A Research On Contemporary Chinese Affixes

Looking from the perspective of language types, Chinese belongs to isolated language.Its forms lack variety. Word formations are mainly compounding. Additive compoundsconsisted of word roots and affixes occupy a small proportion in the total number of words.But we can say affixes are the smallest and most controversial grammar unit. Various scholarshave different understanding in term definition, criterion for judging and scope definition. Theresearch subject of this article is modern Chinese affix. The paper discusses some concretematters about modern Chinese affix.The paper consists of five chapters. The body of this article is from chapter two tochapter five.Chapter1is introduction. This chapter introduces the research subjects and significanceof this article, as well as the contents, theories, research methods and resources of corpus.Chapter2discusses the basic academic issues about affixes in modern Chinese language.The first issue is affix terms. We compare six series of terms from the perspectives of logisticsand terminology. Affixes (prefix, infix, and suffix) and language affixes (prefix, infix, andsuffix) are relatively scientific. Affixes and language affixes have different extensions. Theyshould be distinctly defined and can not be used as the same concept. The second issue isabout the criterion of affixes. We should give an overall consideration to determine an affix,from the perspectives of position, morpheme, semantic grammaticalization, marking of part ofspeech, word formation and phonological reduction. The first three criteria are essential injudging affixes; the last three criteria are for reference. The third issue is about theclassification, scope and characteristic of affixes. We mainly discuss three classifications:genuine affix and quasi-affix, configuration affix and morphological affix, pronunciation affix,grammaticalization affix and pragmaticalization affix. We compare various scholars’ differentideas about scope of affixes and list the identified affixes in this paper. We also analyze thecharacteristics of affixes in modern Chinese language. The characteristics include: lessprefixes, more suffixes; more quasi-affix, less genuine affix; individual diversity in word formation capacity.Chapter3is about affixes changed from structure lexicalization. There are two categoriesof them: one is from cross-level structure lexicalization, the other is from grammar structurelexicalization. Among the affixes from cross-level structure lexicalization, the fivecharacters“于”“乎”“然”“其”“为”are discussed in detail. They have evolved from independentwords to position-fixed semantic grammaticalization morpheme—affixes. There are mainlythree causes for semantic grammaticalization: rhythm of Chinese with two syllables, highfrequency of co-occurrence of words linear adjacent with the word before and semanticgrammaticalization. The lexicalization of syntactic structure refers to syntactic unit combinedwith lexical items and grammar items. We think affixes from lexicalization of syntacticstructure include “着”“了”“的”“地”“得”. These affixes are different from cross-levelstructure lexicalization in that the grammaticalization path of “着”“了”has two stages: Word—function word—affix. Their grammar items are almost the same with cross-level structurelexicalization affixes. The chapter also discusses the question of whether “得” and “不” of the“V得C” and “V不C” structure are infixes or not.Chapter4discusses the affixes of status words. It is developed around4issues. The firstone is about the categories of status words. The affixes can be categorized as one-syllableaffixes, repeated two–syllable affixes, non-repeated two-syllable affixes and multi-syllableaffixes. Among them, repeated two–syllable affixes BB are the most and most complicated.Only those grammaticalized, position-fixed and dependent morphemes are affixes. Thesecond one is about the resources of affixes of status words. Affix BB derives from ABBstructure. BB affixes come into being with the lexicalization of ABB phrases and thegrammaticalization of BB. In addition, after the formation of the mode of additional wordsABB, some grammaticalized B repeats directly to form ABB. ABC and AXBC words comefrom ABB with phonetic change. The third one is about the pragmatic function of the affixesof status words. There are four functions: to express vivid image, to express the level changeof degree, to express commendatory or derogatory meanings and to express stylistic featuresof colloquial language. The fourth is about the pronunciation of ABB words. BB used to be pronounced with the first tone no matter whether their original tone is the first tone. Now theBB inclines to be pronounced with the original tone.Chapter5discusses the influence of language contact to Chinese affixes and derivativemode of word-formation. It talks about the fashion, degree, result and cause of the influence.There are mainly three modes of the influence. The first is that derivative word-formationmode has been used from occasionally to frequently with language contact. The second is thatthe scope of the use of Chinese affixes morpheme has been expanded. The third is thatChinese word root morphemes have newly increased their usage of affixes. Language contacthas some positive influence on Chinese word-formation. The influence is shown in twoaspects: One is that it has promoted the development of Chinese derivative word-formation.The other is that some newly increased word models formed by quasi–affixes. Thedevelopment of language has its rule. Some foreign affixes absorbed by Chinese languagewill be transformed by Chinese. So there is not a one-to-one relationship between Chineseaffixes and foreign affixes. Some foreign affixes have been translated into Chinese. The morethey mix together with Chinese morphemes, the stronger their vitality is. Therefore theinfluence of foreign language to Chinese derivative word-formation is partial, in detail andnot fundamental. There are several factors for other languages derivative word-formationaffixes to be absorbed and transformed by Chinese. The factors include the development ofsociety, international communication, as well as pragmatic psychology, media mode andanalogy mechanism of language.The conclusion part summarizes the factors and mechanisms of affixes formation bygrammaticalization. There are two factors: language and society. The language factor includesrhythm constraint of syllables, grammaticalization, changes of grammar functions andpragmatic psychology. As to the society factor, language contact is a major cause leading togrammaticalization. The mechanisms are mainly re-analysis, analogy and borrowing. Thispart sums up the important conclusion of this paper, reflects handicap of the research and putsforward some issues that need to be explored in further studies.There are three innovations in this paper. ;Firstly, the paper puts forward some new ideas. For example, we think that there arenecessary standards and standards for reference in judging affixes. There are threerequirements to be an affix: fixed position, grammaticalization and not being a word. Notbeing a word is the main difference between affixes and words. We advocate that it isnecessary to define the species relationship between affixes and language affixes and makeclear the denotation of the two concepts.Secondly, the affixes are classified according to their resources. The paper gives athorough analysis of affixes coming from structure lexicalization, affixes of status word andaffixes under the influence of language contact. This paper reveals the essential causes ofaffixes’ being complicated and not having a clear boundary with related language units.Thirdly, In addition to linguistics research methods, this paper also adoptsmulti-disciplinary research methods, mainly including the theories of logic, terminology andcommunication.