浅谈英语新词的来源、构成及发展趋势

浅谈英语新词的来源、构成及发展趋势On the Sources, Formation and Development Tendency of English Neologism
摘要
本文从新词的来源、构成及发展趋势对英语新词进行讨论。

首先，本文分别从科学信息技术行业，经济、政治和文化领域及借词方面论述了新词汇的来源；其次，本文指出了新词的构成规律，如合成法，词缀法，转换法，首字母缩写法，截取法，拼缀法，逆构法及演变自专有名词的方法；最后，本文提出了新词的发展趋势——数量扩大化，来源多样化，系列化和简洁化。

关键词：新词；来源；构词；发展趋势
Abstract
This thesis discusses English neologism in terms of the sources, formation and development tendency of English new words. First of all, with regard to the sources, the new words in the fields of science and technology, economy, politics, culture and loan words are displayed. Secondly, the word-formation rules of English new words are also analyzed, such as compounding, derivation, conversion, acronym, clipping, blending, back-formation and words from proper names. Finally, based on these discussions, we suggest the possible tendency of the development of English new words--increase in quantity, diversity in sources, systematization and simplicity.
Keywords: neologism; sources; word-formation; development tendency
Contents
1.Introduction (1)
2.The Sources of English Neologism (1)
2.1 Science and technology (2)
2.2 Economy (2)
2.3 Politics (2)
2.4 Culture (3)
2.5 Loan words (4)
3. The Formation of English Neologism (4)
3.1 Compounding (4)
3.2 Derivation (5)
3.3 Conversion (5)
3.4 Acronym (6)
3.5 Clipping (6)
3.6 Blending (7)
3.7 Back-formation (8)
3.8 Words from proper names (8)
4. The Development Tendency of English Neologism (9)
4.1 Increase in quantity (9)
4.2 Diversity in sources (9)
4.3 Systematization (10)
4.4 Simplicity (11)
5. Conclusion (11)
References (12)
1. Introduction
Language never stops changing. The changing of language can be seen directly from its words. But what is the definition of new words or neologisms? To answer this question, two aspects should be considered. The first aspect is what new words are, and the second is when they appear and enter into the dictionary. From the above-mentioned aspects, the definition of new words may be described as follows:“Neologisms are newly coined words or words that are given new meanings to fit new situations and new needs because of the social, economic, political, cultural, especially scientific and technical changes in the given period in human society”. (林承璋，刘世平，2009：105）
With the development of society, an ever increasing number of new words have come into being. Never before in history has the world seen such an overwhelming number of new words to learn. Therefore, it safely leads us to the conclusion that enlarging your vocabulary with new words is the first and most important step in learning English well. However, to keep up with the latest English vocabulary is especially difficult for Chinese students.
This thesis is written in the hope that it can help learners of English as foreign language develop an interest in and appreciation for new words from the aspects of the sources, formation and development tendency of English neologism. This thesis consists of five chapters, which are introduction, the sources of English neologism, the formation of English neologism, the development tendency of English neologism and conclusion.
2.The Sources of English Neologism
Generally speaking, language can be divided into two categories, including dead languages, which haven’t been used nowadays, and living languages, which are still used and changing today. Undoubtedly, English belongs to the latter. New words are being invented or introduced due to various social changes from different places. The following part will show the English neologisms in many different fields in the development of society with examples to show how they come into being.
2.1 Science and technology
Modern science and technology contains many new branches apart from the existing fields. The appearance of new branches in modern science and technology gives rise to a great number of new words.
Take a few new words for example. The new word computerist created in 1973 refers to “a person who uses or operates a computer”. The word mouse is an existing word, but now a new sense is added to the word mouse, meaning “a small mobile manual device that controls the movement of the cursor and selection of functions on a computer display”. Also, lots of new words have appeared in other fields in science and technology, such as the new word spacewalk, which means “to move about outside a spacecraft in space” in the outer space field.
2.2 Economy
Economic development is another main source of new words. With the rapid development of economy in the world and the arrival of economy globalization, neologisms in English have appeared in great deal. For instance, EU (European Union), which was founded in 1993, now consists of the former European Economic Community or European Common Market and European Community. In 1975, G-7 (Group of
Seven) was set up by seven countries, including America, Japan, France, UK, German, Italy and Canada. It is to help the seven countries to develop and improve economy in the financial crisis following the World War Two. Likewise, G-20 (Group of Twenty), APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), WTO(World Trade Organization), etc. have appeared one by one.
2.3 Politics
The past two or three decades have seen a dramatic change in political fields around the world. And the change has undoubtedly produced many new English words related to politics. For instance, the word sit-in, which appeared in 1937, means “an act of occupying seats in a racially segregated establishment in organized protest against discrimination”. Besides, due to the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1992, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) became worldwide known. Moreover, the special policies adopted by some American or British leaders have also added new words to English, such as Thatcherism (Thatcher's policy) and Clintonism (Clinton’s policy). With the emergence of women’s movement, the new word liberation appeared in 1970, which means “a movement seeking equal rights and status for women”, e.g. “women’s liberation”. Another new word womanism appeared in 1984. It refers to “a form of feminism focused especially on the conditions and concerns of black women”.
2.4 Culture
Culture also plays an important role in producing neologisms. It is universally acknowledged that language is the carrier of culture and culture is a part of a language. Thus, the more colorful the cultural life is,
the richer the language will be. Therefore, with the rapid development of the content of social life, a large number of new words have found their occurrence. Hippies, also called “flower children or people”, appearing in the 1960s, are those people who advocate love and peace, struggle against Vietnam War but are negative pacifists. They also take drugs, wear strange clothes and like to live in groups. Likewise, New Yippies--the urban young citizens who have expertise and have good income and Yeepies--the youthful energetic elderly people appeared in the following years.
It is widely known that the US is called “the country on the wheel”and the car culture is the main characteristic of this country. Therefore, people often use car brands to represent quality or the rank of their products, like the words Cadillac of Chinese tea, Cadillac of craftsmanship and Rolls-Royce of pianos. All these words have the meaning of “products of high quality”. An American writer once said to reporters, “Publishers only want to print Cadillac names to represent the latest and best news”.
2.5 Loan words
Language is an open system. As the international cooperation and exchange around the world have been increasing, a lot of words that come from foreign countries have been coming into English. It is estimated that English loan words (words borrowed from foreign countries) constitute 80 percent of the modern English vocabulary. It is quite receptive to foreign linguistic influence. As a report of the British Council puts “To our store of written English, which comprises an
international heritage of arts and science, notable contributions by those who have learnt English as a new language are common and likely to increase”. (Quirk, 1963: 12) Examples are as follows: Apartheid was first used in South Africa in 1949 to mean “(policy of) racial segregation”; Sputnik, a Russian word, means “man-made satellite”. Other examples are tai chi, jiao zi, tofu, kungfu and typhoon, which all come from Chinese.
3.The Formation of English Neologism
There is no denying that English is an active language in generation of new words and English vocabulary has increased dramatically in quantity and in extent. However, the generation of new words is not irregular. On the contrary, there is a lot of regularity in the ways of word formation. In this chapter, we will discuss some of those basic ways by which new words are created, namely, compounding, derivation, conversion, acronym, blending, back-formation and words from proper names.
3.1 Compounding
Compounding or composition is a word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit or a compound word. Compounding has been a source of new words in English since the earliest times and is particularly common in present-day English. It is estimated today that the largest number of new words are formed by compounding.
Compounds can be nouns, adjectives and verbs. For example, backdoor is a noun, which is made up of the word “back” and the word “door”, meaning a door at the back of a house or other building. Adjective hardworking, which consists of “hard” and “working”, means “to work hard”. Verb compounds are housekeep(to keep house), proof-read (to read and correct the printer’s proof), etc.
3.2 Derivation
Derivation or affixation can be defined as a process of forming new words by the addition of a word element, such as a prefix, suffix or combing form, to an already existing word. (张韵斐，2010：43）This process allows us to expand our vocabulary without specifically memorizing new words.
Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the base. They do not generally alter the word-class of a word: fair-unfair is a typical example. There are some other productive prefixes including “negative” prefixes: un-, non-, in-, dis-, a-; prefixes of attitude: co-, counter-, anti-, pro-; prefixes of time and order: fore-, post-, ex-, re- , and so forth.
On the contrary, suffixes usually change the word from one part of speech to another, not the meaning of the word. For example, when -able is added to the word “read”, it forms a new word readable, which means something that can be read. And reader means someone who is reading. Some typical examples of suffixes are:-ist(scientist), -ism (realism), -less (careless) , -ly (happily) and so on. A combining form, however, is a bound morpheme, which is originally a full word in Latin or Greek, such as auto-, hydro-, or tele-, but which now occurs only in derivatives. That
is they are now mostly attached to full words of general, learned, scientific or technical character to form new words, for example, autobiography, hydromechanics and television.
3.3 Conversion
Conversion is a word-formation process whereby a word of a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another word-class without the addition of an affix. This process is particularly productive in modern English, with new uses occurring frequently. For example, the verb attack (as in “The enemy attached us at night”.) corresponds to the noun attack (as in “The enemy launched an attack on us at night”.); and this relationship may be seen as parallel to that between the verb look (as in “Please look at the blackboard”.) and the noun look (as in “Can I have a look?”)
Today the largest number of words formed by conversion is constituted by verbs from nouns. For instance, mail is originally used as a noun (as in “Will you please send the parcel by mail?”), but now it can also be used as a verb (as in “Will you please mail this parcel?”) Other examples are telephone, telegraph and ship. Therefore, a new meaning can be associated with and related to an existing word.
3.4 Acronym
Acronyms are words formed from the initial letters of the name of an organization, a scientific term, etc. They are pronounced as words rather than as sequences of letters. Most acronyms are spelled with capital letters, but they rarely appear with periods. When they become very common, they are usually spelled in small letters, such as laser
(lightwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and radar (radio detecting and ranging). If they are proper names, they retain the initial capital. Here are some examples:
OPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
UNESCO: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization
NATO: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
As time goes, some of the words may fall out of use. However, a great number of this kind of words will be added to English vocabulary. There is no doubt that acronyms will remain an important contributor to contemporary English vocabulary.
3.5 Clipping
The process of clipping involves the deletion of one or more syllables from a word (usually from a noun), which is also available in its full form. Clipping may be divided into four main types: back clipping, front clipping, front and back clipping and phrase clipping.
First of all, the deletion may occur at the end of the word, which is called back clipping. This is the most common type of clipping. For example, ad (=advertisement), homo (=homosexual), auto (=automobile) , champ (=champion) , dorm (=dormitory) and so on. Then, front clipping refers to the deletion occurring at the beginning of the word. Examples are bus (=omnibus), copter (=helicopter), plane (=airplane), quake (=earthquake) and scope (=telescope, microscope, radarscope, etc.). In addition, front and back clipping, it means the deletion occurs at both ends of a word: flu (=influenza) and fridge (=refrigerator). Finally, phrase clipping, this involves the shortening of a phrase, such as Perm (=permanent wave) and pop (=popular music, concert, or record).
3.6 Blending
Blending is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full forms. Words formed in this way are called blends or portmanteaus. For example, flush is the combination of fl in the word “flash”and ush in the word “blush”. Likewise, smog is the product of putting sm out of “smoke”and og out of “fog”together. It is widely acknowledged that blends have originated with Lewis Carroll, a British writer, who coined the following blends when he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, such as chortle (chuckle+snort) and galumph (gallop+triumph).
Generally speaking, blends are mostly used in writing related to science and technology, and to newspapers and magazines. It should be noted that though many of them have already achieved popularity in English, they are still considered to be slangs and informal by serious-minded people. As a result of this, frequent use of blends in formal writing is not preferred.
3.7 Back-formation
Back-formation is a term used to refer to a type of word-formation by which a shorter word is coined by the deletion of a supposed affix from a longer form already present in the language. For example, the verb resurrect was formed from the noun “resurrection”by removing the supposed derivative suffix-ion, and the verb edit was formed from “editor” by dropping the suffix -or. The majority of back-formed words are verbs, for verbs have a particular property to develop around them a number of deverbal nouns, such as the agent noun and the noun of action.
Back-formation is one of the traditional sources of new words. It
continues to make needed and substantial contributions to English vocabulary, especially to scientific and technical vocabulary. However, back-formations, unless very well established, are considered more appropriately to be used on informal than formal occasions.
3.8 Words from proper names
Another process of word-formation is the coinage of common words from proper names. They come from all sources, from names of scientists, politicians and statesmen to trademarks, and place names. Some have originated from characters in literature, TV dramas and movies, and some also have derived from book titles.
Take Hertz (a unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second) for example. It is a word from a scientist name H. R. Hertz (1857-1894), an eminent German physicist. Similarly, quite a few of our familiar words have derived from the names of places. An example is champagne, a sparkling white wine made in the region of Champagne, France. Also, some trademarks have become common words. A new coinage produced by this way is Mr. Clean (1971, from the trademark of a liquid cleaner), “a person of impeccable morals or reputation especially a politician or other public figure regarded as incorruptible”. Moreover, some common words have derived from literature, TV dramas and movies. From the Bible we get a Judas and a Solomon; from Shakespeare, a Shylock and a Benedick. Another example is Archie Bunker (1972, from the name of a television character in the comedy series All in the Family), meaning “a type of a working-class man who often reacts to social pressures in a bigoted and self-righteous manner”.
4.The Development Tendency of English Neologism
English is constantly changing. With the development of society, nowadays, an ever increasing number of new words are coming into English. However, the appearance of neologisms is not arbitrary. With more and more new words being born, the tendency of the development of English neologisms can be predicted as follows.
4.1 Increase in quantity
It is known that language is the carrier of culture. Therefore, the enhancing cultural standard and the improving living standard have laid a solid basis on which a large number of new words find their occurrence. For example, changes in social outlook and manners of behavior call for new terms such as beatnik and peacenik. Even new culinary agreements demand new labels and in English they have some forth in the form of cheeseburger, hiliburger, mushroomburger, etc. (Anderson, 1973: 132) Besides, the dramatic change in science and technology also gives rise to the appearance of large amounts of English neologisms. Everybody knows the words software, hardware, and multimedia. Similarly, economy and politics contribute to the produce of new words. Therefore, we can predict that English will be enlarged in quantity due to the changing of the aspects discussed above.
4.2 Diversity in sources
English is the most widely used language in the world. It is not only used as the first language in countries like Britain, America, Canada and Australia, but also used as a second language in India, Spain, France, etc. Today, English is the first choice as an official language in communication between countries. Hence, almost every country in the world can offer new words to English. Undoubtedly, English-speaking
countries provide the most new words to English, such as IQ, T-shirt and brainstorm from America. (徐昌和, 2009：226) Other countries such as China and Japan also make contributions to the increase of English neologisms. For example, kanji, which derives from Japanese, refers to a Japanese system of writing that utilizes characters borrowed and adapted from Chinese writing. In a word, with time passing, new words that derive from many different countries will increase continuously.
4.3 Systematization
It is widely known that we have stepped into the “Information Age”. Everyone gets involved in various kinds of information at any time. This is especially true when it comes to the appearance of the Internet.
With the increasingly rapid development of the Internet, it has exerted great influence on the way people live and work. As a result, a great deal of new words related to the Internet has been produced due to the wide use of the Internet. Examples are netcomputer, netcitizen, netcop, netgoods, network, netletter, netline, netmeeting, netnews, etc. There also have appeared many new words with the prefix e-, used before another word, which mean “something that is done on or involves the Internet”. E-shopping, e-consumer, e-market, e-marketing, e-book, e-business, e-life, e-cash, e-currency, e-mail, e-text, e-services, e-motion, and e-banking are all such examples.
In addition, suffixes -ization/-fication are added to country names to create new words to indicate the important characteristics or situation of a country. Take Iraqification for example. It means America hands over power to Iraq to cut and run.
Other similar new words are Finlandization, Vietnamization, Colombianizationm, etc. In a word, we can see an obvious systematic trend of English neologisms through above examples.
4.4 Simplicity
As the society grows fast, people have a quicker pace in life and work. So to pursue simplicity becomes a trend, and language is no exception. People want to convey or get the most information within the least time and this need can be satisfied by the simplicity of language. Thus, some new words are created by the process of acronyms. They are now used not only to shorten overly long sentences but also to convey entire sentences. For instance, V-J Day refers to the day on which the fighting with Japan officially ended in the Second World War. For its simplicity and saving time, the use of acronyms is becoming more and more prevalent. It is not only preferred by people who are very busy, but also by those who don’t feel motivated enough to create full sentences at the moment. Actually, it is of great advantages to express the most informative messages in the simplest words and the most efficient linguistic forms and that accounts for its popularity. (Atchison, 1997: 98) Hence, we safely conclude that simplicity of English neologisms cannot be denied and will enjoy much popularity in the future.
5.Conclusion
With the advance of modern society, a large number of English new words have been emerging. These new words not only input fresh blood to the English language, but they also exert profound influence on people’s lifestyle. There is no denying that they are pushing people to view language in a new sight. In this thesis, many examples are cited to demonstrate the sources, formation and development tendency of English neologisms. Here this thesis is just a tentative study of English neologisms. Hence, it definitely has imperfections due to the limited time
and research competence. Though human beings have showed a great interest in word formation for thousands of years, there still remain many open issues “in this most secret area of language study”. (Baucer, 1983: 293) Still, there are some areas about English neologisms for further study.
References
[1] Anderson, J. M. Structural Aspects of Language Change. London: Longman
Group Limited, 1973.
[2] Artchison, Jean. Language Change: Process or Decay? Oxford: Oxford University, 1997.
[3] Baucer, Lauire. English Word-formation. London:Cambridge University Press, 1983.
[4] Quirk, Randolph. The Use of English. London: Longman, 1963.
[5] 临承璋，刘世平.《英语词汇学引论》. 上海：上海交通大学出版社，2009.
[6] 徐昌和.《英语新词新语导论》. 上海：上海交通大学出版社，2009.
[7] 张韵斐.《现代英语词汇学概论》. 北京：北京师范大学出版社，2010.。