code the physical entities and our experiences, which will ultimately prove impossible and obstruct the smooth operation of communication. This problem can be solved by making the existing words multisemous, that is, to give a new concept to an old form, thus the meaning of a form is multiplied. There are three kinds of semantic changes, namely, broadening, narrowing, and meaning shift. New words or expressions are created through the following processes.
(1)Invention
Since economic activities are the most important and dynamic in human life, many new lexical items come directly from the consumer items, their producers or their brand names, such as Kodak, Coke, nylon, Xeros Frigidaire, granola, and others to cope with the Invention of new entities.
(2)Blending
Blending is a relatively complex form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words. For example, transfer + resister → transistor; smoke + fog → smog.
Blending can also occur at a high cognitive level. From the similarity in the two expressions She was on the verge of a crackup and she was on the verge of breakdown, the confusion of crack up and break down leads to the coining of crackdown. The same is true of riffle (ripple + shuffle), and rampacious (rampageous+rapacious). This sort of blending is labeled specially as fusion.
(3)Abbreviation
A great number of English words have undergone the process of abbreviation in their etymological history. It is also called clipping, that is, a new word (as shown in the left column below) is created by cutting the final part (or with a slight variation) (Eg. advertisement → ad), or cutting the initial part (E.g. aeroplane → plane ), or Cutting both the initial and final parts accordingly (E.G. influenza → flu). Abbreviation is also popular in educational domain, such as chem for chemistry, e.g. ram for examination, gym for gymnasium, lab for laboratory, math for mathematics, etc.
(4)Acronym
Acronym is made up from the first letters of the name of an organization, which has a heavily modified headword. CIA, WTO, WHO, FB1 are the examples. This process is also widely used in shortening extremely long words of word groups in science, technology and other special fields. For example,
Aids ← acquired immune deficiency syndrome;
Radar ← radio detecting and ranging;
MANIAC ← mathematical analyzer numerical integrator and computer;
COBOL ← common business oriented language;
WASP ← white Anglo-Saxon protestant;
VAT ← value added tax.
(5)Back-formation
Back-formation refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. Take televise for example, the word television predated the occurrence of the word televise. The first part of the word television was pulled out and analyzed as a root, even though no such root occurs elsewhere in the English language. For example, enthusiasm → enthuse; gangling → gangle; editor → edit; peddler → peddle; hawker → hawk; laser → lase; calmative → calm.
(6)Analogical creation
The principle of Analogical creation can account for the co-existence of two forms, regular and irregular, in the conjugation of some English verbs. For instance, people know quite well that the past tense suffix for English verb should beed, and they tend to apply it to all verbs. As a result, we have both the old forms and the new forms for many English verbs. For example:
work → wrought / worked; beseech → besought / beseeched; slay → slew / slayed.
(7)Borrowing
English in its development has managed to widen her vocabulary by borrowing words from other languages. Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Arabic and other languages have all played an active role in this process. Throughout its history, the English language has adopted a vast number of words from various sources. For example:
Greek: flokati, epilepsy; Latin: cancer, tumor; French: mortgage, entail; Spanish: junta, macho; Italian: autostrada, cica; German: rankfurther, hamburger; Chinese: taii, tea; Japanese: Jodo.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查词汇变化的相关内容。新的单词或词语通过新创、混成、缩写、缩略、逆构、类推以及借词等方法产生。