青岛理工大学琴岛学院毕业论文

青岛理工大学琴岛学院

毕业论文

题目A Comparison Between English and Chinese Neologisms

学生姓名：_______孙现___________________

指导教师：_______吕慧___________________

外语系英语专业071班

2011年6月13日

如有疑问请登录指导老师博客：https://www.360docs.net/doc/b415260858.html,/new/5idaixie

毕业论文任务书

摘要

库克曾经说过，语法是语言的基本模型，词汇是语言的基本材料；如果没有语法，我们几乎不能明确地表达思想；而如果没有词汇我们则完全无法表达任何东西。可见词汇是语言不可或缺的组成部分。在过去的数十年间，随着全球政治、经济、文化等领域的巨大变化，大量英汉新词不断涌现出来。新词语的激增引起了语言研究者的兴趣和关注，也因此成为当前语言学的一个重要的研究对象。而这些新词对于那些以英语或汉语为外语的语言学习者而言，其学习难度不言而喻。新词是指反映新事物，新概念，新思维，新经历，新问题等出现在书面语及口语中表义明确，利于交际的词汇。本文将以英汉新词为研究点，介绍新词的相关概念，对比分析英汉新词的生成以及特点。

关键词：英汉新词，形成，特点

ABSTRACT

In a language, as Cook puts it, grammar provides the overall patterns, vocabulary the material to put in the patterns. Without grammar we can convey a little, but without vocabulary we can convey nothing. It is clear that the vocabulary is an essential part of language. In the last several decades, a great number of neologisms have appeared with the huge change of global political, economic and cultural development. Increasingly emerging neologisms has become the focus of attention of modern linguists, hence an important object of current linguistic researches. And meanwhile, these neologisms are a great challenge to those who learn English and Chinese as a foreign language. Neologisms refer to the words and expressions created to express new things, new concepts, new ideas, new experiences and new problems in oral and written communication. This paper focuses on the English and Chinese neologisms and will introduce the general concept of neologisms and do comparisons on the formation and features between Chinese and English neologisms.

KEY WORDS: English and Chinese neologisms, formation, features

Contents

Introduction (9)

Chapter One Concept of Neologisms (10)

1.1 The Concept of Neologisms (10)

1.2 Researches on Neologisms (10)

1.3 Significance of This Paper (12)

Chapter Two The Formation of Neologisms (13)

2.1 The Formation of English Neologisms (13)

2 .1 .1 Derivation (13)

2.1.2 Composition (14)

2.1.3 Conversion (15)

2.1.4 Shortening (16)

2 .1.6 Loan Words (17)

2.2 The Formation of Chinese Neologisms (18)

2.2.1 Loan Words (18)

2.2.2 Change of Meaning (19)

2.2.3Adoption of Dialects (20)

Chapter Three How to Avoid Sexism in English Language (22)

3.1 Democracy, Tolerance and Openness (22)

3.2 Desire for Novelty (23)

3.3 Need for Brevity (24)

Conclusion (26)

Acknowledgements (27)

Bibliography (28)

Introduction

Language is an important tool for human communication. There are three elements in a language, and they are pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Pronunciation and grammar are relatively stable and vocabulary is the most active element. It changes with the progress of time. Neologisms are created to express and record new things, new concepts and new thoughts. They are used both in oral language and written forms. Neologisms are new both in form and meaning or old in form but new in meaning. The continuous appearance of new words is an important social phenomenon. They play a role of mirror in the development of society and they are sensitive to the changes of society. It is significant to do research in this field.

Both English and Chinese neologisms are created based on their own word elements instead of coming out of the blue. This paper makes a comprehensive analysis and comparison between English and Chinese neologisms in the hope that it can help foreign language learners get clearer about the formation rules and features of English and Chinese neologisms. It is also aimed to inform foreign language learners of the socio-cultural connotations of English and Chinese neologisms.

This paper focuses on the comparison between English and Chinese neologisms. At the beginning of the paper, the concept of neologisms and some present researches on neologisms are introduced, and then the formations of neologisms are illustrated. Next, the research is focused on the features of English and Chinese neologisms. And finally, a conclusion will be given.

Chapter One Concept of Neologisms

1.1 The Concept of Neologisms

The term “neologism” originates from Greek: neon means new，logos means word. Thus, a neologism is, literally, a new word. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, “Neologism” can be defined as “newly-invented word”. While in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a “neologism” is “a new word or expression, or a new meaning for an older word”. In linguistics, a neologism is a recently-coined word, or the act of inventing a word or phrase. Additionally, it can imply the use of old words in a new sense such as giving new meanings to existing words or phrases. They are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas that have taken on a new cultural context. With the appearance of neologisms in languages, many scholars have taken keen interest in this phenomenon, and some have tried to step into the exploration in this field. As far as the definition of the term is concerned, some state that a neologism is the term used to describe a word that has been made-up or invented by a speaker. Others mention that a neologism may be a slang word that has yet to find its way into mainstream conversation. Researchers with different knowledge background give a variety of opinions on the definition of “neologism”. In this respec t, Peter Newmark gives a precise one; he defines neologism as newly-coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire new sense. (Newmark, 2005：140)

1.2 Researches on Neologisms

V ocabulary is the most active part in a language, which changes with the development of society. So the research on neologisms becomes important in every language.

The research on neologisms in English-speaking countries dates back to the early 20th century. In 1902, Word-Coinage, Being an Inquiry into Recent Neologisms, Also

a Brief Study of Literary Style, Slang, and Provincialisms was the earliest book about the research on neologisms. It contained some articles about new words. In these articles, the idea of making research on new words was put forward for the first time in the history and provided lots of examples of new words created by some American writers at that time. After the Second World War, many dictionaries and books about new words appeared. For example, Marjorie Taylor, a librarian in New York, collected numerous neologisms created during the war. In 1944, he compiled a word-list, The Language of World War II: Abbreviation, Captions, Quotations, Slogans, Titles and other Terms and Phrases, to explain the name, definition and source of new words. Paul Charles Berg in 1953 compiled Dictionary of New Words in English. The development of science and technology after World II greatly influenced the changes of words. A lot of words about science technology were coined subsequently. A dictionary naming An Explaining Pronouncing Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Words(renamed An Elementary Scientific &Technical Dictionary in 1962) was published in 1950s. Since 1970s the research of English neologisms and publication of dictionaries about neologisms began to catch the public attention. Many columnists began to write articles to record or introduce neologisms. A famous writer, William Safire, was well known for his On Language in New York Times Weekly. In this column, he introduced a considerably clear explanation of new words by citing typical examples. The compilation of new word dictionaries has boomed since 1980s. In 1991 the Oxford University Press compiled Oxford Dictionary of New Words revealing us the changes and developments that occurred in linguistic field. There are about 2000 high-profile new words and phrases with two or three examples. But contrasted to the compiling of new word dictionaries, the number of related words and articles is limited, such as John Algeo’s Fifty Years among the New Words: a Dictionary of Neologism,1941-1991and John Ayto’s first and second volume of Longman Register of New Words.

With the adoption of the opening up policy, an increasing number of new words began to appear in Chinese since 1980s, which caught the attention of many scholars. The research mainly focuses on the following aspects: 1) General features of

neologisms, such as The Production of Chinese Neologisms during the Recent Ten Years(李振杰，1987), and The Cultural Distribution, the Sources arid Causes of Neologisms(姚汉铭，1992); 2) Neologisms from the pure linguistic perspective, research findings in this aspects are A Survey of Neologism Word formation(沈孟缨,1988), and The Prediction of Neologisms(周洪波，1996). 3) Neologisms from the sociolinguistic perspective, that is the study of neologisms carried out under the background of the new society. Papers published in this aspect are Social and Cultural Background of Chinese Neologism(王德春，1990), and The Appearance and the Social Mentality of Neologisms in Modern Times(萧雁，1991). 5) Neologisms and the normalization, such as New Words, New Phrases and Normalization(于根元，1995)，and The Development and Tendency of Neologisms in the New Period(张志毅，张庆云，1997). Besides books and articles, dictionaries introducing Chinese new terms and English new words and expressions were compiled, such as A Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese New Words, A Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Neologisms, and Xinhua Dictionary of New Words. In the latest dictionary Xinhua Dictionary of New Words, there are about 2200 new words referring to all aspects of social life such as politics, economy, information, medicine, environment, and education.

1.3 Significance of This Paper

English and Chinese are both among the widely used languages in the world. Theoretically and practically, it is of great significance to analyze and compare English and Chinese neologisms comprehensively. Theoretically, it helps language learners understand better the rules which govern the development of languages. Practically, in foreign language teaming, it helps foreign language learners get clearer about the features of the two languages and enlarge their vocabulary, which can facilitate their foreign language Teaming. It can also promote foreign language learners' understanding about the culture of the target language, which helps them understand and translate neologisms properly.

Chapter Two The Formation of Neologisms

2.1 The Formation of English Neologisms

In the recent 20 years, English vocabulary has increased in quantity and in extent, mainly by changing word form. Plentiful evidences show that English is an active language in generation of new words and expressions. Moreover, this capacity is strengthening. Traditional English word formation consists of five ways: derivation, composition, conversion, shortening and blending. Those ways are prevailing in recent years for their efficiency in forming new words and gaining public acceptance.

2 .1 .1 Derivation

Derivation has been playing an active role in the process development, especially in contemporary English. Derivation mainly is realized mainly by prefixes and suffixes.

Over 100 prefixes existing of English is realized in English, dozens of them are the most active, for example, a-, an-，au-，bi-，co-，com-, con-，inter-, and so on. Besides these traditional prefixes, new ones were born over the last decades. With multi-media approach, people gain all-round information. We know there are multi-company, multi-culture, and multi-disciplinary and so on. As people are paying more attention to ecological issues, words related to “eco-”are gaining more concerns. If people are not careful about their eco-activities, they may suffer from ecocatastrophe. When eco-atmosphere and eco-climate are destroyed, some species will come to ecocide and thus eco-crisis happens. Now many kinds of food sold at market are labeled as Ecology Mark (chemical free commodity). Ecotourism is getting popular in recent years.

As for suffixes, active elements are not only restricted within the traditional ones. Because of Watergate scandal in 1972, “Watergate” became a common word referring to a political scandal reminiscent of the Watergate scandal and what’s more, it

introduced a new suffix, “-gate”, into the language. Due to the negative influence of the Watergate event, the suffix“-gate”was born with derogatory sense, meaning something similar to the Watergate scandal. Ever since, the suffix “gate” has been exerting his power on coining English words, e.g. Camillagate was used to mean the love affair of British Prince Charles and his lover Camilla Parker. Some new suffixes are loaned from other languages. “-ese” is a typical example to prove that suffixes are more meaningful than before. It formerly means the people or the language belonging to the stated country or place. Its additional meaning is for the language and the feature limited to the stated group, such as officialese, golfese, engineeres，academese, computerese, educationese, New Yorkese. (Chen, 1992: 48) Our world is a multi-polar society, with changes and clashes taking place at any time in any place.

2.1.2 Composition

Composition, also called compounding, is the formation of new words by joining two or more stems. Words formed in this way are called compounds. So a compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one stem and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word. (Jiang，2001：13 ). Silkworm and honeybee are compounds; so are tear gas and easy chair. These examples show that compounds can be written solid (silkworm), hyphenated (honey-bee) and open (tear gas and easy chair). Moonlighting is a compound, so is scofflaw and doublespeak. Some compounds spelled with hyphens, like also-ran and user-friendly, or with spaces, like dark matter and mad cow disease, but these count as compounds because they are different than the sum of their parts.

The solid compounds are not a new trend in English new word formation, for example, brainwashing, nickname, honeymoon, moonlight, and airport. The hyphenated compounds embody the trend of English new word reformation that people hyphenate the words of a phrase or even a whole sentence when they cannot find an accurate word to express their ideas. This is the common practice of journalists and popular writers. In mass media, we often come across expressions of these compounds like a middle-of-the-road politician, an ahead-of-schedule general

election. Many compounds contain more than two stems. In fact, they are free phrases or idioms but are joined together by hyphens to form a single unit. If we take use of these compounds in proper way, we can make our language succinct and to the point.

Modern English places more emphases on simplification and freedom to express. Many words are beyond the restriction of syntax when speakers are under a given condition; therefore many compounds are flexible and understandable at first sight, for example: the now-dry river, the often-referred-to books, a long-stay visit, and a no-nonsense administrator. Joining every word of a whole sentence forms some hyphenated compounds. Quite a number of widespread hyphenated compounds are created either through conversion or backformation. For instance, those conversed from noun form are window-shop, baby-sit, air-condition, blue-print, cold-shoulder, chain-smoker from adjectives. Other words like hen-peck, spoon-feed are from adjective. The open compounds are mostly seen as noun compounds. For instance: hot line, unit pricing, cruise missile, black hole, depth interview, cyber cafe，computer crime, chat room and theme park and so on.

2.1.3 Conversion

Conversion is a way of word formation that changes a word’s syntactical function and grammatical sense. (Wang, 2003：40-43) Words produced by conversion are primarily nouns, adjectives and verbs. Nouns and verbs take out the largest proportion in English vocabulary, so the most productive conversion occurs between nouns and verbs. This phenomenon can be seen in use in different language contexts and different styles. The following are the examples. The newspapers headlined his long record of accomplishment. The boss gave Jason no answer, but eyed him with anger.

It is worth mentioning that conversion is not only a change of grammatical function of the lexical item involved but also the different range of meaning that it originally carried with. For example, the word “people” as a noun has following senses: persons; nation, race, tribe, community; the citizens of a country; and ordinary persons. When it is turned into a verb, it is related only to “people the new land”

(immigrate to). Conversion of adjectives into verbs is not as productive as that of nouns. But they are semantically simple, e.g. a. They walked carefully so as not to wet their shoes. b. Her love for him blinded her to his faults. Some phrases keep their original order and join with a hyphen to convert into nouns. For example: sit-in, shut-down, stand-by, hand-out, count-down. Some phrasal verbs are turned into nouns with anti order, for example, “size down” to “downsize”, “take in”to “intake”, “flow over” to “overflow”, etc

2.1.4 Shortening

When we talk about “plane”, “zoo” and “radar”, we realize that they benefit from shortening. Othe rwise, we still stick to “aero plane”, “zoological gardens” and “Radio Detection and Ranging”. In this way, those complex full names will continue to bring us inconvenience and waste of time. Shortening is composed of clipped words and acronyms. Clipped words are re-formed after cutting some part off the original words. The words “Phone”(telephone), “chute” (parachute), “copter”(helicopter), “mobile”(automobile), “bus” (omnibus), “quake” (earthquake) and “cycle” (bicycle) belong to front clipping, for their front parts are omitted. Back clipping words are “ad” (advertisements), “expo” (exposition), “memo”(memorandum), “dorm” (dormitory) and “champ” (champion). A typical example of front and back clipping is “flu” (influenza). The last type---syncope means omitting unstressed syllables or some part in the middle place: “curtsy” (curtsey), “fridge” (refrigerator), “coke” (coca cola), and “mike” (microphone) and so on.

Another form of shortening is acronyms, joining the initial letters of each word. It is frequently taken use of in forming names of social and political organizations or special noun forms and technical terms, such as VOA, IMF NATO, EU, EEC, CIA, and FBI. Sometimes, this type of shortening can be formed with the initial letters of the first letter plus the whole letters of the second, e.g. “N-bomb”(nuclear bomb), “H-bomb” (hydrogen bomb),and “G-man”(government man). Shortening has become very popular since the World War II and thus is extremely productive. With the passing of time, some of them may quit, but a great number of words will be

added. It will remain an important contributor to the contemporary English vocabulary.

2.1.5 Blending

It is mixing together parts of two or more words. At the beginning of blending activity, blends were regarded as crack jokes. Time passing, new words produced by blending turn to be given some styles and are adopted in writing related newspapers and magazines, some of which lose their original humor at the same time, for example: carbecue (car+ barbecue); workfare (work +welfare); smog (smoke +fog); Medicaid (medical +aid); brunch (breakfast +lunch); interpol (international +police); Chunnel (channel +tunnel); masscult (mass +culture); sci-fi (science +fiction). Economic and simple as blends in form, they mostly apply to articles of news report, science and technology. Article writers, seeking for novelty and attention, often imitate a fresh style to create new words. Blending is a productive process they prefer. For example, there will be sportscaster’s and sportswriter’s (sportscaster =sports +broadcaster) ads in the future. In the field of science and technology, the language fails to catch up with the speed of their development, so one of the usual ways is to mix the existing words together to form new terms. Dozens of examples are: lidar (light +radar); biorhythm (biological +rhythm); Siliwood (Silicon +Hollywood); mooncraft (moon +aircraft); programmatic (programme +automatic); sociomedia (society +media); infowar (information +war) and cablegram (cable +telegram) and so on.

2 .1.6 Loan Words

Between different nations exist trade relation, commercial and cultural exchange, immigration and emigration, war and conquer, and they unavoidably lead to language contacts. It often happens for one language to borrow words and expressions from other languages because no language can survive without borrowed words. (Holley, 2000: 82) Examining English vocabulary in its historical perspective, we can see that English is characterized by a marked tendency to go outside her own linguistic resources and borrow from other languages. It is quite receptive to foreign linguistic influences. Being a universal language, English has adopted words from all other major languages of the world, directly or indirectly. English borrowed words from

other languages, even if they change the pronunciation and spelling a little. Many times, the new words come along with the new items, such as spaghetti (Italian), camel (Hebrew), chocolate (Mexican-Indian by way of Spanish), and Ketchup (also spelled as catsup which comes from Chinese. Since Chinese does not use an alphabet like English, English users adopted different spellings that are still used today.) The following are some examples of loanwords in English: blitz, poodle from German; salad, restaurant from French; tornado, potato from Spanish; carnival, studio from Italian. Chinese is only one of the many contributors to the English language. As China is becoming powerful in the world, more and more Chinese loanwords get into English. According to the latest calculation, the number of Chinese borrowings collected in English dictionaries has accounted for 14885. Some examples are: four modernization(四个现代化)，spiritual pollution(精神污染)，little emperor(小皇帝)，and family planning(计划生育). In fact, there are many Chinese borrowings that often appear in English waiting to be taken in. It is true that some borrowed words may be abandoned in the process language development, but in a long-term perspective, borrowed words are playing their role in the stage of language development and making contributions to the ways and options to express.

2.2 The Formation of Chinese Neologisms

Therefore, psychoanalysis is language analysis. “Men have the power of language, and women are the subordinate and are looked down upon in the aspect of language”. (Gorden, 1998: 54) In general, there are three main methods of formation of Chinese neologisms. Firstly, the language produces new words by borrowing words from other languages. It is a common way in vocabulary enlargement when a native language is unable to express the new trends. Secondly, additional meanings are attached to the existing words. The last way is the adoption of dialects. Though it is not as commonly used as the former three, this way is getting more popular nowadays, especially adopting the dialects of coastal economically-developed regions in China.

2.2.1 Loan Words

Compared with English borrowing, Chinese loanwords were limited in history. However, owing to the opening-up policy, and the rapid development of modern mass media and information exchanges, more and more fresh concepts and fresh ideas have been introduced into China from different nations. With the appearance of these fresh things, many loan words have come into Chinese. As a universal language in the world, English has been playing an important role in our life. Thus, the overwhelming majority of loan words in Chinese come from English, some are from Japanese and Korean, or other languages. There are neologisms borrowed from English, such as 克隆(clone), 网民(netizen), 数据库(database), 摇头丸(dancing outreach), 背景音乐(background music), 泡沫经济(bubble economy), 基因(gene), 黑客(hacker), 多媒体(mufti-media), 安乐死(euthanasia), 网络语言(net speak), and 文化污染(cultural pollution) and so on. There are neologisms borrowed from other Languages, such as 过劳死(karoshi ), 量贩店(bulk sale store ), and 寿司(sushi ) from Japanese; 走廊(corridor ), 壁画(fresco), and歌剧(opera ) from Italian;甲板(deck ),快艇(yacht ),冰山(iceberg ) from Dutch;香槟(champagne ), and大厨(chef ) from French as well as 华尔滋(waltz ), and 闪电战(blitz ) from German.

2.2.2 Change of Meaning

The change of meaning involves the change of word meaning and production of new meaning for the old ones. The resemblance between things is the basis of changing one word’s reference from a certain object, phenomenon or act to other object, phenomenon or act. (Algeo, 1991: 66) At the very beginning of one word’s appe arance, it is only used to name a given object, phenomenon or act, so it contains single meaning. In the process of language development, it obtains new reference and becomes a polysemy. Polysemy is usually obtained in the listed ways: extension, and specialization and so on.

The widening of the meaning of a word or phrase is called extension or generalization, because the meaning is extended to cover a broader and less definite concept---from the specific to the general. When Chinese people talk about“热点”，