| Language is an open system and the best reflection of the development of social politics,economy and culture. With the development of social politics and culture, to some extent,language is also in the process of changing and developing. Among those componentsconsisting language, vocabulary is the most active and sensitive part to reflect thedevelopment. On the basis of language development, neologisms emerge along with itcontinuously. Continuous emergence of neologisms has caused great interest and concern oflinguistic scholars, therefore, the study of neologism becomes the focus of language study inrecent years. English and Chinese neologisms are that words or phrases emerged recently inEnglish and Chinese, and that is with new meanings and forms, or, with existing wordsproduced new meanings or meaning transfer because of social and cultural development.Trends of social development could be traced through the study of neologisms.Research about English and Chinese neologisms has been done by domestic and abroadscholars, but most of the research focuses on cause and usage of English neologism and fewof those researchers do comprehensive analysis from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and seldom of research analyze neologisms on the perspective of semantic approach throughconceptual blending theory. Therefore, this thesis attempts to analyze semantic blendingconstruction from the perspective of cognitive semantics.Language materials of this thesis are mainly from English new word website “Wordspy”and Chinese new words of frequent use which are collected through search engines. In thisthesis, the researcher concentrates on semantic blending analysis of new compounding words,the researcher considers that the emergence of neologism meaning is not randomly oraccidentally, but the development and promotion of original meaning. Prototype categorytheory is strongly persuasive on this development and promotion. Meanwhile, emergence ofneologisms is not all new coinage words, most of them are reform of existing words. Yet, newgenerated meaning of a word is the process of development and promotion of maintenance ofprototype meaning. Conceptual blending theory can explain meaning generation after blendedexactly.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one is introduction part and introduces a sketch of neologism, significance ofstudy and the organization of this thesis.Chapter two reviews domestic and abroad studies of English neologisms, domesticstudies of Chinese neologisms and introduces the definition of neologism, was of formation.Chapter three is the theoretical basis of this thesis, discusses prototype category theoryand conceptual blending theory, and their theoretical interface.Chapter four is the methodology of this thesis. It introduces purpose of the study, research questions and data sources of this thesis.Chapter five is the main part of this thesis. In this chapter, the researcher analyzesmeaning construction of neologisms through prototype category theory, and how changes ofmental space influences meaning of neologism from the perspective of conceptual blendingtheory, and then cognitive ability of conceptual blending theory has been analyzed. Also,examples are listed in this thesis.Chapter six is the conclusion part of this thesis, introduces the major findings anddifferent semantic emergent features of Chinese and English neologisms, also introduces thelimitation of study.Briefly, this thesis uses prototype category theory and conceptual blending theory toanalyze meaning construction of English and Chinese neologisms. To a certain extent, thisresearch has some theoretical and application significance. On the theory perspective, thisthesis analyzes cognitive process of meaning construction of English and Chinese neologismin detail. From the application perspective, this thesis could help English learners grasp thetrend of the development of English vocabulary and translation, and also play a certainguidance role in English teaching. |
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