New Chinese Words in 2014 – A Study of Word-formation Processes

随着社会的发展，尤其是互联网的发展，很多语言每年都涌现出了不少新词汇。词语是每个语言最基本也是最重要的组成部分，因此分析这些新词汇的结构特点以及构词法是很有意义的。这篇文章分析了2014年出现在中文里的新词汇和它们的构词方式，论文的目的是为了更好地了解中文词汇的发展和特点。本文以《2014汉语新词语》中公布的2014年出现的新词汇作为语料进行分析，发现了以下两个主要特点：第一，合成法，派生法，缩略法是2014年产生的新词汇的主要构词方式；第二， 百分之七十二的新词汇是多音节词（包含三个或者三个以上音节），而百分之八十的是名词。这些特点说明中文词汇现阶段的特点和发展趋势，跟传统的中文词汇有不同之处。The aim of this thesis was to investigate how new Chinese words are formed and to examine the linguistic patterns among them. This thesis focused on the analysis of Chinese words formed in 2014. The quantitative data for the analysis included a collection of 423 new Chinese words from the book 2014 汉语新词语 (hànyǔxīn cíyǔ) by Hou and Zhou. Parts of speech and number of syllables in the new words were investigated, although the focus was on word-formation processes. A discussion of derivation, blending, abbreviation, analogy, borrowing, change of meaning, compounding and inventions is also included. The share of each word-formation process used for each of the new words was presented statistically in order to reveal the significance of each word-formation process. The analysis showed that compounding, derivation and abbreviation were the major word-formation processes in 2014. The study also suggests that words formed by derivation and analogy were much more frequent in 2014, in comparison to previous studies. Furthermore, the ways words are formed in Chinese are changing and evolving, as some word-formation processes are becoming more frequently used in the formation of new words