A Study Of Newly Added Words In Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th Edition)

"Modern Chinese Dictionary"(the sixth version)( "the new dictionary")was formally published in July 2012. On the basis of the 5th version, the new dictionary continues to collect more than 3000 words and more than 400 senses’ terms are supplemented, these new words fully reflect the new changes of modern Chinese vocabulary system. In this paper, we regard the new words of the new dictionary as the research object to show a comprehensive overview of the new words.Firstly, this study introduces the main principles of collecting new words about “ Modern Chinese Dictionary ”, and the new words are compared with the annual new words published by“The Green Paper on Language Situation in China”(2006-2011). It is found that there are 23 new words in the green paper collected by the new dictionary.Secondly, In terms of the source of the words, the new words have many sources. The new words are mainly collected from newly-formed words in mandarin Chinese, alien words, dialects,the abbreviation, spoken words, idioms and so on. The semantic meanings reflected by the new words of the new dictionary are comprehensive, they are related to many areas, such as economic life, military politics, science and technology, law, finance and insurance, education,environmental protection, culture and art, network information, sports, transportation, housing,social employment, medicine and health, religious beliefs, social phenomenon. The semantic meanings reflected by the new words not only embody the new changes of different areas in our modern society but also embody the areas that people pay attention to in different periods changes, which provides the linguistic basis for our better understanding of the social changes.Thirdly, as to the number of senses’ terms of words, the monosemic words are more than polysemous words in the new words collected and account for 87.12?, which reflects the rule that monosemic words are dominant in Chinese vocabulary system. As to the syllable structure, there are more new words with double syllables, they are 1903 and accounts for 59.06%,the new words with three syllables and four syllables are also many, they account for 18.44% and 18.81% respectively. There are words with more syllables, such as five syllables, six syllables, seven syllables, eight syllables. Even there is a word with nine syllables! The words with more than five syllables are not many, but it reveals that the syllables of new words in modern Chinese are not limited.In addition, in terms of the structural types of words, we can find that new words are mainly composed of compound words, simple words are less. The structural types of words with two syllables are complete in compound words, however, as the words with more than five syllables are less, their structural types are less too. As to the distribution, the new words are mainly composed of nouns and verbs, they account for 90.08%in standard words, adjectives and adverbs are less, occupying a small proportion, conjunctions, onomatopoeias,measure words, prepositions, pronouns are all less than ten, all these features not only reflect that the dictionary mainly collect nouns and verbs but also reflect that there are more nouns and verbs in Chinese vocabulary system.Finally, through the analysis of the new words from different angles, we find that the new words have distinct characteristics of the times, the words with two syllables and monosemic words are dominant, there exists a phenomenon of semantic analogy. The paper analyzes the producing reasons of the new words from many angles such as language itself, social development and language users.