A Research On The Opposite-and-complementary Word

The opposite-and-complementary word is a kind of compound word constitutedby two monosyllabic morphemes which are opposite or contrary in their meanings. Itis used to represent the phenomena which on the one hand, contradictory, on the otherhand, united. It can also be called opposite word or opposite-compound. Twomonosyllabic morphemes can not only be words when they are single, but also cancombine the opposite or contrary meaning into one word, which seems an interestingword-building in modern Chinese vocabulary. The opposite-and-complementary wordhas a long history and a persistent vitality during the development of Chinese. Atpresent, it is still be used consistently in written and spoken Chinese.The Chinese language is a sort of "idea match" language. The vocabularies of theChinese language contain the historical and cultural elements which are not onlyexpressed in morphemes but also loaded in the whole word. Concerning the previousresearch on the opposite-and-complementary word, this dissertation noticed when themonosyllables in Chinese anatomy constituted two parallel combinations in words, itshown a kind of special affinity and indicated interactional relationship between themeanings of monosyllabic morphemes and the word—the duality of word meaningand morpheme meaning. This article further dealt with the types of the semanticrelation of these words in order to explore the meaning, form and social and culturalcharacteristics of these words. The author will take a research on the followingaspects:The first part determines the target of this study. Based on the former researches,this dissertation explicitly defines the scope of the object and collects example wordsfrom Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (fifth edition by ShangWuYinShuGuan in2005).The second part clarifies the morphemes' meaning respectively from two angles:stationary and dynamic. The stationary research of morpheme is mainly from threeaspects: the sensational meaning, the grammatical meaning and the emotionalmeaning. While the dynamic research mainly studies the lasting and opposite contextof word-building.The third part takes a contrastive analysis on the meaning of constitutedmorphemes and the opposite-and-complementary word, which is still from threeaspects: sensational meaning, grammatical meaning and emotional meaning, and atlast the author makes a categorization.The fourth part reveals the characteristics of this kind of words. The meaningcharacteristics, construction and social and cultural characteristics are presented.The fifth part focuses on the problems in Chinese language teaching, teaching inmother-tongue or second language vocabulary teaching, and gives some constructivesuggestions towards these problems.