A Contrastive Analysis Of The Expansion Of English And Chinese Neologisms

Since the end of 1970s, the world has witnessed great changes in the fields of politics, economics and culture with the rapid development of science and technology at an unprecedented speed. At the same time, China has been carrying out a series of political and economic reforms, which has brought about great changes in all social aspects. Therefore, a large number of neologisms have emerged both in English and Chinese. Increasingly emerging neologisms has become the focus of attention of modern linguists, hence an important object of current linguistic researches. This thesis attempts to expound on the similarities and differences of the expansion of neologisms between English and Chinese and the profound causes of the differences, in the hope of revealing the laws and tendencies of the vocabulary development.Many studies on the expansion of Chinese or English neologisms have been done, yet most of them seem to lack explanatory and systematic analyses. Based on the previous studies on neologisms, this thesis makes comprehensive and systematic descriptions and analyses of the expansion of English and Chinese neologisms from the angle of contrastive linguistics. A lot of examples are given and figures and tables are employed when necessary. English and Chinese are both among the widely used languages in the world. A comprehensive comparison and analysis of the expansion of English and Chinese neologisms informs us of the laws and tendencies of the two languages. Hopefully, it will facilitate our foreign language learning and teaching and make us get a deeper understanding of the nature of languages.The thesis consists of the following four parts:The introduction is devoted to the literature review, significance of the research, data resources, research methodology and outline of the thesis. The neologisms in this thesis are mainly from authoritative dictionaries, such as Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and A Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Neologisms. Part two: a relatively clear definition for neologism is given so that the range and object of research could be determined. The examples of neologisms in this thesis are those that have emerged since the end of 1970s. Then factors contributing to the emergence of English and Chinese neologisms are categorized from the perspective of social linguistics. At last, the author makes a brief introduction to the expansion of Chinese or English neologisms.Part three: detailed comparisons and analyses of the expansion of English and Chinese neologisms are presented. There are mainly three sources of neologisms both in English and Chinese: inventing new words mainly by means of compounding, affixation and shortening, borrowing new words from other languages and adding new meanings and usages to the existing words.Part four: conclusion. It is a theoretical summary of the whole thesis.