An Evolutionary Analysis Of English Words Borrowed Into Chinese

As a critical part of contact linguistics, linguistic borrowings have drawn more and more attention of researchers in recent years. As far as linguistic borrowings in Chinese are concerned, those which originate from English are of the greatest importance. In the field of linguistic borrowings, it is lexical borrowings that keep in the central position. Since Chinese and English are from two distinct language families, most instances of lexical borrowings between them are adapted by the means of translation, i.e. lexical borrowings within these two languages exist in modified versions when compared with their original sources. Modification of this type normally falls into two methods: phonetic simulation and literal translation. This categorization, however, is too simple. One objective of the present thesis is the construction of a satisfactory system to classify EN-CH lexical borrowings.In the translation process of lexical borrowings, some scholars emphasized domestication more while others put more stress upon foreignisation. Obviously it is necessary that a balance should be struck between these two opposite trends of development. Yet few researches have brought them together and unified them in one mode, i.e. to integrate both to explain one single borrowing example. After his tentative studies, the present author successfully arranges each type of lexical borrowings in a linear structure according to their degrees of localization. If being compared to evolutionary progression in biology, this structure represents a lifeline of EN-CH lexical borrowings in which two trends of their development are presented simultaneously, i.e. a lexical borrowing is potential to be further localised; meanwhile it could also move to a lower stage. The present author names such a structure as the"Evolution of Lexical Borrowings". Different types of borrowings have their distinctive features in both developmental trends. Some of them are much more stable, while the others have more possibilities to change, moving closer to either Target Language or Source Language. This aspect also serves as an important part in this thesis paper.