Loanwords are a very important linguistic phenomenon, an apparently inevitable outcome of language contact and culture contact, as well as an effective method for enriching the vocabulary of the recipient language. Since the Chinese “open policy” ...
Loanwords are a very important linguistic phenomenon, an apparently inevitable outcome of language contact and culture contact, as well as an effective method for enriching the vocabulary of the recipient language. Since the Chinese “open policy” in 1978, which followed the rapid development of the economy, there have been a large number of loanwords continuously entering into Chinese, particularly those of English origin. Strikingly, these English-originated loanwords have greatly changed the features of Chinese word formation. This is especially significant since the long-established writing systems associated with English and Chinese are profoundly different (English with a phonological-morphological alphabetic system, Chinese a generally semantic character system). Traditional studies of Chinese loanwords have focused more on the collection and comparative analysis of loanwords, yet little attention has been paid to analysis of loanwords from a morphological perspective. |
