Study On The Quasi-affix Of Modern Chinese

Compounding is the most important method of forming new words in Chinese word-formation system, and with the natural development of Chinese, some morphemes whose derivational competence is huge and semantic content is empty gradually appeared. They are affixes. From the perspective of linguistic typology, the affix is the morpheme whose derivational ability is huge and semanteme is empty, however, some Chinese affixes have the characteristics of empty semanteme but have no further derivational competence to derive new words. So, by the criterion of semantic bleaching and analogical function, we classify the affix into the typical affix and the quasi-affix. The quasi-affix has partly bleaching semanteme and huge analogical function, which is the object of this paper.Chinese is short of the strict morphology. This paper will make great efforts to excavate the semi-morphologies or semi-markers of Chinese, and strive to control the on-line words outside of the dictionary by researching these limited semi-markers. The most important research method of this paper is the combination of the quantitative statistics and the qualitative analysis based on the large-scale corpus. In addition, some other orthodox methods of linguistic study, such as the combination of description and explanation, the combination of dynamic state and static state, the combination of synchrony times and diachrony times, and the contrast between Chinese and foreign languages, are also adopted.The significance of discussing the problem about the quasi-affix is as follows:First, it helps to deepen the theoretical cognition about the Chinese word-formation and Chinese natural characteristics.Second, it helps to provide some required morphological knowledge for computer's automatic analysis.Third, it helps to further perfect the processing of dictionary-compiling and improve the quality of teaching Chinese vocabulary as a foreign language.In the sequel, we will summarize the main doings and conclusions according to the order of chapters as follows:Introduction. We first elaborate the origin and significance of this issue, and then introduce the theoretical foundations, research methods, sources of the language materials and the corpus processing.Chapter I. We sum up the history and the present status of Chinese affix study, and divide the Chinese affix study into four stages, which are establishing period, stagnant period, recovery period and prosperous period. From two perspectives of the lenthway and the crosswise, we summarize the present status of Chinese affix study and make some comments. Finally, we put forward several problems remaining to be solved.Chapter II. We discuss several problems of the quasi-affix such as the nature, the characteristics, the determination and the range. First of all, we expound and prove the value and significance of bringing forward the term "quasi-affix" in the light of the prototype category theory. Then we discuss the connection and the difference between the quasi-affix, the notional morpheme and the typical affix. The difference between the quasi-affix and the typical affix is shown in the semantic transparency, the semantic compatibility, the derivative competence and the semantic adhesion. In this section, we put forward several concepts, which are the competence of word-formation, the competence of generating new derivatives and the degree of semantic contribution. The difference between the quasi-affix and the notional morpheme is shown in the word-forming character and the cognitive foundation. The connection of quasi-affix, typical affix and notional morpheme is that the quasi-affix is a transitional component in the grammaticalizational process from the notional morpheme to the typical affix, and the entire set of all quasi-affixes is a continuum. After discussing the relations among them we point out that the quasi-affix is a category of bound morpheme in the dynamic development of language, the semanteme of which is bleaching, and the place of which is fixed. Moreover, it has huge analogical competence to derive new words. Secondly, in this chapter we bring forward and expound the criteria of deciding a quasi-affix, such as semantic bleaching, semantic bounding, unidirectional high combinability, word-forming fixing. According to the qualitative criteria and referring to the statistic results of all the quasi-affixes brought forward by previous researchers, we figure out the range of the Chinese quasi-affixes. There are 16 quasi-prefixes and 34 quasi-suffixes altogether. Finally, we count up and analyze several external characteristics of Chinese quasi-affix. The research results prove that the trisyllabic words have the first place in the derivatives with quasi-affixes whether the prefix or the suffix, and contrastly, the disyllabic words have the first place in the derivatives with typical affixes. The proportion of the trisyllabic words with the quasi-prefix and the quasi-suffix is respectively 58% and 67%. At the same time, we analyze the style distribution and the overlapping problem of the Chinese quasi-affix on the basis of statistics.Chapter III. In this chapter we explore the types and functions of the Chinese quasi-affixes. First, we classify the Chinese quasi-affixes from five different perspectives, that is, the location, syllable, source, word-forming ability, degree of usage, and so on. We respectively make statistics of the results classified according to every criterion. Second, we discuss the functions of marking the part of speech and lexicalizing the phrase. Finally, from the perspectives of the cognition, grammaticalization and some others, we contrast and research several sets of the synonymous quasi-affixes which have high degree of usage. The content includes the synonymous quasi-affix implicating "Person", "Direction" and "Deny". For instance, exemplifying the synonymous quasi-affix implicating "Direction", we deeply explore the semantic emphasis of the quasi-affixes "Head" and "Face" by using the cognitive metaphorical theory. By the shifting analysis and quantitative statistics based on the corpus, we come to the conclusion: The quasi-affixes "Head" and "Face" have great difference in the psychological point of view. The "Head" implicates that the background focus is inside the reference object, which belongs to the type of the inside psychological point of view. However, the "Face" implicates that the background focus is outside the reference objects, which belongs to the type of the outside psychological point of view. With the help of two different scale corpus, we get the statistics that the "Head" as the internal psychological point of view takes up 62.86% and 65.06%, while as the external psychological point of view it takes up 20.00% and 16.87%. In contrast, as the external psychological point of view the "Face" takes up 67.65% and 65.87%, while as the internal psychological point of view it takes up 20.59% and 26.35%. The result from the quantitative statistics further justifies the conclusion made by the qualitative analysis.Chapter IV. This chapter focuses on the Chinese quasi-affix. We first point out the development of the Chinese quasi-affix is not able to shake and change the configuration of the Chinese word-formation system. Then, the causes of the morpheme's affixation are expounded, which are the social factors, the principle of economy, the linguistic analogical mechanism, the linguistic contact, and the pragmatic mentality of the language users. This thesis shows that those quasi-affixes formed through the linguistic contact mostly have very strong Chinese semantic basis and they are not simple translations from foreign languages. So, we think it is incorrect to simply compare Chinese affixes with the foreign affixes and even consider the Chinese morphemes used to translate the foreign affixes as the Chinese affixes or quasi-affixes. Second, this chapter discusses the switch between "Connotational" derivative words and "Denotational" derivative words from the perspective of the theory of Connotation and Denotation. Finally, the grammaticalizational properties of the Chinese quasi-affix are discussed, which include the semantic boundness, abstract and formalization, reanalysis, and semantic bleaching etc. And the forecast for the future development of the Chinese quasi-affix is also made to some extent.Chapter V. This chapter demonstrates the application of the Chinese quasi-affix, including problems of the Chinese quasi-affix in Chinese Information Processing and Second Language Teaching. The first section studies the automatic identification of quasi-affix and derivatives. This section lists the quasi-affixes and the processing strategies in the Word Segmentation Rule. On the basis of the corpus "People's Daily" (in January, 1998), we make statistics on the problems of derivatives processing existing in current lexical analysis system and shallow syntactic analysis and analyze them. Then, we bring forward the tactics processing the derivatives, which is to expand the word segmentation glossary and add the dependent dictionary permitting users to manage. And then, from the perspective of morphology and according to the corpus, 11 pieces of linguistic rules to conflate the quasi-affix and the root are summed up, which will provide some necessary linguistics knowledge for word segmentation system and automatic syntactic analysis. Finally, we point out the difficulties to combine the quasi-affix and the root. The second section is the quasi-affix and Second Language Teaching. We extract all the quasi-affixes and corresponding derivatives from "the Outline of the Graded Grammar for HSK" and "the Outline of the Graded Vocabulary and Characters for HSK". Several problems about processing the derivatives are set forth, such as the standardization and unity of the term, tagging of the quasi-affix, collection and alignment of the quasi-affixes and derivatives etc. At last, we simply discuss the analogical function of the quasi-affix and acquisition of the Chinese derivatives. And this section demonstrates that the analogical function can improve the ability of Chinese learners to command the Chinese derivatives.Conclusion. This section summarizes the train of thought, research methods, theoretical foundations and conclusions, and at the same time points out the defects of this thesis and further research issues in this field.