An English-Chinese Contrastive Study Of Lexical Motivation

Language form and structure are motivated by intralinguistic and exter-linguistic factors, so are language change and development. Views on motivation reflect the Sprachansicht (language view) of a people, thus become one of the core issues of linguistic and philosophical studies. This dissertation explores the common and different aspects of English and Chinese lexical motivation to put forward the following ideas:(1) the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated; (2) the motivation mechanism of English and Chinese lexical systems has many aspects in common, but also accouts for the diversities as the two languages differ significantly in motivation type and degree; (3) motivation is one of the major forces that shape a lexical system.Motivation is a complex concept. It is the analyzability of a linguistic structure, the driving force for language change and development, the relation of linguistic signs and the interaction between the linguistic system and its external factors, i.e. the natural, social, humanistic ones. As a result, a study into linguistic motivation should not be confined in the static, homogeneous, idealized, objective and enclosed system of linguistic signs. Instead, language should be regarded dynamically as a multi-dimentional, complex, realistic and open system. Both the synchronic and diachronic aspects are included in the research as the history, tradition and development of a language is of vital importance for motivation studies. Both the western and the Chinese language study traditions, and the scientific as well as the humanistic approaches are taken into consideration in this cross-language study of lexical motivation.The western and Chinese traditions of thinking view linguigstic motivation quite differently. Aristotle regarded language as the signs of mind. The idea was reiterated by Rousseau and Hegel, and developed into the Arbitrariness Principle by Saussure in the early 20 century. The principle has exerted unprecedented influences in language studies as it paved the way for the scientific approach of language research and thus ushered in the age of modern linguistics. The theory later became one of sources for the "linguistic turn" of philosophical studies which regarded language as "the home of being" and was widely applauded. The Chinese traditional linguistic studies with a history of over 2,000 years took language motivation as the central issue. The ancient Chinese language scholars developed a systematic methodology of "exploring the meaning through both spoken and written forms of language", accomplished a great number of widely received works like Shuo Wen Jie Zi (A Study into the Structures and Meanings of Chinese Charactrers) and Shi Ming (Explaining the Names), to name only a few, established effective and sophisticated theories such as the You Wen Theory and the Sheng Zhuan Theory which explored the origin, the meaning, the structure and the relation of Zi (the Chinese characters). Western and Chinese linguistic thoughts differ in their understanding of the relation among language, mind and the reality. The Arbitrariness Theory is the natural conclusion of the western tradition that views language as symbols of mind by Aristotle or as a psychological entity by Saussure. The theory denies any natural connections between a linguistic system and the reality, thus displays a very strong idealistic tendency. However, the traditional Chinese views on linguistic motivation focus on the relations between human language and the Real World by recognizing the material basis of language and connecting linguistic forms (both oral and written) with the meaning.Linguistic motivation is defined in this dissertation as the connections between linguistic forms or language changes and the various internal and external linguistic factors. It can be classified synchronically into the internal motivation and the external motivation, and diachronically into the primary motivation and the secondary motivation. The internal motivation concerns about the relations of linguistic items of all levels; the external motivation explores the interaction between the linguistic system and the outside factors; the primary motivation reflects the way by which the earliest people perceived the reality and converted it into the language; the secondary motivation is the principles of generating complex linguistic units by the simple primary linguistic signs. The paper discusses lexical motivation mainly from two perspectives:(1) the lexical motivation within the linguistic system, including the motivation of the simple signs which were first invented by early human beings, of the complex signs and of borrowings; and (2) the lexical phenomena motivated by external factors.The Arbitrariness Theory which lays the foundation for the 20th century linguistics has some important restrictions that are very often neglected:(1) the theory is not necessarily applicable to languages with an ideographic writing system like Chinese; (2) the linguistic sign is defined as a psychological entity formed by the pairing of the sound image and the concept; (3) phonetically motivated linguistic signs like exclamatory and onomatopoeic words are excluded. The theory is the natural and inevitable development of the 2000-year western language thoughts and serves as a perfect example of idealistic charm and "scientific" approach of language studies. However, it poses a very sharp contrast when is compared to the Chinese thinking traditions and is somewhat invalid when is applied to the Chinese language system which adopts the ideographic writing. Zi, which is the basic linguistic unit of the Chinese language, is not "the sign of signs". It exerts a huge deal of influences to the Chinese language thus can not be excluded from the linguistic studies. Language, both the signs and the system, is a natural result of human history and experiences, and has a material base on the reality. The trace elements neglected in scientific research may not be so trivial as they had been assumed. The dissertation maintains that the writing, which is the most marginal in a western language, plays the most significant role in Chinese and should be counted as one of the components of a linguistic sign. Hence, a inner structure of 3 components, i.e. the sound, the graph (the written form) and the concept, is proposed in the dissertation for the linguistic signs in all languges in the age of written civilization. There are two form-meaning relations within a linguistic sign:the sound-concept relation and the graph-concept relation which form the basis respectively for phonographic motivation and graphological motivation. The phonographic motivation is apt to erode as the sound changes greatly over time and distance, while the graphological motivation is very stable as the writing is much less limited by time and distance. Linguistic signs in both the English and Chinese languages have only traces of phonological motivation but are poles apart in terms of graphological motivation. English has hardly any graphological motivation as a result of its phonetic writing system. Chinese features a very high level of graphological motivation as Zi, serving as both the speaking and the writing unit, is ideographic.The endocentric structure of "Feature+Entity" is the common construction of complex linguistic items in English and Chinese. It reflects the general means by which complex items are formed out of the simple ones and may be applied universally. The linguistic structures generated in this way are transparent and thus highly motivated. The borrowings in a language usually experience two stages, namely, the introduction stage and the assimilation stage, and are seldom motivated. Borrowings in English tend to keep their written form in the source languages and get assimilated by readjusting the sound-meaning relations; borrowings in Chinese tend to simulate the sound in the source languages and get assimilated by readjusting the ideograph-meaning relations. Both English and Chinese take in borrowings under the control of Economy Principle and assimilate them according to the inner mechanism of the borrowing language. The arbitrariness/motivation of the borrowing language and the frequency of usage play a decisive role in the assimilation process.The little motivated simple words and loans form the core of the English vocabulary and take up most of the lexicon; the motivated complex words are lower in importance. So the English lexical system is much less motivated. However, all the Chinese lexical items, including the simple Zi, the compound Zi and the double-syllable Ci, are highly motivated, with the marginal Lian Mian Ci and borrowings the only exception, which makes the Chinese lexical system a highly motivated one.The economy motivation, which serves as the driving force for lexicalization and "openness" of a language, shapes a lexical system drastically. the Economy Principle shapes a lexical system from two opposing directions:(1)languages tend to lexicalize increasingly as economic expressions are always welcome by language users (the expression economy); (2) very high lexicalization level is always avoided because it means more efforts in memorizing the lexical items (the memory economy). The English and Chinese lexical systems are both shaped by the opposing forces and reach a balance. English is more highly lexicalized than Chinese, as it is less motivated. The Economy Principle decides whether a language will produce new words more by its own resources or more by the outside resources, and thus leads to the different levels of "openness". English has a less motivated lexical system and becomes one of the most open languages, while Chinese which is highly motivated shows a very strong dislike towards phonetic borrowings. All languages have the equal ability to assimilate words from other languages when there is a real need, if the difficulty or the "costs" to assimilate them is fully consideredMetonymy and metaphor are the underlying mechanism for the extension of the meaning of words as they help make the best use of the existing lexical items and increase the expressiveness of the language. The words expressing basic concepts in English and Chinese share much in common in the early stage of meaning extension, which proves that the metonymic and metaphoric thinking works across the linguistic and cultural lines. However, the cognitive devices of metonymy and metaphor are also restricted by the features of a language and culture. That's why the semantic network of the words for the same concept displays disparities in many aspects.Motivation is one of the factors deciding the features of a lexical system as the type and degree of it influence many aspects of a lexical system, such as the structure, the scale, the development, the word formation, the borrowings, the lexicalization. The dissertation proposes motivation as one of the typological criteria so that languages can be classified into highly motivated and slightly motivated ones. Chinese is a typical highly motivated language while English is slightly motivated. The lexical systems of the two languages are similarly motivated in some aspects at one hand, but display great disparities in other aspects as the result of the different motivation types and degrees.