A Semantic Study Of English And Chinese Quasi-affixes From A Cognitive View

With the progress of the age as well as the advancement of Internet,many words have been endowed with new meanings.Words like“guanxihu(关系户)”(those who go through the back door),“jiabanzu(加班族)”(the group of people working overtime),“yanzhaomen(艳照门)”(the nude picture scandal of Chen Guanxi),“lingfengxian(零风险)”(zero risks)in Chinese and“fireworks”,“bulletproof”,“Irangate”emerge one after another.The spring up of quasi-affixes in these words like hu(户),zu(族),men(门),ling(零)and-works,-proof,-gate has greatly filled in the gap of expressing new things.This linguistic phenomenon has aroused interest of scholars both at home and abroad.Through long-term researches,linguists have generally reached a consensus that quasi-affix is a mid-term between independent words and real affixes.This thesis is based on the Idealized Cognitive Model(ICM)proposed by Lakoff and the Conceptual Blending Theory put forward by Fauconnier & Turner from a cognitive perspective.Through both qualitative and quantitative study,the research focuses on 45 Chinese quasi-affixes listed by Lv Shuxiang and 65 English quasi-affixes proposed by Dieter Kastovsky and makes an analysis of their semantic construction mechanism.Then comparison is made between these two languages.Through analysis,two questions will be answered in this paper:(1)How does the semantic meanings of Chinese and English quasi-affixes generate?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the semantic construction mechanisms of Chinese and English quasi-affixes?Research has shown that the semantic mechanisms of both Chinese and English quasi-affixes are mainly metaphor and metonymy.Metaphor is the cross domain projection from the target domain to the source domain;while metonymy is the mapping within a cognitive domain.Metonymy and metaphor,as major cognitive patterns,have played an important role in meaning construction.In the 45 Chinese quasi-affixes,32 get their semantic meaning through metaphorical process;while 13 go through metonymical process.While in the 65 English quasi-affixes,19 get their semantic meanings through metaphor and the other 46 go through metonymical processes.The social and cultural diversity lead to the discrepancy of human cognition.Metaphor and metonymy are the cognitive patterns we rely on;they are of great significance in the emergings and development of quasi-affixes.Studies on semantic construction process of Chinese and English quasi-affixes from a cognitive point of view will help to promote a better understanding of the implications,relations as well as developing trends of Chinese and English new expressions.