On Study Of English Words Attrition From The Point Of Meaning Overgeneralization In Chinese Environment

The ultimate purpose of learning English is to make sure the maintenance and application of the acquired language, while language attrition is inevitable and greatly hinders English maintenance. Among all the indications of English attrition, words attrition is the most obvious one. Though a study history of more than 30 years in the domestic and overseas, most concentrate on sociological sense to illustrate words attrition. Rare study makes researches in words attrition.The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is chosen in this study. An empirical study of words meaning overgeneralization in the form of questionnaire and words test is carried out among 39 non-English majors in Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology. In this study, three key questions are:(1) whether there exists words attrition among the subjects; (2) whether a close causative relationship exists between meaning overgeneralization and words attrition, here mainly three kinds of overgeneralization are concerned:lexical overgeneralization, semantic overgeneralization and phonological overgeneralization; (3) whether men’s words attrition has apparent divergence with women’s.Based on the three questions above, the author chooses SPSS 20.0 to make further analysis of the data collected in the questionnaires and test and eventually get the conclusion that the inference of words attrition is proved to be true. Three kind of meaning overgeneralization are concerned to result in words attrition:lexical overgeneralization, semantic overgeneralization and phonological overgeneralization. A close causative relationship exists between words attrition and meaning overgeneralization. Besides, among the elements of meaning overgeneralization, lexical overgeneralization is the most prominent, then semantic overgeneralization and the last phonological overgeneralization. Men’s words attrition has no significant difference from women’s, that is to say, gender divergence is not obvious. At the end, the author discusses how to reduce words attrition and limitations of this thesis.