A Comparative And Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Word-formation

Word-formation studies the internal structure of the word, that is to say, words can be divided into the smallest linguistic unit—morpheme. It lays stress on the property, phonetic, semantic of the morphemes and how to combine them into new words. In this respect, there are many similarities and differences between English and Chinese which is the study subject of the paper.To compare and contrast English and Chinese word-formation, it will lead to further understanding to the universality and specialty of the two languages word-formation and improvement English acquisition and English teaching. As we know, the most effective method to learn English is to compare and contrast foreign language with our mother tongue in a scientifically contrastive way. Therefore, under the guidance of the modern linguistic theory, the paper makes a full and contrastive study on English and Chinese word-formation, especially on derivation, compounding, conversion and abbreviation. It mainly includes the following:In the first chapter, literature review about English and Chinese word-formation is made from which we know the comparative and contrast study has not been fully researched in Chinese linguistic field.In the second chapter, we compare and contrast all most word-formation between English and Chinese. First section is about derivation. As a kind of inflectional language, English words are always combined with root and root or root and affixes, so there are many affixes in English. But there are few affixes in Chinese, even the status of some of them are still controversial. Comparing with Chinese, derivation is the one of the most important word processes and occupies a bigger portion in English.In the second section, compounding is discussed. We classify English and Chinese compounds and point out the differences in word structure and semantic meaning generation. Compounding is very important both in English and in Chinese, but relatively, as the most productive and widely-used word-formation, it has a bigger portion in Chinese than in English. In the third section, conversion is talked. With the concise and vivid feature, conversion is one of the most important ways to create new words in English. But in a lot of Chinese lexicological works, it is usually not listed as a kind of word-formation because Chinese is a non-inflectional language and its word-class is not decided by its suffix. We can only say conversion in English is a little bit like word acting as different functions.The fourth section is about abbreviation. With the common features in economy of expressiveness, informality of genre, vagueness of semantic meaning, pragmatic transition, there are some differences in components, features and ways of combination between English and Chinese abbreviations. It is clear that Chinese abbreviations have stronger motivation than English ones.In the third chapter, we notice that besides the word-formation we mentioned above there is another one which is common in the two languages, that is borrowing. Both English and Chinese borrowings have the tendency of assimilation and de-familiarization, but because of influence by different culture, society and national psychology, the two languages show distinctive differences in number, ability of assimilation and extensiveness.In the fourth chapter, we try to imply the conclusion we got above into English teaching and learning. As we all know, systematic and theoretical knowledge on comparative and contrastive study of English and Chinese word-formation is beneficial to utilization of positive transfer of language and avoidance of negative one in language learning and language teaching, it is also beneficial to the study on different cultures and thinking ways.Since comparative and contrastive study on English and Chinese word-formation is a systematic and delicate project, there is a large space this paper does not cover, such as the hidden factors influencing word-formation, national culture and national psychology, which deserves further study.