Network neologism problem: network experts are coming.

Preface to Memorabilia of Chinese New Words in Yang Xiaoping, Zhi-Ran Song (2 0 0 6-2 0 0 8)

The historical memory of the evolution of national culture is treasured in Ci Hai.

-Preface to Professor Zhi-Ran Song's Chronology of New Words in China.

Yang Wenquan

American linguist Sapir said, "There is something behind language. Besides, language cannot exist without culture. The so-called culture is the sum of habits and beliefs passed down from society, which can determine our life organization. " (edward sapir, Language, P.22 1) Mr. Chen Yuan, a social linguist, also said: "When social life changes gradually and violently, language-as a social phenomenon and a social communication tool-changes unequivocally with the progress of social life." "Any change in social life, even the smallest change, will be more or less reflected in language, mainly vocabulary, because language is the most important means of communication on which social life depends." (Sociolinguistics, written by Chen Yuan, Shanghai: Lin Xue Publishing House, 1983, pp. 127, 354. Therefore, in a sense, vocabulary research should become an important aspect of language research.

The relationship between language and society and culture is indeed very close. Since the reform and opening up, with the rapid development of China's politics, economy and culture, new things, new phenomena, new concepts and new lifestyles have emerged, and contemporary Chinese neologisms have also emerged, showing a rapid growth trend of "vocabulary explosion", which has become the fastest period for the derivation and variation of Chinese neologisms in the history of China in the past 30 years. According to the statistics of the Institute of Language Application of the State Language Commission, there are about 1 000 new words in contemporary Chinese every year. This not only greatly enriches the vocabulary of modern Chinese, but also reflects the dynamic development of Chinese vocabulary from one side.

Neologisms, with distinctive characteristics of the times, are vivid language materials that can quickly reflect the state of contemporary social life and have rich humanistic implications. Neologisms are not only the source of basic vocabulary, but also the popular form for people to express new things, new ideas and new concepts. Therefore, the collection, collation and research of new words can not only provide explanations and examples for contemporary readers to check the meaning of a new word, but also provide rich literature materials for the study of Chinese vocabulary history, the compilation and revision of Chinese dictionaries, and also provide language materials that can reflect the characteristics of the times and historical traces for cultural linguistics, cultural anthropology and other disciplines.

Since 1980s, the collection, collation and research of Chinese neologisms have gradually formed a craze. At the initiative of Mr. Lv Shuxiang's article "Let's Pay Attention to New Words and New Meanings" (Lexical StudiesNo. 1984,No. 1), the Institute of Linguistic Application established the writing group "New Words and New Meanings" on 1986 to pay close attention to the development and changes of new words and new meanings in Chinese. Some scholars have edited and published many dictionaries of new words. The State Language Committee and the language monitoring institutions of some universities are also very concerned about the dynamic changes of language. For example, in recent years, the Ministry of Education has successively published the Green Paper "Language Life in China", which has opened a good research atmosphere for China's language research to be close to the reality of language life and reveal the law of language development and change in time, and has played a positive role in changing the situation that language research has always lagged behind the development of language itself.

In recent years, many vivid new words have appeared in newspapers, newspapers, internet and other media, among which a word-making method with "national" production characteristics is particularly worthy of attention. Word family refers to a group of words (including homographs, homoaffixes and homophones, etc.). ) has certain morphological characteristics in the same language system. There are broad and narrow word families, and the narrow word family only refers to word families with the same morpheme; Generalized word family refers to a set of words with certain isomorphic characteristics (norms) or semantic associations (semantic markers). For example, the words "groupie, moonlight clan, gangster, neet, stupid and donkey" are used to describe a group of people with the same characteristics, and the words "fighting for family, carpooling, house, meals, books and traveling" are used to represent a group of people with the same consumption needs. These words, which represent different kinds, properties or states in the same genus, reflect the refinement of people's cognition of things. In fact, through inheritance, introduction and innovation, these new words have formed a series of word families with "family iconicity", which can be abstracted into "X family, X slave, X door, X bar, X fever" and "spelling X, drying X, garbage X, green X and cottage X". These new word families have considerable analogy and productivity, and their appearance has greatly enriched the vocabulary, word formation and expression means of contemporary Chinese. According to statistics, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center conducted a survey of new words in 2007 by computer semi-automatic extraction. The results show that one of the characteristics of neologisms is the extensive use of analogy in word formation, and the word family is obvious, accounting for 27.55% of neologisms (Li Yuming 2008).

So far, the collection, collation and research of Chinese neologisms have achieved fruitful results. First of all, in lexicography, more than 100 dictionaries and annual versions of various new words have been published in recent 30 years. Secondly, a large number of academic papers on new words and related research have been published; No matter ordinary scholars, graduate students or famous linguists, they have shifted their attention and interest to the discussion and research of new words to varying degrees, which has greatly promoted the in-depth research and theoretical construction of contemporary Chinese vocabulary. In addition, several monographs have been published. As the famous linguist Mr. Wang Ning pointed out in the Seventh National Symposium on Chinese Lexicology (sponsored by Hebei University and co-sponsored by Commercial Press, 5438- 10/0/2/7/2008), "In the past 30 years, the research on Chinese vocabulary has made fruitful achievements, in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

Among the existing researches, the compilation of neologism dictionaries has become a bright spot. On the one hand, neologism neologism dictionary records the history of the emergence, development and evolution of Chinese vocabulary in time, and is an important carrier of tangible records of vocabulary, presenting readers with an overview of the development of Chinese vocabulary in the past 30 years; On the other hand, it also reflects the historical image of the Chinese nation in the process of contemporary cultural evolution, and it is a mirror reflecting the development and changes of national culture.

Professor Zhi-Ran Song from College of Literature, Sichuan Normal University has accumulated rich experience in the collection, collation, compilation and research of neologisms. Since 1990s, he began to pay attention to and study contemporary Chinese neologisms, and devoted himself to compiling the Chronicle of Chinese Neologisms. In addition to offering special courses to guide graduate students to pay attention to neologisms and write and publish relevant research papers, he also tried his best to collect all kinds of vivid neologisms from various paper media, online media and audio media, paying special attention to the collection and arrangement of neologisms not included in Modern Chinese Dictionary, and then compiling and publishing them in the form of "annual publication" one after another. Because of his keen interest and persistent spirit in the study of Chinese neologisms, Memorabilia of Chinese neologisms was published and contributed to the society. Now the annual edition has been published in four volumes, namely 1995 ~ 1996, 1997 ~ 2000, 200 1 ~ 2002 and 2003 ~ 2005. At present, the China New Words Yearbook (2006-2008) has also been completed and will be published soon. The publication of these dictionaries fully shows Professor Zhi-Ran Song's special contribution to the collation and research of Chinese neologisms.

We know that it is difficult to compile a dictionary, not to mention the difficulty of compiling a set of multi-volume "annual" dictionaries for fifteen consecutive years. To this end, Professor Song specially organized a group of graduate students and related university teachers to collect new words from various "living" language materials such as paper media such as contemporary newspapers and magazines, audio media such as radio, film and television, and electronic media such as mobile phone networks. This work is very arduous, besides sorting out, summarizing and analyzing a large number of corpus, it also needs keen vision and unique discrimination. As a scholar who has been engaged in the study of ancient Chinese for a long time, Professor Song not only has a profound knowledge of Chinese studies, but also is highly sensitive to the dynamic changes of contemporary Chinese vocabulary. Therefore, he can observe and explain contemporary Chinese vocabulary from the perspective of "history", especially in the investigation of the source of new words, which is better than the general lexicographer, and in the exploration and explanation of the motivation of new words, he is more detailed and profound than similar dictionaries.

To sum up, the Chronicle of Chinese Neologisms (2006-2008) edited by Professor Song has the following three characteristics:

First, the corpus is novel and rich. From the perspective of syllables, the collected corpus includes monosyllabic ones such as Tread, Tide, Fly, Yong, Lei and Leng, and disyllabic ones such as Aobu, Pen substitute, Brown Girl and Butterfly Kiss. There are also many syllables such as concave shape, lame duck, hamstring, soy sauce, mistress, push-ups, ashes, red shirts, monitoring doors, cool pickpockets, lolicon, no nutrition, brain damage, companionship, light mature women, loose meat men and so on. Failure, high-paying flea, Chinese TOEFL, stent therapy, physical examination before love, beautiful garbage, bird's nest generation, human flesh search, three high girls, network cohabitation, administrative luxury, netizen first, paper wealth, marginal contribution award, urban dependence, belly economy, atypical corruption. There are not only morphemes, words and phrases, but also language units such as clauses. In addition, the dictionary also includes many numerical words, alphabetic words and Chinese and western words, such as "4 19", "8 147", "3S girl", "4S shop", "post-90s", "CPI", "KTV", "Kuso" and "K book". The collected corpus is the result of hard work.

The second is arranged by year, in order of sound. The whole dictionary adheres to the consistent principle of compiling words in chronological order, and reveals the time when new words and phrases appear as accurately as possible. Determining the age of new words is an important content in linguistics, especially in the study of Chinese vocabulary history. Although it is not easy to determine the exact time when a new word appears, lexicographers will certainly provide very important literature basis for current and future Chinese vocabulary researchers by carefully searching the results of textual research.

Third, the comments are informative and detailed. There are comments under every word of this publication. "Annotation" is different from the definition of general dictionaries. Its content not only analyzes the meaning and usage of the word, but also focuses on the social and historical background of the word, including relevant knowledge and data. This is very helpful for researchers and general readers to deepen their understanding of the source of related words and the process of derivation and variation.

In recent years, I have made some case studies on neologisms and new meanings by using the relevant theories of metaphor and cognitive semantics. Therefore, it can be said that the collation and research of contemporary Chinese neologisms are closely related to Professor Song. I think Chinese vocabulary should become an important department of language research, and the concept that academic circles only pay attention to the study of written language and ignore the study of realistic and vivid language materials should be changed. Fortunately, the collection, collation and research of Chinese neologisms in the last twenty years have opened a good research atmosphere for Chinese studies. Under such a research atmosphere, Professor Zhi-Ran Song has compiled several volumes of Dictionary of New Words, which has undoubtedly promoted the study of contemporary Chinese vocabulary. I sincerely admire Professor Song's work in this field, so I am very willing to recommend this good publication to readers who like to know or study Chinese neologisms as a post-scholar. This is a sequence.

Yang Wenquan

April 28th, 2009 in Muxiangzhai, Sichuan University.