New Extreme Meaning Expressions Series Research

At a time when Internet culture is booming,more and more Internet buzzwords have gradually entered the general public’s view.It can be seen that the influence and infectious power of Internet buzzwords cannot be underestimated.There exists a category of expressions in Internet buzzwords: after the development process of lexicalization or grammaticalization,their semantic meanings change from real to virtual and develops into extreme meaning.Therefore,this thesis will analyze the evolution of these new extreme meaning expressions diachronically,summarize the commonalities and patterns of the semantic development paths of these expressions,and find out the mechanisms and motives behind their semantic evolution.The introductory section of this paper states the purpose and significance of this thesis,lists the important academic achievements in the fields of extreme meaning,subjectivization and grammaticalization,metaphorical and metonymical mechanisms,and finally explains the research methods and sources used in this thesis.Chapter 1mentions a general overview of the development of online language and the development of modern Chinese language.“Zha Lie”,the object of the discussion in Chapter 2,develops from phrase.In Syntax,it has been through a lexicalized and grammatical process,while in semantics,its evolution depends on metaphorical mechanism and metonymy mechanism,which also forms a continuum of semantic evolution.It is worth noting that the evolution path of Semantics from Zha Lie1 to word Zha Lie3 also includes a development process from telicity to extreme meaning.“Bao Peng”,the object of the discussion in Chapter 3,is originated from Cantonese.And after “Bao Peng” enters into the vocabulary system of Modern Chinese,its part of speech and meaning have changed a lot under the impetus of Internet.In terms of part of speech,“Bao Peng” has developed into an adjective since it was a verb before.And for meaning,except for the increase of meanings,we also can see the development process of meaning from telicity to extreme meaning.“Fei Qi”,the object of the discussion in Chapter 4,originates from the Southwest Mandarin in Chengdu-Chongqing district,and is widely used in online communication.The main syntactic function of the new Internet buzzword "Fei Qi" is to serve as a complement,either directly after the predicate,or after "X+De/De/Dao".In the Southwest Mandarin in Chengdu-Chongqing district,the original meaning of "Fei Qi" refers to movement tendency,which is driven by a metaphorical mechanism to develop into extreme meaning.“X Zhatian/Shangtian/Fantian”,the object of the discussion in Chapter 5,is a set of constructions which indicates highest degree,and its main syntactic function is to be used as a predicate in a sentence.According to different part of speech of “X”,the construction “X Zhatian/ Shangtian/ Fantian” shows differences in their meanings while they indicate highest degree essentially.Mechanisms and motivations that make“X Zhatian/ Shangtian/ Fantian” become the highest degree construction mainly are:metaphor and analogy,semantic erosion and defamiliarization.“X(yeshi)meisheile”,the object of the discussion in Chapter 6,is a network buzzword,which has differentiated into the sub-construction "X1(yeshi)meisheile" and the sub-construction "X2 De/Dao(yeshi)meisheile ".The non-essential component "yeshi" is a discourse marker in nature and a meta-language usage of commentary adverbs.The overall semantic characteristic of the construction is expressed as subjective extreme meaning,and its formation is affected by construction coercion.The main motivations behind it are subjectivity and subjectivization of language,metaphorical mechanism and changes in social communication needs.Chapter 7 summarizes the commonalities and patterns in the formation of new extreme meaning expressions,and argues with cross-linguistic facts and other linguistic facts in Chinese,concluding that there are three semantic evolutionary paths in total: from telicity to extreme meaning,from non-normal meaning to extreme meaning,and from negative meaning to extreme meaning.In addition,the relationship between the new extreme meaning expressions and modern Chinese norms is also explored in Chapter 7.Finally,the concluding section summarizes the whole paper and points out the shortcomings of the paper.