英汉新词构成的理据比较.doc

本科毕业论文题目：英汉新词构成的理据比较学 院:外 国 语 学 院专 业:英 语学 号:学生姓名:指导教师:日 期:2009年6月5日18本科毕业论文摘 要随着现代社会的飞速发展和科学技术的日新月异，语言也发生了巨大发展变化。在语言构成的诸要素中，词汇变化最为明显，这是因为新事物、新概念、新思想需要新的语言表现形式,而词汇可以最便捷、最直接地反映出来。因此，在不断变化中的政治、经济、科技等领域里，我们可以看到大量的新词在不断涌现。这些新词并非随意构成，而是依据了一定的构词规则，即构词理据。不同的语言构词方式和依据不同，而新词语作为语言发展和社会变迁的融合体,即和普通词汇有着相似的理据特征，又具有与时代发展密切相关的独特性。而且随着全球化进程的不断提高和网络技术的不断发展，不同的语言体系中的新词出现互相交融的现象。因此，当代不同语言体系中构词的理据性也是共性和差异并存，例如一些政治术语和网络词汇。本文首先对英汉语的构词理据进行对比分析，揭示了它们在各自词汇体系中的构词特点，然后探讨了不同领域中的英汉新词的理据特征,并在此基础上对英汉新词语理据的共性及差异进行了具体阐述。文章旨在通过构词的理据性研究探索新词的实用价值，激发英语学习者学习英语的兴趣，帮助他们有效地扩大词汇,克服在英语学习和英语阅读中的因新词的出现导致的学习障碍。同时，英汉新词的对比研究在跨文化交流方面，尤其是新词的译介方面发挥巨大的作用。关键词： 新词； 构词理据； 英汉对比； 共性与差异abstractwith the development of society and advancement of science and technology, languge has gone through great changes. in all the elements of language,vocabulary changes fastest, as it can reflect the newly emerging matters, concepts, and ideas most quickly, directly and economically in language system. as a result, we can see new words, which are called, emerge in different fields almost everyday. these new words are not created arbitarily; however, they follow certain language principles, which is called motivation of word-building. different language systems have different features of word-building motivations, and there is no exception to neologisms. on the other hand, neologism reflect the social development. as a result, neologisms are the mixture of language development and social development. furthermore, globlization and internet bring about a great number of common symbols of expressions, so similarities as well as differences can be found between chinese and english neologism, for example, sci-tech termilogy and internet vocabulay.the paper begins with a discussion on word-building motivation,and then describles the different features of neologisms in different fields. finally, the similarities and differences of neologism motivation between english and chinese have been discussed respectively.the purposes of this article are to study the practical value of english and chinese neologisms based on the principles of word-building motivation , to stimulate english learners interest, and then to help them enlarge their vocabulary effectively. besides, it will help learners to overcome the obstacle in their english learning and reading caused by the neologisms. last but not least, the comparative analysis on the motivation between english and chinese neologsms can promote cross-cultural communication in modern society, especially in translation field.key words: motivation; neologisms; comparative research; similarities and differencescontents1introduction12word-building motivation22.1 definition of word-building motivation22.2types of word-building motivation22.2.1onomatopoeic motivation32.2.2morphological motivation42.2.3semantic motivation63neologisms73.1features of neologisms83.2neologisms in different fields93.2.1politics93.2.2economy93.2.3science and technology94comparison of the motivation of chinese and english neologisms114.1similarities114.2differences135conclusion15bibliography17acknowledgements181introduction.12 word-building motivation.2 2.1 definition of word-building motivation.22.2 types of word-building motivation.2 2.2.1 onomatopoeic motivation.3 2.2.2 morphological motivation.4 2.2.3 semantic motivation.63neologisms.7 3.1 features of neologisms.83.2 neologisms in different fields.8 3.2.1 politics.9 3.2.2 economy.9 3.2.3 science and technology.94 comparison of the motivation of chinese andenglish neologisms.114.1 similarities.114.2 differences.135 conclusion.15bibliography.17acknowledgements.18a comparison of the motivation of chinese and english neologisms1introductiona word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function (张维友, 2000: 2). in other words, a word is an unitive form of sound, contextual and grammatical meaning (陆国强, 1999: 9). for effective communication, our ancestors created this kind of handwriting with certain phonology. as time goes by, because of the continuous change and process in society, new things and more complicated ideas are ceaselessly coming into being. the original and limited words have already lost behind peoples demand and satisfaction. so as the regulation of language development, amount of words is increasing from pinch to aboundance. their meanings are becoming complicated from simple. at the same time, the world is in a trend of globalization, economics, politics, culture, language and even everything in different countries are no longer isolated. they all impact each other in a subtle but powerful way. corresponding expression of intaken concepts, phenomena and things in multicultural intercommunication is coming forth at an astonishing rate. taking english as an example, according to richards statistics, the most commonly used english words are only 850, but the total amount of english vocabulary has more than two million (richards, 1943, 1). and among these words, nearly half are borrowed from other countries. i.e. kongfu(功夫)，cha(茶), etc. this paper is focused on the comparison of the motivations of chinese and englishneologisms. here word-forming motivation is also a relatively new concept. it refers to basis on which the names of things are worked out. it also shows the relationship between names meaning and things themselves. based on comparative analysis of the two languages, the paper points out that the new terms in english and chinese word-formation more or less have the same characteristics, they both have obvious similarities and relative differences.2word-building motivation2.1 definition of word-building motivationsaussure, a great linguist first refered the fact that the forms of linguistic signs beared no natural relationship to their meaning and this theory had been accepted by many people. but until now, lingual phylogeny have been more than millions of years. the development of language is just like the development of physical world. it has come through the process from disorder to methodicalness, from arbitrariness to rationality. creation of every neologism should base on sociological and congnitive theory. in the course, every factor which inspires word-formation and prompts word-diversification can be considered to be motivation of word-building( 廖秋玲, 2006: 34-40). if we trace motivation research to socrates “nature theory” and aristotles “prescriptive theory” in old greece, there has been 2000-year history. at present, motivation has become a professional term in linguistics. many linguists have given their definitions to word-building motivation. someone thinks that word-building motivation indicates the explicable character of meaning-acquisition. it explains why certain sounds will present certain persons, things ,places, phenomena and activities( 蒋磊, 2003: 24-26). someone once said that the relationship between word form and word meaning could be called word-building motivation(卢永德, 2008: 27). although these linguists have different statement of motivation, they all have confirmed that there is inevitable relevancy between word form and word meaning from various points of view.motivation can be strong and weak, obvious and unconspicuous. we must analyze it according to the different features of different languages.2.2types of word-building motivationfor the types of word-building motivation, we can also assort them from different consideration. lu guoqiang thinks there are three motivations and they are onomatopoeic motivation, semantic motivation and logical motivation( 陆国强, 1983: 62). wang ailu and si fuzhen classify motivation into proterozoic, derivative and syntax motivation( 王艾录, 2002: 9). stephen ullman thinks there are three main motivations; they are onomatopoeic, morphological and semantic motivation. on this basis,yu wenlong added literal motivation( 许文龙, 2002: 86) reasonably. in this paper, it mainly explains three common motivation sorted by ullman.2.2.1onomatopoeic motivationin every language we can find some words whose phonetic forms suggest their meanings as the words were created by imitating the natural sounds or noises. all these words based on the sounds made by birds, animals, insects and even people. knowing the sounds which they present we can understand their meaning. for example, in english there are bow-wow, bang, ping-pong, miaow, cuckoo, tick-tuck, ha ha; in chinese there are also many like 汪汪，叽叽喳喳, 轰隆such echoic words are conventional to quite a large extent and sometimes there is superposition in sound simulation among different languages. take chinese and english as example, coo (咕咕) cry of pigeonshowl (嗥) roar of wolvesmew (喵) cry of catsgiggle , gurgle (咯咯) laugh of peoplebang (砰) sound of crashding dong (叮当) sound of crash among metalhem and haw (哼哈) tone of people when hesitatingwheeze (呼哧) sound of gasp although chinese and english have different phonnetic system, they happen to have the same sound. and of course for the sound we say in one language may not the same in other languages. because every nation has its own apperception and habits when cognizing new things. there are also some illustrations:buzz (嗡嗡) noise of bees or mosquitoesbleat (喃喃) lower voice of talkingcrash (哗啦) sound of dumpagebabble (咕嘟) sound when at ehe boiling of waterneigh (萧萧) bray of horsesdrip - drop (滴滴嗒嗒) clockwhistle (嘀嘀) sound of flutethere are too many different forms between chinese and english. because english is phonogram but chinese is ideogram. in creating onomatopoeic words, english has more room and freedom. 2.2.2morphological motivationit means that we can judge ones meaning by its structure. in this point, word-building motivation is tied up with word-formation. generally, compounds and derived words have more morphological motivation. in modern times, vocabulary is mainly enlarged on an internal basis. that is we use word-building features available in modality to create new words. in english study, we need to have a clear picture of the structure of english words and their word-forming elements. take decontextualization for example. this is one word, but can be broken down into de-, con-, text, -al, -iz, -ation, each having meaning of its own. these segments cant be further divided and we call them morphemes. morphemes vary in function. accordingly, they can be conjoined in different way to derive new words. if we are familiar with the meanings of different morphemes, we can speculate about the meanings of integrated words.so if we want to find out the morphologic motivations of word-formation, we must know the various patterns of word-building at first. the most productive are affixation, compounding and acronymy. besids, there are also blending, clipping, back-formation, etc. according to pyles and algen(1982), words produced through affixation constitute 30% to 40%, compounding yields 28% to 30%. here the discussion to follow will be based on quirk and sinclair( 1985) and they are all used in english.1. affixationit is generally defined as the formation of words by adding prefixation or suffixes to bases to organize new words.usage of affixes at present is freer than any time in history and new affixes are gradually produced. i.e.-oriented means taking sth as the direction and then there are male-oriented-toys, urban-oriented construction etc.2. compoundingit is the formation of new words by joining two or more bases. so a compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one base and founctioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word.(quirk,1985:45) i.e. silkworm,honeymoon, washing machine, short-sighted etc. these examples show that compounds can be written solid and open. the separation or lack of it in writing is a fair indication of how deeply the heat fusion has penetrated, and of how much the individual components has kept of its own identity. 3. acronymyit is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of composite names of social and political organizations or phrases used as technical terms. words formed in this way are called acronyms, which can be subdivided into initialisms and acronyms depending on the pronunciation of the words. initialisms are pronounced letter by letter. i.e. voa= voice of america, bbc= british brodcasting corporation etc. a true acronym is a word formed from initial letters but pronounced as a normal word, for example radar (radio detecting and ranging), waves(women appointed for voluntary emergency service),etc.4. blendingit is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. i.e. chunnel from (channel+tunnel), medicare from (medical+care).to chinese, it has these morphological motivation too. but in ancient chinese, there is seldom obvious morphological motivation. since the latter half of 19th century, because of translation and borrowing from english, affixes in chinese began to increase. for instance, 创造性 破坏性 敏感性 跳跃性, etc. 性 here is a suffix which means bearing some features. geminate words are particular in chinese. nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and measure words all can superpose according to certain formats. these kind words are vivid and have stronger emotion. such as 高兴, we can also say 高高兴兴； 漂亮&漂漂亮亮, etc. we can sum up these words in 8 styles. 1. aa style such as 爸爸，抱抱; 2. aab style: 毛毛雨, 悄悄话; 3. baa style: 热乎乎,亮晶晶 4. aabc style: 楚楚动人, 心心相印; 5. bcaa style: 可怜巴巴, 浓烟滚滚; 6. aabb style: 干干净净, 白白胖胖; 7. abab style: 讨论讨论, 琢磨琢磨; 8. a-a style: 看一看,玩一玩. it also should be pointed out that there are a lot of words whose structure are opaque. i,e, their meanings are not the combinations of the constituent parts. black marker, for example, is by no means the market black in colour but expressing illegal selling and buying.2.2.3semantic motivationsemantic motivation is the mental associations based on the conceptual meaning of a word. generally speaking, it means we can guess, conclude, extend or even derive new meanings out of a word. when we say the mouth of a river, we associatethe opening part of the river with the mouth of a human being or an animal. when we use the foot of a moutain, we are comparing the lower part of the mountain to the foot of a human being. bottle in he is fond of the bottle reminds one of what is contained inside; and pen and sword in the pen is mightier than the sword is suggestive of writing and war.so we can also say that semantic motivation is a kind of association of ideas. basing on the original phrase, we can extend its usual acception by rhetoric such as exaggeration, simile, elevation, transference and so on. i.e. the eye of a needle. eye here doesnt mean the peoples organ but the little hole that the string can pass through.the three most common methods in creating new words by sementic motivation are semantic analogy, rhetoric and conversion.1. analogypeople always have the psychology of analogy, they can suppose one objects form according the other object which has the same characteristics. it is a kind of imitation. i.e. hotline means a popular line for help, consultation or other service. according to analogy, there are coldline, helpline, chatline and jokeline. in chinese, we also have 芙蓉姐姐， 蔷薇大妈. they both are famous on internet and have some funny commonness, so when people named the other person who has the same characteristics in the same structure 天仙妹妹 and this structure implies the same semantic meaning-flubdub.2. figurative speechfigurative speech is also a significant tact to broaden or shift word meanings. the major ones are: metaphor, exaggeration, euphemism, etc.there are so many rhetorics and here, i just take metaphor for example. because two objects have some similarities that we can compare one thing to another. in enlish, we always see this kind of sentences: a car may lie down and die; the wind kisses our cheeks, the face of a cliff; the teeth of a sawthese words in are all given new semantic meaning. in chinese, we can find this phenomenon every where in our daily communication such as 粉丝, 玉米, 凉粉. now, the three words are not only food but the great fans of some stars.3. conversionit means converting words of one class to another class. i.e. by turning words of one part of speech to those of another part of speech in traditional terms. new words are only new in a grammatical sense. since the words that are made do not change in morphological structure but in function, this process is also known as functional shift. i.e. a cheat is a person who cheats; to oil the machine= to provide the machine with oil. cheat here can both means a person who are not honest and also the behaviors of the person. in chinese, conversion is also very popilar. for example, most verbs can used as nouns, such as 鱼肉百姓, 杀人放火. compare with english which is letter-combination, chinese words are always combination of semantic units. it attaches more