A Usage-based Approach To Quasi-affixationization In Modern Chinese:Frequency Effects And Its Cognitive Representation

Since the1970s, with the continuous promotion of economic integration in the world and rapid change of Chinese society, Chinese language is also experiencing quick development and change. Under this background, many new Chinese words that can reflect new social features and social values constantly emerge. With the unceasing increase of use frequency of these new words, the original Chinese roots will be gradually generalized, and thus a large number of quasi-affixes are produced. Comparing with typical affixes, the meanings of these quasi-affixes are not totally generalized but they are in a constant process of quasi-affixationization. With regard to this prominent linguistic phenomenon in Chinese, many scholars have probed into the generative motivations of quasi-affixes, including the generalization of morpheme meanings, the change of word formation environment, the mechanism of analogy, the economic principle of language, the effects of social life, language contact, the change of social mentality, the prominence of focus information, and the increase of expressive effects, etc. However, they do not realize that language is a complex system and grammar is the cognitive organization of human being’s language experience. Thus, in the present paper, the author, based on usage-based grammar, aims to probe into the frequency effects and cognitive representation in the quasi-affixationization of modern Chinese. According to usage-based grammar, modern Chinese quasi-affixationization is a dynamic process of constructionization whereby its cognitive representation is shaped or affected by the frequency effects of the exemplar in question.The thesis can be divided into six chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, including the introduction to the research background, the objectives of the research, research methodology and the layout of the thesis. The second chapter is the literature review. Based on a brief introduction to the definition of Chinese quasi-affixes, this chapter mainly probes into the status quo of researches on Chinese quasi-affixes from the semantic, pragmatic, lexicographic, and cognitive view. In addition, the limitations of the previous studies are also included in the chapter. Then, in Chapter Three, the author has a brief introduction to the theoretical foundations of this thesis, including constructions, constructionization, a usage-based approach to grammar, and the effects of token frequency. The fourth chapter is the main body of the paper, in which the frequency effects and cognitive representation in quasi-affixationization in modern Chinese are investigated. Moreover, in order to make the thesis more persuasive, in Chapter Five, two modern Chinese quasi-affixes "吧" and "泛" are chosen to do the case study in order to testify the assumption that the increasing frequency of use can promote the Chinese quasi-affixationization. Then, Chapter Six is a natural conclusion of the thesis. Apart from the brief summary, the limitations of the present thesis and the suggestions for further studies are also put forward in this chapter.