A Study Of Common Features Of English And Chinese Neologisms

Since the end of 1970s, with the integration of international economy and the fast development of science and technology, language as the means of communication must adapt to the changes of communication conditions. Both English and Chinese are in the most rapidly developing period in which large numbers of neologisms are constantly emerging. Moreover, the modern media such as radio, TV and internet prove to be great helpers in spreading the neologisms. Neologism, a prism of the modern society, reflects the new thoughts, new life styles and new values. Under such a situation, neologisms certainly will become the focus of attention of the modern linguists, hence an important object of current linguistic researches. Neologism study has its significances in such fields as linguistics, cultural studies and sociology.This paper is aimed at a detailed analysis of the causes why neologisms come forth and their ways of formation. The focal point is the similarities and common tendencies in the formation of English and Chinese neologisms and the causes of such similarities.The paper can be divided into four major chapters:Chapter one is devoted to the significance of neologism study, the literature review and the method of research. Through the review of literature on English and Chinese neologisms, it is found that many dictionaries or supplements of dictionaries have been published which provide abundant materials for neologism study. Internet and other modern media provide new channels for the collection and research of neologisms. Meanwhile, the number of the specialized publications on neologism research is relatively small. As for the method of research in this paper, the contrastive study of English and Chinese has been centered on the individualities and ignore the universalities or similarities, which is not a full-scale study. The universalism research should be strengthened.In the second chapter, a relatively clear definition for neologism will be given so that the range and subject of research could be determined. As the change of vocabularyis greatly influenced by the development of society, the examples of neologisms in the paper are those that have emerged in the last twenty years because in this period tremendous changes have taken place in the fields of politics, economy, science and technology. Considered from the specific characteristics of the words, if there is anything new in the form, meaning or usage of a word, it can be called a "neologism". The second part of this chapter is about the causes of neologism emergence. The rise of neologisms is due to both the self-regulation of the linguistic system and the social development. And in the end there will be a brief introduction to the sources of neologisms.The third chapter is the main body of this paper in which the common features and tendencies of development of English and Chinese will be discussed. According to the definition of neologism given in the second chapter, the neologisms will be categorized into the invented new words, loan words and new words with semantic changes. In the part of invented new words, affixationization, phrasalization of English compounds and polysyllabicalization of Chinese new words, flourishing of analogical and shortened new words are shared by English and Chinese neologisms. The tendency of affixationization is one of the common features of English and Chinese neologisms. In English and Chinese, old affixes demonstrate new developments while new affixes or quasi-affixes come forth in great numbers. Compounds are another important way of word building. In English, the new words tend to have more than two components, which make them look more like phrases than a single word while in Chinese there are more and more polysyllabic new words. The longer structure of compounds results from the adaptation to the more complicated human thinking, more and more new things and phenomena. Analogy is an active way of word formation in the recent decades. In this way new words can be produced in batch. So it's a very effective and convenient way of word formation. The flourishing of shortenings is due to the faster and faster development of society. People need simpler words and expressions to convey information and communicate with each other. Besides the new words created by theway of word building with the native linguistic materials, borrowing from other languages is another important source of new words. In this paper the discussion is focused on the English loanwords in Chinese and Chinese loanwords in English in the recent years. Chinese has borrowed a great number of new words and expressions from English in recent years. English loanwords have two obvious influences on Chinese: one is the direct use of the original English words, especially initialisms and acronyms; the other is that a part of transliterated words may become new morphemes for word building. The last source of new words is originated from semantic changes. The development of society and the change of social psychology and values are among the reasons for semantic change of words. The generalization of word meaning is a common tendency of English and Chinese, especially the communization of proper names and technical terms.The last chapter is conclusion. By analyzing the common features of English and Chinese neologisms, we can deepen our understanding of the nature of languages and reveal the tendency of language development. There are more and more similarities in English and Chinese neologisms, which demonstrate the tendency of language convergence and language fusion. The causes of language convergence include the similarities in the development of different languages and societies and the frequent cultural contacts between nations in which different languages would absorb good elements from each other so as to enrich themselves. In the author's opinion, language convergence would not lead to the extinction of some languages. The stability of national culture and individualities of different societies guarantee the diversity of national languages. Different languages would coexist with their individualities and share more and more common features in their development and contact. Language convergence is a favorable phenomenon to English teaching because the similarities make it easier for the students to learn the new vocabulary and the principles of word building.