The Study Of The Creation Of New Words In Post-Reform Period

Many books or papers written about Chinese lexicon usually emphasis that, Chinese lexicon still is the weak link comparing with others. This is not an exaggeration because even now Chinese lexicon is still in a relatively backward stage. And when it comes to the internal parts of Chinese lexicon, word-creation is the weak link of all. If one made a comprehensive survey of the history of Chinese lexicon, one could find out that instead making research in word-creation, people tend to study the structure of words. In the new era (post-reform), China changes deeply in politic, economic and culture. As the most sensitive aspect to the change of the society, words shows abundant of new features as well. The new words have always been the hot area in Chinese lexicon. One can find many books or papers discussing the generation, structure, pragmation of new words, but few papers focus on the special area of word-creation in new era. On the basis of the research of some predecessors and contemporaries, under the direction of the theories of lexicology and general linguistic, using cognitive linguistic, etymology, cultural linguistic, social linguistic and linguistic philosophy etc., we build a corpora and divide the new words into several categories. Then we describe and analysis the creation of new words, in order to make some preliminary study in word-creation m new era.This dissertation includes six chapters in all The first chapter makes a review of the history of the study of Chinese word-creation. During the early stage, study of word-creation was often mixed in the study of the structure. In other words, it has not become a independent area yet. No doubt that word-creation and the structure of words are closely related by totally different. When word-creation separated from the structure of words, it got the independence and laying foundations for subsequent research. In section 2, we conclude some mainly used systems of word-creation and compare them with each other. We believe that there is rationality in each system. They normally differs in the standard of determine the way that how word is created. Besides, it is quite important that the system of word-creation distinguishes from the system of structure. And the practicability of some system of word-creation should be high, which means people can actually use the ways in the system to analysis a word. In section 3 and 4, we conclude the study of the new words and some special ways in creating new words. They overlap to some extent since after the system of word-creation was build, left us nothing but to probe into a micro area such as the purpose and motivation of word-creation. The background, time and motivation of generating new words are relatively easily to know since they never exit before. The generation of new words draws lots of attention from researchers. Some rhetoric methods such as metaphor, simulation are widely used to create new words. Of course, sometimes it takes more than a single way to create a new wordChapter 2 discusses the foundation of word-creation in new era in general Quantitative analysis is the basic method here, We calculate the new words in our corpus from vary perspectives. Generally speaking, loan words grow a lot in new era. Indeed, the numbers of loan words increase a lot comparing with the time of 1949-1978. But our research do shows that the numbers of loan words lessen more or less comparing with the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. The number of syllable in Chinese words also changes, word with three syllables increase rapidly, which shows that the trend of double syllables may start to shift to triple syllables. And due to the increasing of triple-syllable-words, people use compound morpheme much more often. The compound morpheme is transformed from compound word, which includes two syllables at least. When most new words are double-syllable words, it is difficult to use compound morpheme to create new words. What’s more, if we divide the new era into three stages by ten years, we can easily find the word-creation is speeding up since there are more and more new things and new phenomena come into being.Chapter 3 mainly discusses the material of word-creation, which means the morpheme. Though no one ever pointed it out, but it is a fact that when we talk about word-creation, we mainly talk about the ways that word formed Of course, ways are quite important but it definitely not everything. Word-creation is an activity that serves the needs of communication and ways only are far from enough. Each and every word is created in some way with some material. Mostly used material is morpheme but it also includes syllable, character, alphabet, numbers, etc. These two different types of material should be treated separately. In this chapter, using the theory from cognitive linguistc, we analysis the meaning of morpheme undergo decategorization when used to create new words. Static meaning always changes somehow when used to create new words. When such change involves breaking of old category, it means the morpheme gets new features. In others words, it decategorized Decategorization is actually the cognitive pattern in language. People tend to learn something new with old knowledge, and find the connections between old morpheme and new things in order to cognize them. When certain morpheme is used to create new words frequently, the new meaning of morpheme will probably fix in language as a new separation of meanings, which means it re-categorized and form a new category. Thus, the development of morpheme and the word-creation relate to each other closely. Were the old meaning never changed, the new meaning would never come into being. The meaning of morpheme gets more and more perfect just because it is used to create new words.The theory of de-categorization cannot only apply in words that created in new era but also other period of history. In terms of the new era, the de-categorization shows two features. One is the low extent of de-categorize, which means the features of morpheme barely changes when create new words and the new words are quite easy to understand. The other is high extent of de-categorization and the new words are quite difficult to understand because we cannot speculate the meaning of the word though the meaning of morpheme. In section 5 we make a case study of BeiXX, which is a typical example of the high extent of de-categorization. In simple words, seeking efficiency of communication leads to high transparency of words. Seeking funny communication leads to low transparency of words.In chapter 4 we discuss two special types of words:the transliteration and alphabet words. The material of the former is basically syllables, which means using Chinese syllable to imitate the sound of foreign words. Generally speaking, a single syllable in transliteration meaning nothing because the meaning only exist when all the syllables in one transliteration join together. However, in new era, some meaningless syllables can get independent and gain meanings and become a new morpheme. This is the process of Chinesization of foreign morpheme. Some of them even can be used as a word Using letters to create words is a important feature in new era. Letters never widely used in this way in the history of Chinese lexicon. Most alphabet words are abbreviation and quite short, which means easy to use. The abundant of alphabet words is the result of language contact and it is partly due to the higher English level in new era as well.In chapter 5 we discuss the ways of word-creation. There is few brand-new ways of word-creation in new era, and most words are made of new material in old ways. Of course, some ways seldom used in new era such as randomly combination of sound and meaning, and the alteration of sound But illustration, metaphor, onomatopoeia are still widely used Large amount of words are created in the ways of abbreviation, simulation and analogy. There is one thing in common that these ways are easily used and create words very fast. It also implies that rhetoric and word-creation gets closer. In section 3 we discuss a typical connotative meaning in new words which is jocosity. The jocosity is closely connected with word-creation. As the social psychology getting more and more open, people often use harmonics, simulation and analogy to create new words. These all contribute to the generation of jocosity. On the other hand, when provoking laughter became the main stream of aesthetic, people tend to create new words with humor or irony. Besides, the internet provides everyone the right of speech. When people encounter some depressing and upset, they want to get these emotions off by create new words with jocosity. We think this kind of words may keep arising in the future.In chapter 6 we mainly discuss the words that originally created on the internet, or internet word for short. It goes beyond saying that the internet word is the most special type in new words. First of all, one can be extremely creative in choosing material for internet word such as morpheme, character, letter, number and even foreign language. The traditional rules of word-formation are not compulsive. There are various ways of creating internet words and harmonics is a vital one in addition to old ways. Harmonics allows people input faster and show the individual character of one person. However, though we create tons of words in harmonics, most of them only get to use in parole but langue. This means that harmonics is more like a figure of speech. Most internet words are merely the variant of traditional words. To put in another way, they are derived from old words on internet. They have to depend on the old words because they are not totally independent.Created with all kinds of material in different ways, the internet words vary in forms. These words seemingly stay in a quite tanglesome state. However, from the perspective of linguistic philosophy, quite a few internet words show the trend of de-construction. It is not an coincidence that internet words differ from traditional words so much. People actually made this situation on intentionally. Most creators of internet words are youth who tend to rebel natively. Hence, they try everything to show their inconsistence with the traditional rules. As a result, they alter the old words with various ways such as tearing, splitting, pasting, grafting, etc. All they want is to create brand-new words. Moreover, people using typing instead of speaking to communicate on internet which means they read what others says but not listen. Also they can be anonymous if they want to. These are the prerequisite of de-construction on internet.Word-creation is the main road in which new words are generated. In any stage of the linguistic history, we need to create new words. While in different stages, it shows different features due to different social psychology and culture. The reform and openness policy have been carried out for over 30 years and undoubtedly will keep on. Meanwhile, new words will be created continually. The study of word-creation involves linguistic, society and phycology and it is extremely complicated. The psychological features of youth in new era, the standard they choose the material, the way they combine the material and the effect that word-creation made upon word-formation and pragmatics are still left to be discussed.