Some English words are made up of the same part and have different beginnings and different endings, such as import, export, report and transport. All these words, you can see, have the same “port”, which come from the Latin word, meaning “to carry” or “to move” from one place to another. And according to the bit at the beginning, which we call the prefix the meaning changes. “Import” means “to carry in” or “to bring into a country”, “export”, “ex” means “out of”, so this word means “to carry out of the country”, “re” means “back”, so the “report” means “to tell somebody, to bring back information to somebody”, “transport”, “trans” means “across” and it means “to carry across one place to another”.
Let’s look at the following words: supporter, reporter, importer and exporter. You can see that in this case these words are nouns which are made up of the verbs plus a suffix, thus meaning a person who completes the verb. So supporter means somebody who supports. A reporter is somebody who reports. Importer is somebody who imports and exporter is somebody who exports, and so on.
1. In the first sentence the word “part” means _______.
A. different beginnings and different endings B. the same part that has several meanings
C. the root of the word D. the same root that has different meanings
2. By adding a prefix or a suffix to a root, we can get a word which has _______.
A. the meaning of a Latin word B. a different meaning
C. the meaning of “in” or “out of” D. a lot of meanings
3. We can get a noun _______.
A. just by adding “er” to verbs B. by changing a prefix C. only by adding “er” to a root D. by adding a suffix to a verb
4. According to the passage, if we talk about a man of refinement, you may guess that he must be _______.
A. a man having good manners and education B. a person who should be educated
C. somebody having bad manners D. a person punished by somebody else
(1—4 CBDA)
【答案解析】短文介绍了英语构词法的有关知识。
1. C。词义猜测题。从Some English words are made up of the same part and have different beginnings and different endings 可知，part 应是词根，而不是前缀或后缀。
2. B。细节题。根据 And according to the bit at the beginning, which we call the prefix the meaning changes. 可推知，词根加上不同的前、后缀，可得到不同的意义。A和C的说法太片面。
3. D。细节题。根据 You can see that in this case these words are nouns which are made up of the verbs plus a suffix, thus meaning a person who completes the verb.可知，在动词后加上一个后缀，就变成了名词。
4. A。推断题。文中说在动词后加上一个后缀，就变成了名词。refine是动词，本意为“净化，精炼，纯净”，加上后缀 -ment 后变成了名词，故A最佳。
