A Comparative Study Of English Words Formation And Chinese Characters From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

With the spread and influence of Chinese and Western cultures,many people have been confused about the basic structures of the two different languages and simply treated tens of thousands of English words and Chinese phrases as equals for a long time.It constantly brings difficulties to learners of the two languages,especially the Chinese students who are learning English vocabulary.English,as a phonetic symbol,belongs to the Indo-European language system,while Chinese,as an ideographic form,belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family.Writing is a cognitive tool for recording languages.Throughout the development of English vocabulary,the vitality of English word-formation is reflected by the infinite combination of roots and affixes.Among all types of words,the most typical one is derivation word.Throughout the evolution of traditional Chinese characters and the application of modern Chinese characters,phonetic compound is the most flexible and productive form due to enormous flexible radicals.In this paper,from the prototype category theory,this paper compares English words with Chinese characters in terms of formation.The author makes a comprehensive and detailed comparison between the formation methods of English words,elements(Latin alphabet,affix)and the composition devices of Chinese characters and components(strokes and radicals).According to the previous division of affixes and radicals,the paper lists a large number of affixes and radicals to find that English derivation words formed by affixes and the Chinese phonetic compounds composed with radicals are the results of the categorization of different nations,and both of these graphic forms are prototypes of the two categories in formation.In terms of semantic category,the functions of affixes and radicals are similar,and part of them can be equivalent.However,the functions of grammatical categories are quite different,which originates from different thinking modes of English and Chinesenationalities.From the above analysis,it can be inferred that the English derivatives and the Chinese phonetic characters are similar in composition.The semantic and grammatical categorization functions of the affixes and the radicals are similar.These findings will improve the English learning of Chinese students and further the development of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.