A Study Of Chinese Lexical Abbreviations From The Perspective Of Optimality Theory

Chinese lexical abbreviations (CLAs) are of one significant and unique language phenomenon, the study of whose motivation is beneficial to reflect their relevant factors. Thus, we can implement deep research and thorough study of the groundwork of CLAs. Local scholars and experts have already described and illustrated this kind of language phenomenon with certain efforts and achievements. But for the motivation of CLAs, we are still in shortage of thorough exploration or theoretical support from general linguistics. However, Optimality Theory (OT) brought forth by phonologist Alan Prince and cognitive scientist Paul Smolensky at the beginning of 90's in the 20th century is a kind of invaluable aid in revealing the motivation of CLAs and provides theoretical direction for it. This systemic theory can generate all kinds of possible candidates for CLAs and make the optimal one CLA with constraints of different ranks, i.e. faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints. Our research is exactly based on its principle and procedure, which makes an attempt to study the realistic and linguistic regulations of CLAs ultimately and to discover the root causes of this language phenomenon. This method will provide systemic and theoretical direction and completely new angle for the research of motivations of CLAs to complement and enhance the achievements of CLAs.In the first place, within the framework of OT Grammar, we explore two kinds of constraints of CLAs, i.e. faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints, and raise seven constraints of motivation of CLAs altogether, namely constraints of DEP-IO, LINEARITY-IO, IDENT-IO[Fm], ALIGN-L, ECONOMY, CONVENTIONALITY and FOCUS. In the next place, based on the seven constraints, we rank them with existing CLAs data to make them possess different ranks when orfanizaing and coming into being. According to all the existing data of CLAs and the algorithm for ranking the constraints, our study finds out that the order of the ranking is { DEP-IO, ECONOMY, CONVENTIONALITY } >> IDENT-IO[Fm] >> { LINEARITY-IO, ALIGN-L, FOCUS }.On the basis of these research achievements, we can explore the mechanism of CLAs with the aid of analytic method of OT Grammar. To start with, through one constitute of OT Grammar, generation system, we generate an infinite set of output candidates for a certain CLA from the Chinese lexicon. Secondly, through the evaluation system unique of Chinese, namely the ranking of seven constraints of CLAs, we evaluate all the output candidates simultaneously. Following the principle of "strict domination", the evaluation system sieves all the candidates, selects the one which violates the constraints with lest degree and makes it the ultimate existing form of CLA. Finally, this research explores three types of ways forming CLAs, i.e. blending, clipping and generalization with numbers, which tries to make clear of the related factors of CLAs and their motivation to study their essence.