A Study of the Sources of English and Chinese Neologisms

甘露

摘要： Neologisms refers to words created to express and record new things and new thoughts in oral and written forms. They play a role of mirror in the development of society. This paper is a study of English and Chinese neologisms through exploring their sources.

關鍵詞：neologism; study; sources

1. Introduction

As a prism of the modern society， language reflects our thoughts and lifestyles. In a language system， pronunciation and grammar are relatively stable while the vocabulary is always under constant changes. The emergence of new words reflects the developments of the society.

Since Reform and Opening-up Policy has been implemented in China， new words that reflect the updated developments of Chinese society have come into being at an unparalleled speed. In English speaking countries， many new words are created in the Digital Revolution. More and more neologisms are invented to meet the needs of expressing new things and ideas. Neologisms play a role of mirror in the development of society and the development of society results in the increasing of new words.

2. Sources of Neologism

There are mainly three sources of neologisms in a certain language： word-formation， semantic change and borrowing words.

2.1. Word Formation

Creating neologisms means creating words based on native word elements such as letters， sounds， morphemes， roots， affixes， bases and words.

2.1.1 Compounding

Compounding is a word-formation method in which words are formed by putting two or more words together. No matter in English or Chinese， it is the most productive way to create new words.

In English， there are compounds such as silkworm， e-commerce， home page， etc. In Chinese，“單身貴族”“電子銀行”“音樂療法”are new words coined through compounding.

2.1.2 Shortening

Shortenings can make people communicate with less linguistic signs. Acronym， blending， and clipping are three major types of shortening.

Acronym is extracting the first letter of every constituent， such as GPS （Global Positioning System）， BBS （bulletin board system）.

Clipping is cutting a part of the original and using what remains instead. For instance， Net （Internet）， expo （exposition）.

Blending is combining the meanings and sounds of two words， one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms， such as edutainment （education entertainment）， electionomics （election economics）.

In Chinese， shortened words are usually formed by extracting some meaning-loaded morphemes from words or phrases. For example， 福彩（福利彩票），法援（法律援助）.

2.1.3 Affixation

Affixation is the formation of words by adding word forming or derivative affixes to stems. There are dozens of traditional affixes in English， for example： “multi-”：multi-functional， multi-element; “-free”： nuclear-free zone， dust-free chalk. New affixes appeared nowadays， such as the prefixes “cyber-” and “e-” are related to the electric communication network producing “cyber-crime”， “cyber-culture”， “e-business” and “e-commerce”.

In Chinese， formation of new words by affixation is only a supplementary way， but it has been on the rise in modern Chinese. Affixes in classical Chinese includes老-，小-，阿-. Now there are some new affixes created analogy to familiar words， such as -秀： 脫口秀，模仿秀;-門： 詐捐門，潑墨門.

2.2 Semantic Change

Semantic Change refers to the changing the meaning of a word. There are mainly two ways of changing the meaning of existing words： widening or narrowing the meanings of existing words.

2.2.1 widening meanings

Among the neologisms in English and Chinese， quite a lot come from widening the meanings of existing words. Most words begin as specific names ， with the progress of time， the precise denotation is lost and the word’s meaning is extended. ? For example， “clone” now means “ to produce an identical copy or copies of a person or thing from a model or blueprint”， while it only referred to “any group of individuals produced asexually from a single ancestry” before. In Chinese， “下課”refers to “fire a coach” now while it only meant “finish the class” in the past time.

2.3 Borrowing

Languages are always borrowing from other languages during the language contact. Lexical borrowing is one of the sources of new words.

2.3.1 borrowed words in English

English language as a rather open language is a heavy borrower. Consistent with its position as an international language， English borrows useful words and expressions almost from every language. For example， “dahl” is a dish from India; “bossanova” is a dance from Brazil; “Islamic Jihad” from Latin; and Kugfu from Chinese.

2.3.2 borrowed words in Chinese

The overwhelming majority of borrowed words in Chinese come from Englis. For example，泡沫經濟 （bubble economy）， 跳騷市場 （flea market）， 試管嬰兒 （test-tube child），雅思 （IELTS）， 托福 （TOLFL）， T恤衫 （T-shirt）， 比基尼（bikini）， 香波（shampoo）， 漢堡包 （hamburger）， 曲奇餅 （cookie）， 比薩餅（pizza）.

5. Conclusion

From the above analysis， it is displayed that English and Chinese neologisms result from the interaction of linguistic factors and social factors. With the development of society， there will be more and more neologisms in English and Chinese and they will share more and more features. Understanding the sources of neologisms will enlarge our vocabulary thus facilitate foreign language learning.

References：

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