Study Of The Onomasiological Process Of Modern Chinese Words

It is often found that some thing has many words to denote it and something just changes its names with the time passing.Nowdays,with the development of society many new words come out with the rise of new things and new phenomenon.Some people make jokes with the misusing of words and some people are mocked for using the wrong words.All these language issues embody a common linguistic research question: How does the thing get named?In fact,it is an eternal research question as to how to name a thing or concept.How does the concept change its name? How do the words get established? It is belived that a word expresses a lot of ideas with just two or three morphemes.It is wondered how those ideas are packed into few morphemes? People never stop asking questioning and finding the answers.Even though with many answers at hand,we are still not satisfied with the result.Therefore,it is still necessary to continue the pursuit.Naturally,the starting point of the study is the thing to be named.Based on the previous linguistic theories of cognitive linguistics and semantics,a cognitive onomasiological process model of Chinese words is put forward,which is named as Model of Two Major Processes with Six Minor Processes.They are features recognition,construal,cognitive association,semantic structure,onomasiological structure,morphemes allocation.With the detailed exploration of the model is the proof of Chinese words.The following part is a tentative study of principles and influencing factors involving in the onomasiological process.The principles put forword here consists of three kinds: clarity,economy and expressivity.The factors influencing the steps in the naming processes come from cognitive,linguistic,social and cultural aspects.Model of Two Major Processes with Six Minor Processes concerns individual speakers' congnitive processing of a new word.After a word is generated it faces a new problem: whether it will be accepted by the speech community and How.Based on the Macro-sociolinguictic study a social onomasiological process model of Chinese words is set up,which consists of three kinds: Power Model,Elites Model,and Mass Model.Each model is explained fully and proved with historical facts.Besides theoretical exploration,this study also conveys an empirical study: a study of 423 names of occupation in Chinese.With the data analysis we conclude that the most important semantic elements in the onomasioloty of words in this area is agent,V-predicate,and patient.In addition,the most prominent naming structure are all two-units naming structure: agent+V-predicate,agent+ patient,and agent+external argument.The data shows that economy principle and clarity principle play important roles in the onomasiological process.The rank of the onomasiological structure depends on the application of economy principle and clarity principle.They are matched proportionally.As to the types of words,it is found that the majority of words are of morphological-semantic type.Words of morphological type and semantic type account for minority.Words of morphological type mainly are acronyms.Words of semantic type come from semantic association.This study is conducive theoretically to the better unstanding of the nature of language and the study of the onomasiology of the language.It can also help to strengthen the links between different branches of linguistics and expand the study area of Chinese vocabulary study.Practically,this study is helpful for the language management,dictionary compiling and Chinese teaching to foreign students.At last it may help to understand how the brain works and contribute to the NLP in the AI research area.