本科毕业设计-浅析英语新词的构成与翻译.doc

AbstractLanguage, as an important carrier of social development, is supposed to be synchronized with it. The rapid development of politics, economy in modern society, the consistent progress of science and technology, the increasingly frequent cross-culture communication as well as the prevalence of the Internet has produced a great number of English neologisms. Being a prism of western social life, English neologisms reflect the new idea, new life and new value of modern western people. Hence, the research on English neologisms is of great significance in many aspects such as linguistics, culturology and sociology. It not only benefits the research on English renewal and changes, but also facilitates the international exchange of science and culture.This thesis, which focuses on English neologisms created after World War , will firstly give a relatively clear definition to “Neologism”, then the formation and translation skills of English neologisms will be analyzed. Further, we will undertake discussing with respect to the sources or underlying reasons for their existence, and finally make some forecast of developing trend of English neologisms. The innovation of this thesis as follows: in the future, the new coinage of English neologisms will tend to be efficient and mass-produced, and Chinese will be a great source of English neologisms.Key words: English neologism; word formation; translation; sources; prospect 中文摘要作为社会发展动态和成果的直接载体，语言的发展必须与之同步。现代社会政治经济的发展、科学技术的进步、频繁的跨文化交流，网络的盛行，大量的英语新词应运而生。英语新词表现了当代西方人的新思想、新生活、新的价值观念，是反映西方社会的多棱镜。英语新词的研究是一项非常重要的工作，具有语言学、文化学、社会学等多方面的意义。研究英语新词不仅有利于研究英语的更新和变化，还有利于促进世界性科技文化交流。本文针对二战后产生的英语新词，根据国内外对英语新词的研究，首先对“何为新词”给出一个较为明确的定义，重点分析阐述其构词方式和翻译技巧，继而探讨其产生来源，并对其未来发展趋势作出预测。本文的创新点在于指出在未来，英语新词的造词趋向简洁化批量化，而中文亦将对其有着更为重要的影响。关键词：英语新词；构词；汉译；来源；展望Chapter 1 Introduction and Definition of Neologisms1.1 IntroductionAs the vehicle of communication, language is relatively stable as well as constantly changing. The British scholar Foster (1980) said when society changes gradually or sharply, language will show some changes to cater to the demands of society. And Eugene Nida (1982) deemed that the most distinctive feature of English language is its flexibility.Vocabulary is the most important and active component of a language. Social development leads to developments and changes of English language, which results in the appearance of a large number of English new words. Consequently, it is an inexorable trend of English language to adapt to the development of society. According to The Barnhart Dictionary Companion, the number of new words they collect is no less than 1,500 to 1,600 per year. The first systematic research on English neologism started in the early 20th century, and most of the early neologisms came from wars and technology. The dictionary compilation of English neologisms was booming in the last two decades. Roughly estimated, there are more than 20 different kinds of neologism dictionaries. Moreover, the thriving of the Internet and modern media also provide a fertile ground for neologisms. The Internet performs its magic power and makes twitter and unfriend become the hottest new words of 2009 while news reports apply neologisms as spot lights in news title producing. Nevertheless, different from abroad, the domestic study of English neologisms has just taken off.This thesis will give a relatively clear definition for neologism, then the emphasizing analysis on the characteristics of their word formation, translations as well as sources will be given, and finally predictions of the prospects of English neologisms will be made. The study of English neologisms not only benefits the study of English renewing and changing, but also enhances the global technological and cultural exchange and cooperation, better integration rather than separation.1.2 Definition of NeologismsWebsters New World Dictionary (Third College Edition) defines the word “neologism” as “a new word or new meaning for an established word” (David Bernard Guralnik, Neufeldt Victoria, 1989).The definition of neologism in Microsoft Encarta Library Encarta Dictionary was “a recently coined word or phrase, or a recently extended meaning of an existing word or phrase”. Lin Chengzhangs (1987) definition is “newly coined words or words that are given new meaning to fit new situation because of social, economic, political, cultural, scientific and technical changes in human society.” Neologisms are prisms of the modern society that reflect the new thoughts, new life styles and new values. This thesis will mainly focus on the general principles for formation and translations of neologisms in latest decades. Roughly speaking, the word “neologisms” in this thesis includes the following meanings: i) A new word: it was created because of the social changes. ii) An old word: new meanings were given to an old word during the development of a language or an existed word of other languages was introduced to English.Chapter 2 Literature ReviewThe researches on English neologisms always goes with lexicology as the birth of English neologism will always lead to the need of compiling of a dictionary to include English new words. The American scholar John Algeo once wrote in the preface of his book Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologism, 1941-1991 (1993), though neologisms dictionaries win warm praise from the public in recent years, in fact, the compiling of English dictionaries begins with the compiling of neologisms dictionaries in a way. The first overseas researches on neologisms and compiling of new words dictionaries can be dated back to the beginning of 20th century, in a real sense. Leon Meads book Word - Coinage which was published in 1902, is the earliest writing of studies on new words in the 20th century. Though the book is not yet a neologism dictionary, it does collect a amount of writings of neologisms. In the book, Mead presented the research on neologisms for the first time, and noted the attitudes of some writers at that time. Alphonso Smith, on the other hand, had his writing which was entitled New Words Self-Defined released in 1920. This book is the first record of new development of new words (mostly for military use) by means of dictionary compiling. From then on, war and scientific technology seems to be hot spots of producing new words, and neologisms dictionaries that include new words of these two fields are emerging unceasingly.In the recent 20 years, the dictionary compiling in western countries is thriving. According to statistics, there are more than 20 types of English neologisms already. And Webster's Third New International Dictionary, The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, The Barnhart Dictionary of New English and Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologism, 1941-1991 by Professor Algeo are of highest academic value among those dictionaries. Besides, well-known publications like Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Verbatin and Dictionary Society of North America have given a push to the promotion of English neologisms. Moreover, the mass media, both the traditional ones and the new media provide new ways of collecting and researching on neologisms, say the selection of “Word of the Year” or some specialized website for new words studies - . In contrast to the prosperous emerging of neologisms dictionaries, intensive studies and researches seem modest and have little impact. Despite its short history compared to the overseas research on English neologisms, the domestic studies now gain more and more focus from scholars and the public, as a consequence of the development of information superhighway along with the popularity of the Internet, especially studies on new Internet terms and new scientific words. And Professor Wang Rongpei have obtained a most remarkable achievement in monograph writing and thesis on English neologisms, lifting the research up to a high level. Though finer categories of English neologisms study have been made, neither the speed nor scale of domestic researches can be mentioned in the same breath with the overseas ones. Most of the researches focus on the morphemic structure of new words, but say little about the underlying reasons for their existence and the analysis of developing trend of the neologisms. Furthermore, as China have a greater impact on the world affairs even the English language, domestic studies should start watching the development of the fusing of Chinese and English closely.Chapter 3 Formation of English New Words3.1 Semantic Change 3.1.1 AffixationIn accordance with Zhang Weiyou (1997), affixation is the formation of words by adding word forming or derivative affixes to stems. Even today, affixation still plays an active and important part in the process of word forming in English. According to statistics, 17.5% of neologisms since World War are formed in this way, for example, cybercafé网吧, preschooler学龄前儿童, antiaging 抗衰老. And unfriend解除和某人在社交网站上的好友关系from Facebook easily took the title of Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year 2009. Due to the convenience and efficiency of derivation, affixes play a significant part in the morphology of the new words. Though a large number of typical affixes are still active and productive, a lot of morphemes now also become newly emerged affixes, quasi-affixes or affixes-to-be. During the process of affix formation, the meaning of a free morpheme becomes abstract and functional gradually. Then finally, a free morpheme can not be used independently and its location is fixed so that it can be considered as a prefix or suffix, which can act as an indicator of the part of speech.In fact, people has applied components of some popular words as affixes for a while, yet such components are not really affixes originally, and some of them are even intercepted from other languages. The use of the suffix “gate” and “-nik” are typical examples. The former is taken out from the word “Watergate水门事件”, concerning political scandals, whereas the latter is originated from a Russian word “sputnik人造卫星”, referring to the meaning “one associated with or characterized by”.In the future, in order to fulfill the need of rapid development of society and information explosion, mass-production of new words and expressions is inevitable, as a result, more and more newly produced affixes will appear, and affixation will continue to be prevailing for a long period.3.1.2 CompoundingAs pointed out by Randolph Quirk (1985: 1567) in the book A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, a compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one base and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word. According to Ayto (1999), 3/4 of neologisms are combinations of existing components. Compound words are written either as a single word (e.g. hypertext超文本, downsize裁员), as hyphenated words (e.g. nuclear-weapon-free 无核武器的), or as two words (e.g. test-tube baby试管婴儿, information fatigue syndrome信息疲劳症).Among all the compounds, the compound nouns, adjectives and verbs are more than other compounds in number, because content words which contain more meanings and information than functional words do, can satisfy peoples multiple needs in language exchange. The Barnhart Dictionary of New English indicated that compound nouns would take up 15% in all the neologisms since 1963. Besides, compounds with more than two components are growing in a huge number, the following words stored-program-control telephone程控电话and the end-justifies-the-means philosophy不择手段的哲学are such cases. These compound adjectives which have been originally phrases, idioms or even sentences make the structure of new words simple and expressive. As regards compound nouns, the number of components increases and the hyphens are often omitted, which make them more like phrases than words, e.g. distribution according to ones performance按劳分配.Language, being a vehicle of human thoughts, always adapts itself to the pace of social development. As new things and new concepts come forth one after another, human beings undoubtedly need more accurate and expressive language for communication. Therefore, compounds tend to be longer and more complex.3.1.3 ShorteningIn the 11th edition of The Acronym, Initialism & Abbreviations Dictionary published by Gale Research Company in 1987, more than 400,000 items of shortenings have been included (汪榕培, 2000). In English, there are several categories of shortening in building new words: clipping, acronyms, initialism, and blending.Clipping is a method of shortening a word by deleting several letters without changing its meaning. It is used widely in scientific writing and journalistic style. The word ad (advertisement) and copter (helicopter) are good examples. Both initialisms and acronyms form words by intercepting initial letters from a compound word, then makes up a new word. The former makes up words that are pronounced as the sequence of letters, e.g. PK (player kill), B2B (Business to Business) and GPS (Global Position System), while the latter makes up words which can be pronounced as a word, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and DINK (Double Income, No Kid). Blending is the way to form a word by clipping a part from each word and combining them into a new word. For example: kidult (kid + adult), brunch (breakfast + lunch) and Chinglish (Chinese + English).There is an interesting phenomenon: the original forms and the shortened ones usually coexist no matter what the language is. So does English. There are two reasons: one is that the shortened forms would lead to the loss of some information so that the original meaning may not be clear and may cause misunderstanding; the other reason is that many shortened forms are informal and mainly used in spoken or informal occasions. Hence, the original forms are necessary for those formal occasions to avoid misunderstanding and be in harmony with the formal atmosphere.For the advent of “Information Age”, on one hand, language, as mentioned above, becomes more and more precise and complicated in expression. On the other hand, under the pressure of huge volume of information, especially in field of scientific technology and news, efficiency tends to be another trend in the development of language: simple in form but rich in content. Shortening would be another prevailing formation of neologism for that it is an economic ways of expression as syllables have been reduced so that they are much easier for people to speak, write and memorize. 3.1.4 AnalogyThe analogical creation indicates that a new word or a new phrase is coined by an analogy between a newly created one and an existing corresponding one (林承璋, 刘世平, 2007: 330). For instance, sunrise comes from moonrise, and white collar analogizes pink collar, go