The Research Into Neology In The New Period

The reform and opening policy drives Chinese to push forward greatly, and the obvious reflection is that many old words give birth to new meanings. Neology is a lexical phenomenon of new meanings adding to old word forms. It follows the manner of new wine in old bottles, that is to say, by the way of extending or changing the old meanings, the new ones attach themselves to the old word while it remains its form unchanged. Neology is the embodiment of economical principle and the outcome of self-adjustment in the lexical system. It reflects the changes of society and lexical system, and has close relation with pragmatic factors. There are two conditions of neology. Firstly, old words change their old meanings. Secondly, new meanings are added to old words. The first condition involves the changes of a certain sememe of old word in different period of time. In the second condition, a new sememe is added to the old word while old sememes are reserved. In what condition do old words gain new sememes? According to the result of our research, there are 4:(1) New meaning points come into being resulting from the innovative usage, since they can not be included in the old sememes. The new ones are born. (2) Some meaning point which belongs to old meaning field of word can be looked at by new eyes as speakers gradually notices the particular side of context meaning, or it can be affected by context factors and changes take place quietly. Both result in the independence of the meaning points. (3) New sememes are influenced by grammatical factors. If a word has new grammatical combination relations (word conversions excluded), new sememes should be set up. (4) Reinterpreting the meaning of morpheme which is made up of compound words also gives birth to new meanings, and new sememes should be set up. With regard to neology, there are two important reflections in the new period. For one thing, some history words come forth again while changing their old meanings. For another thing, some special-purpose words are overgeneralized. The thesis analyses the types of first reflection, and discusses the characteristic, manner and social function of second reflection.