2013年专四作文真题附范文:节约花钱

作者词汇基本功不错，建议今后多用学术词汇；可适当增加从句和复杂句使用；文章层次不够分明，缺少组织，需注意文章整体的组织结构。

Causes of Semantic Evolution In the course of the development of language old words die out, and new words are added and existing words change their meanings. It is obvious that the gradual change of meaning in words is a universal feature of human language. At the same time, when new objects and new ideas emerge, it is necessary for us to give them a new name or to express them in a new way. What’s more, when a word loses its old meaning and comes to refer to something altogether different, the result is a change of word meaning. Change of meaning can be brought about by many causes. First, historical cause is a key factor. The world is changing. The form of those words which have a diachronic development is retained, but the conceptions and meaning of those words are totally changed. In ancient time, feather was called “pen” by westerners as a tool of writing. Then when it comes to a new age, people no longer use feather to write. Instead, what people use is ball-pen and gel ink pen. But the word “pen” is still used to mean a tool of writing. Similarly, the word car meant “two-wheeled vehicle for carrying loads. With the emergence and prosperity of automobile industry, the word car was first applied to the automobile in 1895, that is to say, it means a usually four-wheeled automotive vehicle designed for passenger transportation. Second, the language is changing. Linguistic causes. For instance, there has been a tendency towards ellipsis in English. The original sense of the word full means to descend or go down freely, wheres the other meaning of this word is autumn because of the ellipsis of the phrase “fall of leaves”. In addition, English language incorporated new words into it from other languages. Deer used to denote animals. The word “animal” in Latin and “beast” in French shared the same meaning with “deer”. In order to distinguish the three synonyms, the meaning of “deer” was narrowed down into a certain kind of animal. “Animal” kept its original meaning. “Beast” was endowed with the meaning of a dangerous and ferocious. Third, human being is changing. In the primitive society, there is no hierarchy, and everyone is equal.While with social progress and quick development of human beings, the social hierarchy came into being, so there is lowliness and nobleness among human beings. Noble had a prejudice against peasant, as a result, the meaning of words falls into dispute because the society prejudice. For example, villain now denotes a man guilty of evil deeds, but the original sense of villain is a farmer that is neutral. Wench is a word describing a country girl originally, while now it just means a girl of loose character. To put it in a nutshell, the world, the language, and human beings are all changing with the time goes. change of meaning is a commonplace, and indeed it would appear to be fundamental in living language.Almost every word we use today has a slightly different meaning from the one it has a century ago. And a century ago it had a slightly different meaning from the one it had a century before that.