The Features of the Composition of New English Vocabularies

张艳敏

Abstract:English vocabularies, like any modern language are constantly evolving. A lot of new things、 new concepts, making the emergence of English words continue to increase. This article from the "use Prefixes and suffixes method, Patchwork method, composite method, abbreviated method, meaning conversion," to summed up the five features of the composition of the new English vocabulary。

摘要：英语词汇跟任何现代语言的词汇一样, 都在不断地发展。近来大量新事物、新概念的出现更是需要英语单词不断地增加。本文从“利用词缀法、拼缀法、复合法、缩略法、词义转换”五个方面总结了英语新词汇构成的特点。

Keywords:English; new vocabulary; compositional characteristics

关键词：英语；新词汇；构成特点

作者简介：张艳敏，女，1982年6月，河南教育学院， 英语专业 2008级。

[中图分类号]：H313[文献标识码]：A

[文章编号]：1002-2139(2011)-21-0146-01

Introduction: English is the world's most popular official language, even that the world's largest proportion of new things, new terminology, new concepts are expressed in English. With more and more new things come into people's vision, and therefore it requires English vocabulary constantly increasing, this article summarizes the following five aspects of some new English vocabulary composition features.

1.Use Prefixes and suffixes method[1]

Use Prefixes and suffixes to constitute a new word. For example, “Super-”in contemporary English, is a very active prefix, means "a bigger, more powerful, or more important version of a particular thing," such as: supermarket, superpower. In addition there are some new affixes, for example, adjectives alcoholic (alcoholism, alcohol addiction) is an adjective from the noun with the suffix”-ic” alcohol derived. Now it has broken down -holic from this component, add back in some of the words constitute a new word, such as: workaholic, beeraholic, and then new words arise in this way.

2.Patchwork method

Use Patchwork method to form some new words, two words that make the original cut, and then take the one part; or maintain the prototype of a word, to take part of another word to form a new word. In this way, new words formed. For example: airtel (airplane hotel), chinglish (Chinese English) and so on.

3.Composite method

The means of use a word with another word directly combined to form a new word. For example: with "speak" to migrate to the word names、 organization names,organization names ,will produce a lot of new words. Such as: “computer speak, business speak, college speak 、Olympic speak” and so on. The use of composite method in modern English constitutes a large number of new compound words, greatly simplifying the syntactic structure.

4.Abbreviated method[2]

Another modern English word-formation is active abbreviated method. It features coinage concise, easy to use. Such as: VCD (Video Compact Disk), SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and so on.

5.Meaning conversion

5.1 Giving new meaning to old words.For example: The commonly used verb “break” has a new meaning, "break dance"; in computer terminology, “mouse” became the "Mouse Locator"; “window” in the computer language, means "the computer window."

5.2 Terminology transformation. Some high-tech, new product names, company names, over time, from the original meaning and become a new word. Such as: tele-traffic (formerly the United States "RedcomLaboratories Inc" of a trademark), a-go-go (The word comes from Paris, a cafe and nightclub Whiky a Gogo).

5.3 Foreign words come in. Highly information-oriented modern society, increasingly frequent international exchanges, making foreign words continue to enter the English language, have greatly enriched its vocabulary. Such as: “jukebox” (African languages), “robot” (Czech), and “paper tiger” (from Chinese).

General overview of the above five aspects of new English vocabulary composition features, I believe that in the process of learning new vocabularies ,if we remember that there are these types of construction method, that we would more quickly master the new words.

Reference:

【1】SHA Hong fang, The learning strategies of English vocabulary[J]Journal of Wuhan Polytechnic University ,2001(02) 75-76.

【2】張燕，英语新词汇的特点及翻译【J】，文教论坛，2007年第12期外语研究，57-58。