On Lettered-words

Lettered-words, as a new kind of borrowing, have frequently occurred in Chinese with the implementation of the opening up policy and the increase of international contacts and communication between China and foreign countries. Lettered-words are attracting more and more attention and have been discussed heatedly in the applied linguistic circle since the 1990s. Now lettered-words have been assimilated into Chinese and accepted widely by Chinese, and have entered prestigious and authoritative Chinese dictionaries as entries.Based on the researches that have been made on lettered-words, the present thesis discusses several aspects of lettered-words, such as the name, definition, category ascription, pronunciation, attitudes, written form, usage and rhetorical use of lettered-words. After reviewing the historical development of lettered-words, the thesis gives the causes and characteristics of lettered-words. The changes occurring in the assimilation of lettered-words into Chinese are discussed from three aspects: phonetic aspect, morphological aspect and semantic aspect. Then the thesis tries to work out the assimilation process of lettered-words into Chinese from code-switching to borrowing. On the basis of description of lettered-words, finally the thesis gives the general principles and concrete methods for the standardization of lettered-words. The dictionary is a good tool for the standardization of lettered-words.Many problems related to lettered-words are explored in the thesis, such as the homographs, heterographs and abuse of lettered-words, especially the pronunciation of lettered-words which has been the choke point for the healthy development of lettered-words in Chinese. The paper suggests that the government departments concerned should take immediate measures and lay down rules or set standards to unify the pronunciation of lettered-words on the basis of extensive survey.