网络新生混成字的形成以及识别中的认知机制

The Cognitive Mechanisms under Formation and Recognition of Chinese Neo-blending Characters

混成词是现代世界语言中一种相对较新的文字现象,因其特异性和创新性引起了语言学家的广泛关注.汉语中近些年也在网络上集中出现了大量新造字,其产生类似于英文中的混成词,笔者将其命名为混成字(blending characters).与英文中的混成词相类似,混成汉字由两个或两个以上汉字在空间上重叠组成,在此过程中至少一个来源字的部件受到缩减.混成字打破了作为汉语最小语素单位的“字”,在亚语素的层面上对基本书写单位进行了创造性的改变,达成对新概念的曲折的幽默的表达.文章将混成汉字与英文中的混成词相比较,初步探讨了汉语混成字的成因、特点,以及在构成和识别中的认知原则.

Chinese is considered an isolating language that lacks morphological changes.Unlike most of the living languages,the orthography bears no logical relationship to pronunciation.And this feature excludes phonemic overlap to be a factor in the forming of Chinese blending characters.This paper aims to examine the similarities and differences between English blending words and Chinese blending characters,and further discuss the cognitive mechanisms under the formation and recognition of those neo-blending characters.Following a brief review of several previous classifi-catory studies,the paper analyzes the orthographic structure of Chinese blends based on perception model.The main factors to be discussed are( i) the amount of information each source character contributes;( ii) cognitive distinguish ability of the constituents taken from source words,and( iii) the spatial organization of the contributing parts.The results show that the amount of material contributed by the words is determined by the degree of recognizability of the source characters,similar to English blends.However,the spatial operationalization of source characters to the blending character plays a vital role in Chinese blending character formation,whereas phonemic similarity,the most affecting factor in English blends,is completely irrelevant in the process.This paper also points out potentially rewarding avenues of further research by proposing further behavioral studies to validate these results on the basis of naming/recognizing a comparison of popular blending characters to intentional blends that violates the proposed principles.