（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）基于cnn科技新闻的科技新词构词分析.pdf

华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iii摘 要 本文作者阅读了大量有关英文新词的书籍、文章以及关于科技领域的网络新闻，从而激发了撰写这篇论文的灵感。报刊被称为传播最快最广的媒介之一，也被认为是英语新词诞生的摇篮。随着现代科技的快速发展,英语语言也在经历着巨大的变化,尤其是科技领域出现了越来越多的新词汇。而研究发现,语言中新词汇基本先由媒体开始推广和流行.本文作者的研究对象为 cnn （著名的美国新闻网站） 上自 2005 年 6月以来的科技新闻中出现的科技新词。历史上对英语新词的研究往往仅局限在对新词的收集和解释上。基于这些珍贵的资料，本文探讨了英文报刊新词产生的原因和形成的方法。至于新词是如何形成的，本文中提到了 8 种方法:合成、词缀、缩略、拼合、转化、类比、借用和旧词新义等。文章不仅用传统构词法解释了新词的形成，而且对无法进行系统归类的特殊形式展开了细致深入的探讨，揣测创造者的心理背景和造词思路。文章通过对具有强大构词能力词素的研究，进一步揭示了单词与单词之间的有机联系，旨在阐述一定的构词知识在英语词汇的理解和记忆中的作用。 文章期望具有一定实用价值，能够激发英语学习者学习科技英语单词的兴趣，帮助他们更好的阅读科技新闻。 关键词： 科技英语新词、构词方式、科技新闻 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iabstract the idea of this thesis was originated from some books and articles about english neologisms and everyday news on science and technology in which est neologisms found their appearance. newspaper and websites, being the quickest and most widely spread medium, serve as a major cradle for the creation of new words. with the quick development of modern science and technology, the english language is also undergoing great changes, among which the most conspicuous one is in english vocabulary. more and more est neologisms have come into existence, firstly appearing in the news media, causing some difficulty in reading the news, or even causing some serious consequences due to misunderstanding of the neologisms. so it is imperative to make an analysis on the est neologisms to facilitate understanding of them and the news that involve these neologisms. among all those media, either printed or electric version, the author chooses the source from the news about science and technology from june, 2005 till january, 2006 on cnn website, which involve about 500 items of news. in history, the previous researches on the english neologisms put the emphasis upon the collection and explanation of these new words. on the basis of previous research, this thesis explores the reasons and methods of the coining of est neologisms. as for the methods of the production of neologisms, eight of them are mentioned in this thesis- - compounding, affixation, shortening, blending, conversion, analogy, borrowing and old words putting on new meaning, etc. a quantitative analysis for each kind of coining method is done, with the result shown in tables. for those neologisms that do not fit any conventional word formation categories, the thesis also attempts to explain the formation process from the creators psychological perspective. by studying some word elements with great productivity, the thesis tries to 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iidemonstrate that words do not exist independently but are related to one another, and that certain knowledge about word elements and word formation rules will facilitate the understanding and memorizing of english words. with all the neologisms and examples taken from the latest news in the past few months, the author tries to provide a new source for news readers, especially those interested in news on science and technology as well as english learners interested in enlarging est vocabulary. the author also expects the thesis to be of some help for further research in this field, and stimulate english learners interest in studying est. key words: est neologisms word formation process sci- tech news 独创性声明 本人声明所呈交的学位论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。尽我所知，除文中已经标明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到，本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权华中科技大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 保密 ，在_ _年解密后适用本授权书。 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名： 指导教师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 日期： 年 月 本论文属于 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 1introduction newspaper is considered as an effective channel for people to know the outside world. with the development of science and society, people have become more and more interested in the development of science and technology, and therefore they read newspapers, or nowadays more likely read online newspapers or news to be informed of the current events happening all around the world about science and technology. however, newspaper is characterized by its own writing spirit and dynamic, which makes it rather difficult to be understood. apart from the terminology, the development of the new words used in it is catching more and more attention nowadays. since a majority of failures in understanding news on science and technology seemingly result from an inadequate consciousness of the new words in the source language, a research of these neologisms in news on science and technology from the newspaper has turned out to be necessary as well as imperative. with the advance of society, new words are being formed everyday. as far as newspaper is concerned, many factors contribute to this phenomenon. when reading a newspaper, certain mistakes in terminology can be forgiven, but a total negligence of this language change, specifically speaking, here referring to the coining of the new words, should be avoided. the role of the neologism in scientific news is so pervasive that many articles may not be adequately understood without careful consideration of its existence. therefore, this thesis gives a rather comprehensive illustration of this phenomenon. significance of studying est neologisms languages are living things with words constantly coming and going. never before in history has the world seen such an overwhelming onslaught of new words to learn. in fact, in the united states, the booming of new words in 1990s has given rise to a powerful movement in the linguistic field, the so- called the new word revolution. the 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 2new word revolution is the radical explosion of new words and terminology created by the digital revolution which includes: new technology, the internet, popular culture, youth slang, and new terms from hundreds of other fields(honey 2000). because of the rapid spread of the new word revolution, america is speaking a whole new language. even the english speakers themselves feel the urge of keeping up with the latest vocabulary. “ the ability to learn a new language everyday is of utmost importance, because as distinctions between national tongues die out, a new vocabulary is being born at a staggering rate- already roughly 1/3 of the words in any standard dictionary are old! a keen ear for idiom and a knack for coining phrases has become the currency of modern- day imagineering.” though widely exposed to the english language, native speakers have to take conscious efforts to keep their vocabulary from becoming obsolete. and in this society filled so much with development of modern science and technology, there emerges the need to get to know the est neologisms which would greatly facilitate news reading on science and technology topics. we can imagine how important it is for english learners to study est neologisms. when we read the latest printed or online english newspapers and magazines or listen to the english broadcast, how frequently we encounter neologisms and have to acknowledge the fact that we cannot always depend on dictionaries. under these circumstances, a comprehensive study on word formation processes whereby new words are created will be very helpful to english learners who are eager to have a better command of the english vocabulary. aim of the study the news readers, especially those interested in reading the science and technology page constantly find that they come across some new words which could neither be found in any dictionaries nor any reference books. and very often these words are key words in 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 3understanding and could not be neglected. so an analysis of these new words becomes an imperative task for a better comprehension of the news and will greatly facilitate the news readers understanding. to understand a word, one should also be aware of how it is constructed, whether or not i t can be broken down into two or more constituents. this thesis is mainly concerned with the word formation processes by which new words are coined. the attention is focused on analyzing the structures of est neologisms and finding rules governing their formation. to keep up with the latest est vocabulary is especially difficult. this thesis is written in the hope that it can help english learners develop an interest and appreciation for new words and the processes that produce them. it is also aimed to inform the students of the latest development of the est vocabulary. it is expected that the new words and word elements presented in this thesis should facilitate their ability in reading english newspapers and magazines on science and technology. the discussion in this thesis cannot claim to be complete, since the neologisms collected for study are just a small portion of the vast number of new words. but i have tried to inform to some extent, though in no very systematic way, how the various traditionally recognized patterns of word- formation are interrelated and how new words are formed. meanwhile, i shall also be concerned with some unconventional patterns of word- making, seen against a background of those established and productive patterns on which most generally- acceptable new words are formed. one point that should be made clear is that not all the neologisms on our list stand a chance of entering general dictionaries. in fact, many of them are just created on the spur of the moment and may have only a short life- span. today we are used to new and unusual- looking words, and the influence of press, radio and most of all the internet ensures that almost every neologism, however transient, which occurs in a communication meant for the public, leaves behind it some record of its existence. i believe that such transient coinages are valuable in helping us. when taken all together, they reveal patterns 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 4which are more orderly than the eccentric appearance of individual items might suggest. i have used them to show, for instance, how we are capable of making new words, such as blog, ipod, electionaut, freaknik examples from these sources also provide interesting evidence of how word- elements of all kinds may be taken up and used in new formations. from an inspection of a range of established and transient coinages, we may gain some idea of the various forces at work in english word- formation. the overview of the thesis besides the introduction section and the conclusion section at the beginning and the end, the thesis has three parts: the introduction section of the thesis introduces the research background and explains the aim of the present study. part presents a detailed review of the relevant literature. it covers the theoretical base of the research, the previous studies in neologisms and est neologisms and the limitation in previous studies. part offers the methodology of the research, mainly including the research objectives, subjects and procedures. part analyzes the various word formation methods with substantive examples- more than 500 news items from cnn website and 660 neologisms from these news from june, 2005 to january,2006. the topics are on science and technology, varying from science and nature to personal tech, internet, space etc. the final part is the conclusion which presents the main findings, limitations of the present study and predicts for future development of est neologisms. 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 51 literature review 1.1theoretical base 1.1.1definition of word and neologism as far as the definition of a word is concerned, so far no completely satisfactory definition has been given. scholars and experts do not agree on all points of definition of a “ word” . below is a definition given by bloomfield: “ a free form which is not a phrase, is a word. a word, then is a free form which does not consist entirely of (or more) lesser free forms; in brief, a word is a minimum free form.” (bloomfield 1933) another famous definition for “ word” is given by an outstanding french linguist, antoine meillet(1925): “ a word is defined as the association of a given sense with a given group of sounds capable of a given grammatical use.” both definitions, taken together, give the main criteria of a word, that is, sound, meaning and syntactic function. in brief, a word may be defined as a fundamental unit of speech and a minimum free form; with a unity of sound and meaning (both lexical and grammatical meaning), capable of performing a given syntactic function. (zhang weiyou 1997) the term “ neologism” originates from greek: neos means “ new” , and logos means “ word” , and is in itself something of a neologism. for a long time neologism had been seen as pathological or deviating. webster s third new international dictionary (1966) defined neologism as “ a meaningless word coined by a psychotic” , which could not be adopted in general dictionaries. this view, in a sense, implied linguists ignorance of the new linguistic phenomenon- the tremendously arising new words. nowadays, the term “ neologism” is closely associated with linguistic neology, lexicology and terminology. in most dictionaries, neologism and neology are treated as 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 6synonyms and share the same definition: the act of inventing a word and a phrase or a newly invented word or phrase. in oxford advanced learner s english- chinese dictionary(2000), “ neologism” is defined as “ newly- invented word” , and in longman dictionary of contemporary english(1993), “ a new word or expression, or a new meaning for an older word” . these definitions cannot tell much about the nature of neologisms, and can hardly serve the purpose in the present thesis. so we have to seek the answer in the linguistic field. in the opinion of classical lexicologists like rondeau or guilbert, neology deals with the study of the new linguistic phenomena that appear at a given time in the development of a language in use. the phenomena can be found at all descriptive levels of language such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon and so on. thus, by neologisms, we mean the lexical neology dealing with the appearance of new words and some other closely related subjects. but it seems that the characteristics of neologisms are still vague unless certain points of reference, which are to some extent arbitrary in nature, are taken into account. the following are several possible parameters (they are not absolute standards) to determine if a unit constitutes a neologism or not(wang yaqin 2005): diachrony: a unit is a neologism if it has occurred recently lexicography: a unit is a neologism if it is not in dictionaries systematic instability: a unit is a neologism if it exhibits signs of formal instability (e.g. morphological, graphic, phonetic) or semantic instability psychology: a unit is a neologism if speakers perceive it as a new unit. according to the standards above, we seem to have quite a clear definition. however, with the growing attention to new words, linguists begin to view them from the multi- perspective. to define the nature of neologisms, french lexicographer louis guilbert(1975) said “ the creation of a neologism cannot be dissociated from individual creators who are integrated into a community and use it in discourse for expressing themselves in a particular situation.” another french lexicographer and terminologist 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 7alain rey(1995) echoed louis guilbert, saying: “ neologism.a unit of the lexicon, a word element or a phrase whose meaning, or whose signifier- signified relationship, presupposing an effective function in a specific model of communication, was not previously materialized as a linguistic form in the immediately preceding stage of the lexicon of the language. this novelty, which is observed in relation to a precise and empirical definition of the lexicon, corresponds normally to a specific feeling in speakers. according to the model of the lexicon chosen, the neologism will be perceived as belonging to the language in general or only to one of its special usages; or as belonging to a subject- specific usage which may be specialized or general (rey 1995)” . in this thesis, the author will take the notion that neologisms are tokens of a creative process as summarized by roger (1976) as “ a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life on the other” . neologisms here include new words with new form and old words taking on new meanings as well as new expressions. the terms, neologisms and new words, are used alternatively as the same reference in the thesis. 1.1.2 classification of neologisms new words can be categorized in different ways. there are mainly three versions of neologism assortment. the first is to group neologisms according to the degree of public acceptance; the second, their distribution in subject areas; and the third, word form. and in this thesis, the author is going to classify the neologisms according to the word formation process. and hereafter the author will give a brief introduction to the three versions of neologism assortment. degree of acceptance whenever a new word comes into being, it is unlikely for it to be accepted all at once. any neologism that makes its way to the general dictionary has to go through three 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 8phrases: firstly, it is born as a new word known only by very few people, then it grows into a familiar one known by a special group of people and finally it becomes accepted in the formal dictionaries. in practice, many of them fail to achieve the third phrase. many of them stay temporarily, fulfill their function, and then disappear forever. nevertheless, we can still encounter plenty of them that gain their popularity and serve our communication well in our daily life though we cannot find them in the dictionaries. so, according to different phrases, we have three types of neolo