On The Motivation Of English Neologisms In The Recent 30 Years

With the rapid development of science and technology worldwide, many neologisms appear in various fields in order to express new things, new concepts and new ideas. English is now a world language and most often the language used to introduce new ideas and technologies. This study focuses on the motivation of English neologisms in recent 30-year period of time. An overall analysis of neologisms is presented from the perspective of motivation. 1116 words are selected from Twentieth Century Words edited by John Ayto.Based on the previous studies on motivation, a classification of motivation is made. In order to delve into their motivational characteristics of the neologisms, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is employed in this study. According to the classification of motivation, the neologisms are categorized and percentages are calculated.This study shows that most neologisms in contemporary English are highly motivated. Among the four types of motivation, phonetic, morphological, semantic and etymological motivation, morphological motivation is the most frequently used one. The relationship between word form and word meaning is identified and hopefully it can be applied to promote vocabulary acquisition and teaching.