A Comprehensive Study On "X癌" Lexical Construction

The research of Chinese neologism is an often-new topic in the field of Modern Chinese lexicon research.With the background of Internet,this paper takes“X癌”lexical construction,which originates from the“X癌”new words group,as the main research object.The research conducts a comprehensive study on“X癌”lexical construction,in which it reveals the internal characteristics of“X癌”lexical construction and its pragmatic value.The semantic changes of“X癌”have been illustrated,which includes organizing the original meaning of morpheme“X癌”the development of“X癌”words,the metaphorical meaning of“X癌”words and the new meaning and new words of“X癌”.It’s found that“X癌”words used to refer to malignancies medically,but under the influence of internet sub-culture,new“X癌”words emerged,which refer to"certain way of act,values(negative mostly)or psychological problems because of long-term accumulation of stress and strains coming from modern life and social environment”.[+Extreme degree]is the common semantic feature of these words.Based on Construction Grammar,the constructional meaning of“X癌”lexical construction has been summarized as "the object demonstrates a certain semantic feature of extreme degree(the object can be people,things,substance,psychology,emotion,state,etc.)".By observing components of the construction,it’s discovered that there are three kinds of constructions:“NP+癌”,“VP+癌”and“AP+癌”,all of which are highly illustrated in the research.The constant component“X癌”shows the phenomenon of meaning deficiency.Besides,there exists relativity of extreme degree and lexical coercion inside the lexical construction.The syntactic structure of "X癌”lexical construction has certain characteristics.The whole construction belongs to modified compound noun.The common syntactic distribution of the construction is subject,predicate,object or attributive in a sentence.In addition,it even can be used as a verbal component or a sentence by itself.A Lot of fixed frameworks are generated in this construction,which have been summarized as Pre-add framework,Post-add framework and Pre-Post-add framework.When choosing frameworks,the construction prefers to the framework frequently matched with its prototype.The“X癌”lexical construction shows three core discourse functions:exaggerate description,degree evaluation and generalization.It also shows significant pragmatic functions,which includes broadening expression of space of language and enriching Chinese lexicon.Considering the deriving mechanism of“X癌”lexical construction,the base of novel metaphors creates advantageous condition for new words to grow;the linguistic memes effects makes high-quality linguistic memes to be duplicated and broadcasted;semantic generalization mechanism expands the living space of words and accelerates the semantic generalization of words;the influence of society and culture also promotes the derivation of the“X癌”words.From the growth trend of“X癌”words,it’s predicted that the lexical construction will produce more“X癌”words with double-syllable words as its variable.Moreover,the degree of meaning deficiency of constant“癌”may increase.“癌”even tends to become quasi-affixation or affixation in the course of long-term language evolution.