A Study On Vocabulary,Semantic And Grammatical Variation In Modern Chinese

Language is not only a product of human social activities,but also the carrier of the human social activities.As a tool and carrier for human communication,there must have a close interaction between language and society.In other words there is a covariant phenomenon between the two co-variations.The evolution of the society has led to the variation of language,which is fully reflected in the various aspects of the language system and various factors.Unlike Indo-European and Latin American languages,Chinese is a combination of the three elements of sound,form and meaning,in one of the most abundant connotation of symbol system.Vocabulary is the most active variability factor in the language system and is very sensitive to the social evolution.An indisputable fact is that a large number of new words are produced to reflect new things,new phenomena and new ideas in social life.The study of the variations of language can offer us a more comprehensive understanding of the different stages of social development and changes in the language.Therefore,the study of variations of vocabulary,semantics and syntax of the language has universal social significance and value.The variability of the language itself is the most essential feature of language.In the new period,the influence of the social structure diversification in China can be found in the modern Chinese vocabulary,semantic and grammatical aspects.The vocabulary or lexical variations are the result of the increase and decrease of the vocabulary,namely:the production of new words and the abandon:ment of some old words.According to the origins,new words can be divided into words borrowed from other languages,words borrowed from some dialects,and words that are created.According to the ways of creation,most of the new words are created by the use of morphemes from other languages,and some new words are created to reflect the contemporary social and economical developments and trends.The emergence of a large number of new morphemes in the new words has the following characteristics:firstly,a lot of abbreviations come out and are used widely and frequently;secondly,multi-syllabic words are favored;thirdly,there is an increase of the use of words borrowed from other languages;and fourthly,English letter words are used quietly often.The semantic variation refers to the meaning variation of words or morphemes in the new era.The prominent semantic variation is the increase of new morphemes which are borrowed from other languages and local dialects of Chinese.Although there are only a few new morphemes,they are extremely powerful.In general,the semantic variation of Chinese in the new era has the characteristics of the increase of monosemic words,the increasing frequency of uses,and a much wide distribution.Grammar variations of modern Chinese in the new period mainly involves paradigmatic and syntagmatic changes.The widely-used reduplication of ABB or AABB is an example of paradigmatic change while the“X”structure and“You +VP" structure are examples of syntagmatic change.These changes reflect the social development in the new period.That is to say,the grammatical variations are the results of the changes of the social structure,social life,and social values.Language variation is the result of internal and external incentives working together.Internal factors include the interaction of the elements of the language structure and the role of the language analogy mechanism.The external factors include the social change,the cognitive and communicative functions of language,and the pragmatic psychological factors.The emergence of a large number of new structures and new word sets are good illustrations of this point.The vocabulary,semantic and grammatical variations of Chinese in the new period give us an impression of a chaos and disorder of the language,but the Chinese language as a dynamic and open system will regulate itself and put it in order.Along with the development of the society,new variations are sure to come out and the language will regulate it and put it in order again.To sum up,the language will repeat this kind of process again and again.