Case Study On The Retreat Of Annual New Words

Since2007, the Ministry of Education and the National Committee of Language have published every year "Annual New Words" of the previous year. There exist many researches on new words, but researches on annual new words are lack of attention. In addition, people used to focus more on the static and synchro nic study of annual new words, and less on the dynamic and diachronic research. New words are coming or going in haste. Researches about the retreat of new words have not yet aroused widespread concern in the academia.Based on the annual new words of2006and2007, this paper has retrieved database of the5years from2008to2012of14newspapers of different natures and regions by self-compiled computer program and manual procedure, and made a study on the retreat status of these591new words of this two years. According to the retrieval results, new words fall into "Retreated New Words" and "Existent New Words" and they can be further divided into "Completely Retreated New Words" and "Non-completely Retreated New Words". Completely retreated new words mean the new words which did not reappear in the14newspapers’database for the5consecutive years; non-completely retreated new words had a frequent reappearance in the5years; and existent new words reappeared every year in the5years. Through the data statistics, we can find a higher proportion of retreated new words in the annual new words, such as71.9%in2006and84.3%in2007. This paper selects some representative words to make a concrete interpretation, and also tries to make a preliminary analysis of factors of the new words retreating. In addition, this paper also has presented the evolution and classification of non-completely retreated new words in the5years, and made a more detailed description of new words retreating process. It tries to forecast the evolution of new words through its reappearance, semantic and structural characteristics. In the past, the scholars paid more attention to the potential appearance of new words, and less to the prediction of the vitality of new words which have appeared. Therefore, this paper mainly aims to provide reference for the prediction.This paper consists of five chapters, each of which embraces the specific contents as follows:Chapter1IntroductionIt introduces the present study situation of new words and the data sources of this paper; it also briefly introduces the research contents, research methods and research value.Chapter2Foundation of researchIt mainly shows the retreated and existential overview of annual new words in2006and2007. By searching the14newspapers’database, we obtain447retreated new words in2006and2007, accounting for80.7%of the total number of new words, while there are only114existent new words, accounting for19.3%. We can find that the majority of the new words are the retreated ones, which are our research priorities.Chapter3Analysis of the completely retreated new wordsAccording to the analysis and statistics, we find that119new words have retreated as things disappear, and phenomena or influence rapidly decline. The proportion of these new words in completely retreated new words is high to50.4%. Retreat of this part of new words is mainly due to the external factors, which is taken as "Conception-driven Completely Retreated New Words". There are also a number of new words referring to things, phenomena and groups that have not yet disappeared, and still had certain influence. These new words exist mainly in our language by another appellation. Through the observation of the current source, we conclude several competitions like synonymous competition, hyponymy competition, traditional semantic competition and old way expression competition. Retreat of this part of new words is mainly due to internal factors, which is taken as "Completely Retreated New Words of Internal Competition of Language". External and internal factors of language both affect the retreat of new words.Chapter4Reappearance of non-completely retreated new wordsAccording to the retrieval, we can work out the reappearance situation of non-completely retreated new words for five consecutive years. It can be divided into4types:isolated retreat type, isolated reappearance type, before and after fault reappearance type and intermittent reappearance type. And on this basis, we can make predictions about the evolution direction combined with its own semantic and structural features.Chapter5Summary of the whole paperWe mainly summarize the main ideas of this paper, and point out the limitation and problems which remain to be resolved.In conclusion, this paper focuses on the presentation of retreat situation of annual new words in2006and2007for5years (2008-2012). The originalities of this paper firstly lie in new words retreat phenomenon, and find the high retreat rate of new words. Secondly, this paper selects typical cases and makes a preliminary explanation of new words retreat factors. Thirdly, it predicts the existence and retreat of new words based on the non-completely retreated new words research, and provides a reference for the new words normalization work. This paper has certain positivist significance by providing a detailed and solid case for new words study particularly for annual new words.