CONTENTS
Acknowledgements i
Abstract ii
摘要. iii
1 Introduction. 1
1.1 Background of the Study. 1
1.2 Basic Concepts of the Study 1
1.3 Significance of the Study. 2
2 Literature Review 3
2.1 Neologism and Blending Words 3
2.2 Theoretical Foundation 4
2.3 Chapter Summery.5
3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Novel Blending Words. 7
3.1 Nature of Metaphor 7
3.2 Theoretical Foundations of Conceptual Metaphor Theory 8
3.3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory in Understanding Novel Blending Words11
3.4 Limitations of Conceptual Metaphor Theory 12
3.5 Chapter Summery.13
4 Conceptual Blending Theory and Novel Blending Words 14
4.1 Theoretical Foundations of Conceptual Blending Theory. 14
4.2 Conceptual Blending Networks. 15
4.3 Conceptual Blending Theory in Forming Novel Blending Words. 17
4.4 Chapter Summery 18
5 Prototype Theory and Novel Blending Words. 19
5.1 Theoretical Foundations of Prototype Theory. 19
5.2 Family Resemblance 20
5.3 Prototype Theory in Memorizing Novel Blending Words. 20
5.4 Chapter Summery 21
6 Conclusion. 23
6.1 Regular Tetrahedron Model. 23
6.2 Limitations of the Present Study 25
6.3 Suggestions for Further Study 25
Bibliography. 27
1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Neologisms have always been of great interest to linguists. The creation of new words or new meanings for existing words shows how people realize and reflect the reality. As a result, the emergence of neologism is of great importance. First of all, it reflects the requirement of social development. Secondly, it shows the cognitive development of human beings. Last but not least, from the morphological point of view, neologisms are especially interesting as they often demonstrate how imaginative and unpredictable language can be.
With the rapid development of society, English words change greatly and a large amount of new words come into being every year. Meanwhile, with the quickening of the pace of modern life and work, people are always in pursuit of obtaining the most information within the shortest possible time, which leads to the fact that most of the new words tend to be short and simple. Therefore, with the feature of conciseness, uniqueness and vividness, blending is becoming one of the most important methods of word building. Novel blending words are getting more and more popular in the field of literature, mass media propaganda, daily communication, etc., which satisfy the psychological adventure of young people in the new era who prefer something novel and strange. Therefore, blends have more irreplaceable advantages and value in use than any other words in different forms.
1.2 Basic Concepts of the Study
Blending words have been first created by Lewis Carroll (1971) in his work Through the Looking-Glass. Chinese scholar LU Guoqiang (1999) described blending words from the perspective of word formations. He insisted that a blend is a quite flexible word formation which formed mainly from clippings, especially from the head of one word and tail of the other. The new word coined in this way can be called “blend”, “portmanteau word” and “telescopic word” (Lu,1999:44).Thus it can be seen blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new word. Other scholars such as HU Zhuangli (2004) and YANG Bin (2008) are also famous experts who have made contributions in the field of novel blending words. 英语混成新词建构新解多元理论视域(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_4512.html