当代汉语新词的多元化趋向和地区竞争

The Diversity Trend and Area Competition of New Words in Contemporary Mandarin

本文利用香港城市大学“各地中文共时语料库”研究海内外汉语新词,有以下几项发现:(1)外来词始生阶段有多元化倾向;(2)方言词汇在不同地区之间互相渗透;(3)新词有从南向北扩散的倾向;(4)新词演变有三种状态:某种形式占优势、尚不分胜负、可能长期对立;(5)上海地区对外来文化和外来词的兼容性比北京强;(6)新词的音节数目有趋简的趋势。最后讨论新词的竞争力、外来词的输入途径、外来词的音译和意译等问题。

The paper studies the sources, development, geographic distribution and competition of new words recently appeared in China's Mainland and overseas Chinese communities on the basis of LIVAC, A Synchronic Corpus of Linguistic Variation in Chinese Communities. The authors find that a new word often has several variations in the initial period, then area competition follows. They also find that two decisive factors lead to the winning of a new word in area competition; one is cultural superiority and the other is less syllables, that is bi-syllable words always win.