A Comparative Study On The Homographs Between China Mainland And Taiwan

Although the China mainland and Taiwan share common cultural origins, based on the standard language of Han nationality, due to the long separation isolation, there are still many differences between Mandarin in Taiwan and the mainland. These differences, in particular homographs, lead to a lot of disadvantages and even obstacle on the communication and understanding of language, and the exchange of information to the people on both sides. Language problem has never been a small problem. In order to meet the communication needs of people on both sides, the thesis, based on the Dictionary of Different Words Across the Taiwan Strait, utilized comparative investigation, qualitative and quantitative methods and corpus to make “inquisitive”classification, comparison, and investigation on 344 pairs of the same names of different reality from the perspective of the etymology. And it concluded the reason that homographs produced between two sides.The thesis was divided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction,which discussed the purpose and significance of the study, research object and methods.And it set out that this thesis, based on Dictionary of Different Words Across the Taiwan Strait, separated homographs between cross-strait from the perspective of the etymology in the close area, and concluded the reason. The second chapter is focused on 219 pairs of homographs. They were divided into two categories: “semantic change only in one side” and “semantic change in two sides”. Each category was divided into subcategories: the former is divided into “semantic change in mainland” and “semantic change in Taiwan”; the latter was divided into “semantic change of the same type” and“semantic change of different types”. Each class had further analysis according to Mr.Zhang Zhiyi’s “linguistic models”. The third chapter was devoted to the 125 pairs the same name of different reality from different origins. The results showed eight major areas of differences between the two sides:(1) differences in abbreviation;(2)differences in foreign language;(3) different dialect words;(4) differences in social history;(5) different political environment;(6) differences in social customs;(7) the disunion of terminology;(8) new words production. The fourth chapter summarized the different causes of homographs according to the classification of the second and the third chapter. The fifth chapter was the conclusion summarizing the research.The innovation of the thesis was based on the dictionary in different periods of the two sides, and attempted to describe the production, evolution and development of homographs. The differences between the mainland and Taiwan was mainly the same.And they produced the fusion phenomenon.