A Comparative Study Of Nominal Suffixes Between Chinese And English

Affixation is one of the most productive means of word-formation in the English language. Among affixes in English, suffixes and especially nominal suffixes account for a large proportion. Although derivation does not play such an important role in Chinese word-formation, it becomes more and more significant in word-formation with the evolution of the society and the language. Scholars have conducted some studies of affixes and nominal suffixes in Chinese for a long time and made fruitful achievements in this field. But, until now there is not yet a consensus among scholars about the existence, form and features of affixes in Chinese. One of fundamental reasons is that the nature of Chinese characters is quite different from that of English letters. Although there have been quite some studies of affixes, studies on the comparison of nominal suffixes are far from being satisfactory. Therefore, the author of this thesis will make a comparative study of nominal suffixes between Chinese and English.First, data collection of nominal suffixes has been done mainly from papers and articles which were read as references. Then, according to the collected data, features about English and Chinese affixes are generalized. On the basis of the features, a tentative definition of nominal suffixes has been worked out. Most examples of nominal suffixes used in this thesis come from the researches of scholars.The comparison of nominal suffixes between Chinese and English is conducted in terms of morphological, functional, semantic, and prosodic features. In addition to the comparative study, causes of the similarities and differences of nominal suffixes in Chinese and in English will be explored from the aspects of grammaticalization, analogy, etymology, the basic word-formation elements, and prosody.