The linguistic Motivations for the Production of Neologisms

Guo Ermin

摘要： Languages， as a part of culture， develop with the society. Vocabularies are the most active factors in all languages. The change of vocabulary includes the addition and deletion of vocabularies or the transformation of the meaning of the words. Social development includes the development of economy， politics， military， technology， culture， art and so on. All of these provide the conditions for the production of neologism. From the perspective of linguistics， the paper tries to explore the linguistic motivations for the production of neologism combining with concrete examples.

關鍵詞：neologisms? ?production? ?motivations? ?significance

Foreword

Neologisms are newly coined words that are given new meaning to fit new situations because of social， cultural， scientific and technical changes in human society.In a narrow sense neologisms refer to newly coined words. In a broad sense neologisms include the new meanings produced on the basis of the original meanings. The new words mentioned in the paper refer to newly coined words or words borrowed from other languages or the original words with new meanings and new usage.

1. The causes for the production of newly coined words

With the development of society and the appearance of new things and new conditions， some neologisms or new concepts that are used to refer to them come forth accordingly such as“粉絲”（fans）;“穿越劇”（time-travel TV drama）; “微博” （microblog）; “海歸” （overseas returnee） and so on。

The changes of value and life style and the production of new ideas are also the causes for the production of new expressions such as single noble， Dink， hen-pecker， grey income （extra income） and so on.Nowadays with the rapid development of science and technology， a lot of newly coined words that are closely related to technology come into being， such as CT， ultrasound， clone， e-mail and so on.

Network， as a modern technology， has been rapidly developed and greatly applied into peoples daily life and daily work， therefore， many new terms related to network spring up accordingly， such as internet bar， netizen， hacker， net surfing and so on.

The neologisms whether they are produced from economic and social life or from the fields of science and technology are attributed to the social development which is the basic condition and great power for the production of neologisms， which is the inevitable result of social development. With the advance and development of society， it has been a law for the development of languages. These neologisms have been mostly and widely applied and been an integral part of national language.

If we take the neologisms produced in recent years as the study objects， there are five basic ways for the production of neologisms： acronyms， metaphor， nominal used as adjectives， newly coined words， the original words with new meanings and usage， dialect and loan words.

In the present information era， with the development of science and culture， peoples thinking and cognitive abilities have been greatly enhanced and languages themselves have been developed rapidly as well. All of these speed up the appearance of neologisms which reflect new things， new concepts and new ideas. This provides a favorable condition for the rapid spread of new information. The production and forming of modern neologisms are usually scientifically motivated. Combining with the characteristics of English and Chinese languages， the paper makes a contrastive analysis on the motivations of Chinese neologisms from the aspects of sound， form， meaning， derivation and so on.

2. The linguistic motivations for the production of newly coined words

1） Acronyms

Acronyms are a special kind of clipping. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letter of a word that makes up a name. It is often used in military， technical and political terms. For example： CCP refers to Chinese Communist Party; IDD refers to International Direct Dialing; DIY refers to do it yourself; ATM refers to Automatic Tellers Machine; GDP refers to Gross Domestic Product.“過勞死” means someone dies from over fatigue and this phrase is made up of three words： over+fatigue+death;“白骨精” refers to someone that belongs to white collar and elite in certain callings. “高富帥”refers to a man that is tall， rich and handsome. “白富美” refers to a woman that is white， rich and beautiful.

2） Metaphor

Metaphor is an important language device. A metaphor makes a comparison between two unlike elements but the comparison is implied rather than stated. Nowadays many new words come into being by means of employing the metaphor， such as “打醬油”（indifferent on-looker），“跳槽”（change ones jobs），“剩女”（leftover ladies）， “宅男”（geek， like staying at home with the companion of computers），“潛力股”（someone with great potential and hope）， “花瓶” （metaphorically refer to some girls with beautiful appearance but no ability， now it specifically refers to some actresses in films or TV act as minor role，“什么都是浮云” （Everything is nothing.Famous actress CaiMing said in opusculum in 2013 Spring Festival Party “……都是千年的狐貍，你玩什么聊齋啊”，She means that we are both sophisticated， so do not be so astute in front of me. Here“狐貍 fox” refers to a cunning or tricky man.“聊齋chatting house”，originally refers to the name of a Chinese series or a classical novel. Now it refers to a sort of man or behavior featuring by foxery and sophistication.“雷thunder” originally refers to a natural phenomenon when it rains， while now it refers to something too exaggerated or someones abnormal behavior.

3） Nominal used as adjectives

他很娘（ He is like a woman）; 他很man （He is strong and manful）; 他很潮（He is fashionable）; 他很牛 （He is very great）; 他很二（“二” originally refers to a figure or number， now it refers to someone that is unstrung. “你很文藝” （You are a young man of art.）“他很大男子主義”（He has the quality of androcentrism.） 。“你長得很違章” This word originally means breaking the rule， now it is used to express that someone is not good-looking.

4） Partial Tone

“酷”comes from English word “cool” ;“杯具”comes from the word “tragedy”;“粉絲”comes from the word “fans”; 太極（ taiji），功夫（kongfu），磕頭（kautau）， 吉普（jeep）， 沙發（sofa）， 伊妹兒（Email）and安琪兒（angel） all come from partial tone. In Chinese， there are partial tone phenomena such as有木有-——有沒有（have or have not）; 神馬——什么（everything）;鴨梨——壓力（pressure）; 鴨梨山大——壓力山大（ The pressure is as heavy as a mountain）;“斑竹”——“版主（moderator）”。 玉米——“宇迷”（the fans of Li Yuchun）

5） Affixation

Affixation includes prefix and suffix. Affixation is the morphological process whereby grammatical or lexical information is added to the base. Affixation has played an active part in the course of the development of English language. It is a productive method in English word-building.

Prefix is the main type of word-formation putting a prefix in front of the base， sometimes with， but more usually without a change of word class， e.g. unhappy （un-happy）， illegal（il-legal）.

With the rapid development of internet technologies， many new computer jargons related to computer network appear. The most frequently used word is cyber which comes from Greece. On the basis of the word---cyberspace（網絡空間），? many new words are created such as： cyberaddict（網迷）， cybernut（網蟲），cyberculture（網絡文化）， cyberstar（網絡明星）， cybersource（網絡資源）， cybersight（網絡景點）， cybersquat（網上盜名登記）， cyber phobia（計算機恐懼癥）， cyber pet（電子寵物） ，cyber war（網絡戰）， cyber warrior （網絡戰士），cybercrime（網絡犯罪）and so on. Cyber almost becomes the most active prefix at present.

New words are also created in some TV programs for the amusement， such words are often mentioned such as “A貨男”refers to first class men with good qualities and conditions. Here A貨… acts as a prefix in a certain sense. Some words beginning with the word “被” are similar to the passive voice， such as“被離婚”referring to that one part is forced by another in a couple to get devoiced，and“被就業”referring to that people can not freely choose jobs that they like under the great pressure of employment.

Some newly coined words ending with suffix…族 refer to a group of persons such as月光族（someone spends his or her salary every month， no savings）， 啃老族（ someone that are adults but still relies on his or her parents economically），畢漂族（someone is out of work and no stable jobs the time they graduated from universities or colleges），蟻族（ ant-like graduates who live in rented small rooms that are like dens of ants）， 鐵丁族（someone that is determined not to want children）， 丁寵族（someone that does not want children but takes their pets as their children）.

Suffix ending up with …控 refers to taking a preference to certain kind of styles or things such as 格子控 （take a fancy to the clothes with the style of lattice），西裝控 （ take a preference to business suit） and so on. Suffix ending up with …女 refers to certain kinds of women， such as 輕熟女 （women with the age of 25-35 years who are social elites in their own callings）; 杠桿女 （women that can be helpful and beneficial to their husbands and children in career， social status or other aspects）; 拜金女（ women that warship money and take money in the first place）.

6） Compound

Modern science and technology bring about the addition of new words without numbers. They are the most important source of new words which appear mostly in the form of compound.

The exploration of deep space produces many new words. Here are some examples： space sickness （unpleasant physiological effects occurring under the conditions sustained spaceflight）; spacewalker （ a person who takes a spacewalk）; deep space （space beyond the earth and the moon）; space age （the age when men endeavor to explore the space）.

3. The significance of the production of neologisms

In language communication， the pragmatic meaning of some new words in the new context is gradually solidified into the inherent meaning of the words after repeated use. With the development of oral stylistics， many archaic words will fall into disuse， the number of new words will be increased， the sources of vocabularies will become rich and the form of new words will be apt to simplicity. The production of neologism shows the progress of the times and the enrichment of peoples material life and the improvement of peoples spiritual level.The newly coined words not only enrich our language but also reflect a social phenomenon， namely， present culture. Conversely， culture will hasten the development of vocabularies.

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