The Investigation And Analysis Of New Chinese Words For The Recent Decade

Based on the new Chinese words embodied in the Modern Chinese Dictionary (both the 2002 Enlarged Edition and the 2005 Edition) and those released by the National Language Resource Monitoring and Research Center during 2006 and 2009, this dissertation, after a full review of the quantitative distribution, phonetic format and word formation of new Chinese words for the recent decade, comes to the conclusion that the number of new words, which are mainly dissyllable ones, is on the rise year by year, with increasing more words boasting more than 3 syllables. Meanwhile, this paper finds that new words are mainly derived from such language domains as economy and finance as well as social life and science and education in terms of source domain; and from such styles as oral, written and network in terms of style sources by exploring the language domain, style source and the contact between new words and other languages and dialects. With increasingly frequent contact between new words and other languages and dialects, a large number of loanwords and dialect words make their presence. This thesis also analyzes the new Chinese words'impact on the Chinese lexical system, arguing that the emergence of a large number of new words have exerted a profound impact on Chinese morpheme, and the formation, meaning and use of vocabulary. Besides, this paper also researches different groups of people's awareness of and attitudes towards new words by means of questionnaires and interviews, from which, it deems that part or full of the variables including gender, age, educational background and occupation will have some impact on the understanding and use of new words. Finally, the paper forecasts the prospect of new words, pointing out that only by following the internal rules for the development of languages and enhancing guide for standardization can new words develop towards the direction benefiting both the society and language itself.