A Contrastive Study Of The Lexicalization Of English And Chinese Abbreviations

In the development of all languages,abbreviations appear.Either in Chinese or in English,there are a large number of abbreviations.All kinds of passwords,codes,shorthand,symbols and so on,are coming into being,which can be regarded as abbreviations belonging to the range of a certain subject.Lexicalization is a phenomenon of the evolution of language,which usually refers to the change in which a certain language form,such as phrase or sentence gradually solidifies into a word or a lexical item in the process of use.Abbreviations are a form of lexicalizations,and also results of lexicalization.in the mean time,abbreviations are an important way for the generation of new words.Therefore,the study of abbreviations should be an important topic in linguistics,which is related to the study of the word system of language and the exploration of linguistic rules for using language.It is a difficult and complex task to compare the lexicalization degree of the two languages as a whole.The production of abbreviations originates from the economic principle.Some scholars of cognitive science,psychology and pragmatics have proposed and analyzed this principle.Moreover,abbreviations have been widely used in various media in daily life,which shows its wide range of application.However,the contrast study of abbreviations between English and Chinese is very rare.This thesis selects the Modern Chinese Abbreviation Dictionary,the Modern English Abbreviation Dictionary,the Practical Abbreviation Dictionary,and the abbreviations from the new words appearing in the2012-2022 Corpus website,uses the relevant theories of Lexical Construction and Cognitive Linguistics to explain the representative and solidified modern English and Chinese abbreviations from a new perspective of lexical construction,and applies the "usage-based" construction theory to the research,Through the comparative study,this thesis found that: 1)Through the use of contrast and comparative methods to analyze the structural changes of English and Chinese abbreviations,and explore the changes of word grammar,pronunciation and pragmatics.By applying Goldberg’s construction grammar theory,we find that the grammatical changes of abbreviations mainly lie in morpheme and lexicalization.The mechanism behind the formation of many new abbreviations is morpheme,including syllable morpheme and word morpheme.In this process,adhesion is weakened and productivity is enhanced.Chinese is more productive than English.2)In the process of lexicalization of abbreviations,the transition relationship from prototype to lexicalized abbreviations is manifested by the intensification of phonetic and grammatical integration degree and the significance of formal integration in the prototyped words.The lower the phonetic and grammatical integration degree is,the closer the abbreviation is to the prototype.On the contrary,the degree of lexicalization of prototype abbreviations is higher.3)Construction Grammar teaching is mainly a practical problem,but also a theoretical problem.Apply the results of construction analysis to language teaching(especially second language teaching),and apply the prototype analysis of categorization to language teaching.Through comparative study,analyze the role of this study in foreign language teaching from intellection.