Studies On Ming Loanwords

Loanwords are important elements in the study of Chinese vocabulary, loanwords studies have made many groundbreaking achievements since the20th century, but the research on the history of Loanwords is in a weak position in its history. This thesis selects Ming loanwords as investigation object, supported by theory of language contact and language variation, the static description and dynamic analysis, the combination of quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis, synchronic description and diachronic comparison, combining the research method of combining of the basic features and characteristics of foreign words in Ming dynasty for description and analysis, trying to build the history of the Loanwords.The thesis is divided into six parts, each part, is as follow:The first part is an introduction. It introduces the background, the significance, the research situation of Ming dynasty words and Loanwords. And emphatically summarizes the research situation on Ming Loanwords, and discusses the theoretical basis, research methods and the corpus source. Finally, it determines the object and definition of Ming loanwords,The second part describes the social circumstance of Ming dynasty, including political, economic, ideological, cultural and so on. And it points out that the international exchange and fusion between domestic nationalities are the background of Ming Loanwords.The third part analysises an overview of Ming Loanwords. With the method of synchronic description, this part shows the basic appearance of Ming loanwords by describing the language sources, the ways of absorbing and Semantic content. It finds out that there is20kinds of language sources and so on.The fourth part is the features of Ming loanwords. It concluds that language sources are relatively abundant, Mongolian and English are more than others; a word has more than one source; Transliteration, Distinguished name and scientific name, Double syllable, the noun, and modified compound words are the main positions in their fields.The fifth part is the use and influence of Ming Loanwords. It compares the Ming loanwords with the The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, in order to find these retained Loanwords which mainly refer to religious, and these Loanwordswhich losed the enterance to the Chinese vocabulary system have some changes. Ming Loanwords make some influences on later generations, such as the increase of the new words and the double syllable words.The sixth is an conclusion.The part summarizes the main content of the thesis, and points out that Innovations and limitations, trying to enrich the contents of the history of vocabulary.