On The Generation Of Wei-Phrases And Meaning Extension Of Wei In Neologisms From Cognitive Perspective

Ever since Weibo (microblog) swept across china in 2009, wei-phrase has been flooding into people's daily life. Some are names for newly-arrived things; some are concepts for newly emerging phenomenon. Glanced at the morphological structure, wei-phrases seem to be in the same structure as wers disyllabic words and the translation of micro-prefixing words which are originated from English. However, we find they are only the basis or premise of wei-phrases when observing closer.wei-phrases are intrinsically different from the previous expressions. Among those researches done by former scholars, morphological descriptions and social backgrounds are frequently noted. Though some of them have touched the mechanism governing its generation and meaning derivation and extension, they are not digging deep into this topic under cognitive mechanisms. Traditional ways in meaning description, such as componential analysis, fail to deal with some newly-born and irregular neologisms, for they are weak in giving persuasive explanations on innovative meaning extension. Thus there are still quite a lot of problems remain unsolved. For example, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the generation of wei-phrases, the meaning extension of wei in neologisms, etc. All of those questions have a direct bearing on a reasonable explanation of wei-phrases and a prediction of its future trend, which can never be fully dealt with only from the perspective of morphological or semantic description and analysis.Based on reasons mentioned above we are trying to explore two issues with help from cognitive semantics:one is, the generation of wei-phrases from the perspective of cognitive mechanisms provided; the other is, meaning extension of wei under the theoretical background of Metaphor and Metonymy. In the very beginning of the thesis, the target structure will be strictly defined and then the derivational course will be presented, which are all based on morphological studies done by former scholars. Right after, a timely analysis of its generation will be given under the scope of cognitive mechanisms. At last, the meaning extension of wei as an essential element in wei-phrases will be studied. Wei can either function as an adjective modifier or a noun modifier as the abbreviation form of weibo in the structure, which has done lots of good to wei's meaning extension. The meaning extension of wei mainly falls into two category:first, the metaphoric meaning extension of wei as an adjective morpheme; then metonymic meaning extension of wei as the abbreviation of weibo. During the research into meaning we also find that two kinds of meaning are to some extent overlapped, which ensures i-rers superior position in the structure and also enables more X to be modified. Eventually we arrive safely at the conclusion that the word structure will be popular in a certain period of time thanks to M'ei's great power of meaning extension and moreover people's interpretation in mental presentation.Though we have grasped some inherent laws of wei-phrases, the results are quite limited for the thesis is not an exhaustive one. The collection of related materials is in some sense incomplete and subjective; and the word entries have not been included into authoritative dictionaries. Therefore the study on wei-phrases, as a representative one in neologisms nowadays, should be continuously deepened in hope to generalize or complete similar studies.