Neologisms And Their Influence On Chinese Vocabulary And Syntax

The paper studies neologisms in both English and Chinese, and put much emphasis on the changes of Chinese vocabulary and syntax owe to the influence of English.In chapter one, the author gives a description of the evolvement of languages and analyzes the necessity of the appearance of neologisms in both English and Chinese. Then the definition and domains of neologisms are discussed followed by the spreading mode of neologisms. In the end are some examples.In chapter two, the reasons for vocabulary evolvement and several ways of the formation of Chinese neologisms are discussed.In chapter three, the author considers the appearance of new words a means to enlarge Chinese vocabulary. And the ways to translate neologisms from English to Chinese are mentioned. Finally there are some aspects of the changes in Chinese: more affixes, more synonyms, changes of meaning and parts of speech. The conclusion is that these new words, under the influence of English, have greatly enriched Chinese expressions.In chapter four, the influence on Chinese syntax by means of translation is presented with many examples:"under"structure,"until","when", attributive clauses and others structures.Last, the author puts forward that the influence due to language contact is unavoidable as long as there exist various languages. And the author holds an optimistic attitude towards language purism. However, as far as the influence of English on Chinese vocabulary and syntax, it may remain disputable as here only small amount of language materials are included, and sometimes it is very hard to delimit some specific language phenomenon.