On the Lexical Meaning of the Release of Chinese New Words

On the Lexical Meaning of the Release of Chinese New Words

Yang

Recently, the Ministry of Education and the State Language Committee released the report on language life in China in 2006. Compared with the 2005 Language Life Report, one of the highlights of this report is the listing of 17 1 new Chinese words. These new words were selected by the editorial board of the report after verifying the "suspected" new words that appeared in more than 30 domestic newspapers last year. Two factors can be used to choose: first, "new", that is, new words and new meanings that really appeared in 2006; Second, it is used frequently. The "high frequency" mentioned here is aimed at those new words that have not been selected, which is far lower than the frequency of use of "newspaper, radio and TV buzzwords" published in the report and common words in people's daily life. Therefore, Chinese neologisms are by no means equal to buzzwords.

After the release of the new word 17 1, it has aroused widespread concern and heated discussion in society. While people generally affirm the significance of the release of new words, some people also express their worries and anxieties about the release of new words. Below, the author wants to explain the lexical meaning of the new words released by the state through the statistical analysis of these new words, and correct some wrong views in the current society.

Through the analysis of two characteristics of neologisms, we can see that the release of Chinese neologisms has at least three meanings: first, it is conducive to the in-depth study of modern Chinese vocabulary; Second, it is conducive to scientific prediction of the future development of Chinese vocabulary; Third, it can provide a basis for the revision of Chinese dictionaries.

1. The disyllabic words of neologisms are absolutely dominant, while the trisyllabic words are still on the increase, which shows that neologisms still conform to the basic characteristics of Chinese vocabulary.

17 1 Among the new words, there are 56 disyllabic words and 45 disyllabic words. All the four-syllable words, whether they are "eight honors and eight disgraces" in conjoined structure or "beautiful garbage" and "red chamber manuscript" in partial structure, are composed of two disyllabic words, which can be regarded as the combination form of disyllabic words. In this way, 59% of the new words of 17 1 can be classified as disyllabic words, more than half of them. However, one of the characteristics of modern Chinese vocabulary is that disyllabic words are dominant. It can be seen that the new words produced in 2006 still conform to this main feature of modern Chinese vocabulary. 17 1 Among the new words, there are 52 trisyllabic words, accounting for 30.4% of the total, which is much higher than the proportion of trisyllabic words in the new meanings of new words included in Modern Chinese Dictionary (2002 supplementary edition). In Modern Chinese Dictionary (2002 supplementary edition), there are 1205 new words and new meanings, of which trisyllabic words 158, accounting for 13. 1%, while in Modern Chinese Dictionary1%. There are a large number of trisyllabic words composed of imitation, such as "act young". To investigate whether the proportion of trisyllabic words in neologisms continues to rise, we need to make statistical research on neologisms every year, which also reflects the significance of the publication of "Chinese Neologisms".

In the discussion, some people think that neologisms are "alienation" of Chinese. In fact, through the above analysis, we can see that although new words are new, they still conform to the basic characteristics of Chinese vocabulary and are not completely "weird".

2. Morphemes are the main word formation methods of neologisms, and abbreviations account for a small proportion. There are also cases where letters or Arabic numerals are used to form words in new words, but the proportion of such words is very small. This feature reflects that neologisms not only keep the inherent characteristics of Chinese, but also reflect some new characteristics of Chinese development in the new period.

Most of the neologisms in 17 1 are composed of old morphemes, such as "NPC CPPCC's blog, welfare corruption, snail birthday patients, retro school, group rent, ticket discount area, goal" and so on. These words are new words synthesized from old morphemes. Because old morphemes are inherent in Chinese, or have become stable and generally recognized, word formation with old morphemes can give full play to the advantages of Chinese characters' "looking at the text to create meaning" and the role of morphemes in prompting the meaning of words, making words easy to understand and accept, which is also a long-standing word formation method in Chinese. Therefore, in the discussion of 17 1 neologisms in society, some people think that neologisms are difficult to understand, similar to "mars language". This view is partial, only a few new words are difficult to understand and deny the majority, which is tantamount to picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelon. Some new words composed of old morphemes are difficult for people to understand at the moment, but this is not because of word formation, but because the things recorded by these words have not been popularized in society, such as "smile circle, sponge road" and so on. "Smile Circle" refers to the plastic bracelet worn by Olympic volunteers to serve the Olympic Games, which is named after the word "Smile Beijing" printed on the bracelet. "Sponge Road" refers to a new type of pavement, which can absorb groundwater as quickly as a sponge. The word formation of these new words is very suitable for the characteristics of things themselves. Once new things are understood, new words are easily accepted by people, so they are not the so-called "mars language".

In 17 1 neologisms, a small number of neologisms are constructed with new, unformed and morphemic elements, such as "buying tourists" and "social economy", which are relatively difficult to understand, but account for a small proportion in the total. "Sun" itself is listed as one of the new words 17 1, which means to publish things online. This is a brand-new usage of the word "sun" in 2006. The word "Sun Ke" is using this new morpheme, and "Ke" is also a relatively new morpheme, indicating a kind of people on the Internet. The word "she" in her economy means "about women", and the usage of this word is obviously brand-new. Although the meaning of such words is difficult to be understood in a short time, this situation has been changed because of the existence of parody. Imitation word formation is to use existing or newly formed morphemes to imitate similar new words in the same structural way. Analogy is a common mechanism in language and an important mechanism for the formation of many words. Many morphemes in Chinese vocabulary (some words with the same morpheme position and the same meaning) are created in this way, and there are many such words in 17 1 new words. Such as "changing customers, digging customers, spelling customers, buying tourists, printing customers", "car slaves, house slaves, festival slave, tomb slaves, certificate slaves", "act young", "accompanying people, carrying people, running people, hanging bottles, eating together, getting married in a hurry, coming to school, living happily, slow heating, testing drugs, and so on. Due to the rapid spread of emerging media, when a new word is popular on the Internet, it is possible to copy a number of new words with similar structures. The newly copied words may be unstable and their meanings are not easy to understand, but the morphemes shared by * * * in the copied new words are relatively stable because of their extensive use, such as "slave", "guest" and "clan" in the above words. For example, when we know that "guest" refers to a kind of people on the internet, "slave" refers to a kind of people who are under pressure for some reason in society, "clan" refers to people with certain characteristics in present life, and "door" refers to an event, then the meaning of the above new words is very clear. The release of these new words makes us clearly see that some morphemes have strong word-formation ability, and we can roughly predict their future development trend, that is, they may gradually stabilize and become fixed words or morphemes in Chinese vocabulary, which also provides a basis for us to supplement new words and new meanings when revising dictionaries. For example, when the dictionary is revised, the above-mentioned new words such as "change guest, dig guest, car slave, house slave, act young clan, sparring clan, monitoring gate and skeleton gate" may not be added to the dictionary, but morphemes such as "guest", "slave", "clan" and "gate" which have been relatively fixed can be adopted as new words.

Abbreviations mainly include two categories: general abbreviations and numerical abbreviations. The general abbreviation is to directly extract multiple components from the original form to form a new form, such as "Bodou, Bo Wen, Dingchong family, the only second generation, light mature women, poor people running, job powder, cold promotion". Because there is no unified principle in the process of abbreviation, the meanings of these abbreviations are generally vague and difficult to understand. For example, "cold promotion" refers to the promotion in off-season ("cold season"), and "Ding Chong clan" refers to families with pets but not children (Ding Ke), and so on. It is precisely because these words have vague meanings that some people think that the publication of new words is of little value. This statement admits the shortcomings of this kind of words, which is undoubtedly correct, but in fact, after statistics, less than 30 of the new words 17 1 can be recognized as general abbreviations, including some words constructed by analogy. For example, "immigrants who passed the college entrance examination" is not only the abbreviation of "immigrants who passed the college entrance examination", but also a word that imitates "immigrants who passed the college entrance examination". This will not affect the meaning of other words. More importantly, through the publication of these and other neologisms, we can fully understand the overall composition of the current neologisms, and the investigation and study would be incomplete without any piece. Moreover, judging from the abbreviations mentioned above, some words may still be used more frequently in the future, and it seems that these words are difficult to be replaced by better forms, such as "the second generation alone", which may stabilize, so they should not be completely denied. There are five new words * * * condensed from figures, namely "Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces, three lost, Third Hand Disease, Three Limited Houses, Three Supports and One Help". Basically, they are all proper nouns, which come into being with the appearance of new things. If this thing persists, it will become a supplement to Chinese vocabulary.

Among the new words of 17 1, there is a small number of words, but they are very eye-catching, that is, four words with letters or Arabic numerals as word-formation elements: "2-point closure order, EMBA, M-type society, 7 times". These four words can appear in the published new words, indicating that their frequency of use has reached a certain level. It can be seen that a few alphabetic words (including Arabic numerals) have stepped out of the network field and started to appear more frequently in newspapers and other mass media, which is a new feature of Chinese vocabulary in the new period. During the discussion, some people expressed concern that the publication of these words would affect the use of Chinese vocabulary by young people. In fact, from the above four words, we can see that they are all proper nouns with strong discipline. Moreover, most alphabetic words currently used in newspapers, magazines, television and other mass media have similar properties. Because of its narrow scope of use, it is unlikely to appear in the daily language and composition of primary and secondary school students, so there is no need to worry too much.

In the new word 17 1, there are some other ways of word formation, such as figurative words ("half-sugar couple, flying fish family", etc. ), transliteration words ("Google, Toye", etc. ), homophonic words ("Bai Tuo, Lihua", etc. ), the number is small, mostly proper nouns. On the contrary, through the release of all these new words, we can see the whole picture of Chinese vocabulary in the new period more clearly, which provides the possibility for a deeper and more comprehensive study.

To sum up, the publication of the new words 17 1 is of great lexical significance, because it is irrational to unilaterally deny the significance of the publication of the whole new words because of the possible defects of a certain type of words.