On the Latest Development of Modern English Vocabulary Essay Example

usually taken for granted by the speakers.

However, to speak and understand a language means knowing the vocabulary of that language. According to the founder of modern linguistics Bloomfield (1933), all languages are dynamic rather than static and change is constant – and normal. That is to say English vocabulary has a metabolic process to meet the needs of the rapid development of the society.The average speaker knows thousands of words, and as the language grows new words are introduced while many old words fall out of use. As foreign learners of English, we should concentrate on this metabolic process continuously so as to keep pace with the development of English. 2.

The Definition and Study Actuality of English New Words 2. 1 Definition According to the Oxford Essential Dictionary of New Words edited by Erin, word is novel arrangement of letters with a meaning not quite duplicated by any other arrangement of letters (2003).This is the ideal form of a new word. Like most ideals, this is rarer than we’d like.

Real-world new words are messier. For one thing, new ‘words’ are often made up of more than one word-- they’re multiword lexical units, to be technical. Often, new words are merely new senses of an existing word. A new word must earn its place in the dictionary by showing that people are using it? lots of people, in lots of different places. This is great for proving that the new word is a solid citizen of the English language (Lin & Liu, 2005, p.

151).From the above mentioned, the definition of new words may be described as follows: neologisms are newly coined words

or words that are given new meaning to fit new situation because of social, economic, political, cultural, scientific and technical changes in human society (Lin & Liu, 2005, p. 132). They are also called vogue words, that is, the newly popular and much used words.

2. 2 Study Actuality In 1902, Leon Mead published a work Word-Coinage: Being an Inquiry into Recent Neologisms; also A Brief Study of Literary Style, Slang, and Provincialisms (1902), which is the earliest work studying English new words in the 20th century.And Mead is the first person to bring forward the opinion of studying neologisms in his work, which includes many new words created by American writers. Besides, the author also made a record of the attitude of American literary toward “neologism”, such as Henry James. “Henry James is afraid he is wholly unable to aid me in collecting words either of his own invention or of anyone else’s. ” (Gao, 1998, p.

11). The existing lexicology thinks little of modern English new vocabulary. The easons are just like follows: firstly, uncertainty on the definition and scale of new words; Secondly, incompleteness on the collecting of new words; lastly, without authority standard and few is edited into dictionaries and books (Deng, 2005, p. 49). However, as professor Wang Rongpei said, “As for new words, we cannot ignore them just because they haven’t been edited into dictionaries or accepted by the Standard English” (2006).

We should attach importance to its development, formation and trend. 3. The Sources of English New WordsNew words are being invented or introduced all the time. Sometimes a new word is produced by a single person only,

in some special situations. These words are called nonce words used only once or coined for one particular occasion, and never occur again. Sometimes a new word coined by a single speaker is used by a small group, such as the staff of the institution, and exists for a time without gaining any wider circulation.

Sometimes a new word is coined by a number of people; such a word becomes an accepted part of language, and is fixed in a dictionary.When a new product is made, a new conception comes in man’s thought, and a new name must be found, that is, a new word appears in the language. In general, the sources of English new words mainly distributes in more than ten semantic fields reflecting the ever-changing contemporary world in an all-round way. (A semantic field is an area of meaning which can be delimited from others in a language). 3. 1 New Words Caught in Society, Politics, and Economy After World War II, the global political, economic situation and social life is changing with each passing day.

It reflects that new words in these fields are emerging in an endless stream. The world situation is out of joint. Numerous new words appear. For instance, CIS, Commonwealth of Independent States after the Soviet Union collapsed; Velvet Revolution referring to a non-violent political revolution during the Drastic Change in Eastern Europe; G8, which evolved from the Group of Seven, consisting of the world's eight leading industrialized powers; Sandstorm in the 1991, Gulf War/Persian Gulf War making its formidable impact felt on Iraq; NMD, National Missile Defense and TDM, Theater Missile Defense.

Though the Bush administration enthusiastically implements

these two strategies, the September 11 terrorist attacking on the United States has also produced serious consequences. To smash terrorism and halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction and eco-tourism, the US and British governments waged a war on Iraq at all costs. Statesmen and diplomats of each country were quite active and carried out shuttle diplomacy to obtain cold peace. The outbreak of the war in Iraq caused thousands of casualties and humanitarian disaster.To resist US and British army, some Iraqis take extremes and suicide bombing.

Every younger generation is labeled by the American society. At the beginning of the 20th century, the young who was confused and disenchanted by the scar of the World War I and haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war was called the Lost Generation. The generation who was born in 1920s and came of age after the World War II flouted tradition. They were the Beat Generation.

The generation who was born in 1930s is the Silent/ Silence Generation.The birthrate skyrocketed following World War II, causing people born in this period as the Baby Boom Generation. And also, there are the Me Generation born in 1950s, the Generation X born in 1960s and the Generation Y born in 1970s. The Baby Boom Generation dreaded wars and conscription and was the pioneers of sexual revolution and taking drugs for fun.

The X Generation feared unemployment and was cynical about life. And the Generation Y worried about stray bullets and AIDS while had the Internet. In society, people of different social life have different social name.There were decadent hippies in

the 60's, yippies: Youth International Party in the 70’s and yuppies: young urban professionals in 80’s. Besides, there appeared bluppy/ bluppie: black yuppies, guppy/ guppie: gay urban professionals, yappie: young affluent professionals, muppie: middle-aged urban professionals, woopy/ woopie: well-off older person, yeepie: youthful energetic elderly people involved in everything, sippy: senior independent pioneers, and yuffie: young urban failure.

At the beginning of this century, BOBOS aroused the interest of white-collar workers and petty bourgeois.It refers to Bourgeois Bohemians meaning the new 'enlightened elite' of the information age. They are well-educated and have forged a new social ethos from a logic-defying fusion of 1960s counter-culture and 1980s entrepreneurial materialism. Today is also an era of knowledge economy.

With the deepening of economic globalization, multinational corporations, global marketing, PR: public relations, e-commerce, etc. are new things in Economic Field. Fortune 500 is a bellwether pushing forward the global economic development. Nevertheless, the global economy cannot boost without SME: small and medium-size enterprises.Running an enterprise depends on high-quality personnel. It not only needs the guidance of CEO: chief executive officer, but also requires the cooperation of COO: chief operating officer, CFO: chief financial officer, and CIO: chief information officer.

The company top should pay attention to TQM: total quality management, guard against corpocracy, and set a high value on corporate culture. In the securities market/firm, angel investors finance and often mentor risky young companies in exchange for equity stakes in the businesses.They are called angels because the funding they provide often seems heaven-sent at a time when the friends-and-family money is exhausted and the company has not yet developed the products or revenue to attract later-stage investors. 3.

2 New Words Reflecting Scientific and Technological Progress At present, we are in the process of “The Third Wave” in which information technology (IT) is playing a vital important role. Computer technology and telecommunications industry change with each passing day.

The English-Chinese Bilingual Dictionary of Information Technology published in 2000 includes more than 100,000 new IT words.And new words involved in computer technology from 1980s account for over 50 percent, such as supercomputer, desktop, laptop/ lunch box/ notebook, pen/ penputer/ pentop/ notepad and palmtop. Moreover, the Internet has become fashionable all over the world. “Cyber-” denoting computer network is turning to a productive prefix. Over 50 words are combined from this prefix, including cybercafe, cyberspace, cyberchat, cybersurf, cyberstation and so on.

GSM: global system for mobile communications mobile users can “roam about the world”.And ADSL: asynchronous digital subscriber line supports computer users to access the Internet quite fast without waiting for a dial-up connection. Other advanced scientific and technological products are SSC: superconducting super collider, LEP: large electron- position collider, LRV: light rail vehicle/ LRT: light rail train and magnetic- levitation train having already been moved in Shanghai. Life science has been universally acknowledged as a newly developed discipline worldwide, being highly valued in international academic circles.

People often mention clone and human cloning which trigger a debate about the relation between biotech and bioethics. There are also genetic engineering, genetic fingerprinting coming from life science. In 2001, the US genomics company, Celera announced the human genome causing a big stir in the world. Recently, nm: nanometer/ nanoscale technology is becoming popular. 3. 3New Words Describing the 21st-Century Ailments The new era has brought about wonderful

life as well as the 21st-century ailments inevitablely to human beings.

The PWA: person with AIDS suffers from AIDS.Despite AIDS cocktails therapy, the rapid spread of AIDS makes many people gloomsters. In 2003, SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome/ atypical pneumonia appearing in China is depressingly high. Highly technical and highly rushed modern way of life may cause mental illness such as CFS: chronic fatigue syndrome, shadow syndrome, depression, ADD: attention deficit disorder and mania.

If you spent Christmas day nursing a cold rather than enjoying the delights of good food and relaxation, you may be a victim of a newly identified condition: leisure sickness.This is a term which has recently been adopted on both sides of the Atlantic to refer to a situation that will be very familiar to many of us: we avidly look forward to a rest after a period of intense activity at work, only to be annoyingly struck down with some kind of bug which makes us feel rotten, just when we thought we were going to enjoy ourselves for a few days. At the end of the 20th century, pestilence brought disaster to “animal kingdom” from bird flu in Hong Kong to BSE: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (still called Mad Cow Disease) in Britain. Besides psychological and mental disease, “social diseases” are quite a lot.The criminal rate remains a high level in the 21st century.

Modern new words consist of various criminal acts: money washing/ money laundering, acquaintance rape, baby napping, contract killing, serial killer, spree killer and etc. Domestic violence causes victims suffering from battered wife syndrome. There are also many invisible problems in the society which are in the

form of disrespect for personal dignity and disregard of human rights: racism, sexism, ageism, classism, ableism, adultism, lookism, fattism, heightism, and sizism. 3. 4 New Word in EntertainmentEconomic development and social advancement change and enrich people’s life in a more and more profound way.

During holidays, people can go shopping in shopping mall or power center/strip and have dinner in food court. Merchandise comes from all over the world: white goods, brown goods, dish washer, food processor, microwave oven/ pinger, toast oven and kitchen ventilator. Most of them are cheap and cheerful. People may enjoy an event movie/ event picture in a multiplex or watch an action film at their home cinema/ home theater. In fitness center, aerobics, rhythmic gymnastics, stretching, treadmiling and stair mastering are available.

An increasing number of young people attempt to do aquatic sports (surfing, jet-skiing and board sailing) and extreme sports (bungee jumping, rock climbing, extreme skiing, ski surfing and peakbagging) to show their adventurous spirit. 4. The Formation of English New Words When facing new words, some people will be scared or some people just put them aside. But some people will study them.

For they realize that knowledge of word-formation is not only helpful for the expansion of one’s vocabulary, but also of great significance in inferring word meaning. 4. 1 Common Rules on the Formation . 1.

1 Conversion Conversion is a main type of word-formation assigning the base to a different word class with no change of form. It can be viewed as the combination of two or sometimes more than two words to create new words. In the English language conversion is unusually prominent as a

word-formation process. Of course, conversion, like other main types of word-formation, is treated as a process now available for extending the lexical resource of the English language, e.

g. the haves and have-nots, ins and outs, ifs and buts, ifs and therefores. 4. 1. 2 CompoundingCompounding is a main type of word-formation adding one base to another, such that usually the one placed in front in some sense subcategorizes the one that follow, e. g.

blackbird, etc. Take another few new words for example, gay marriage, boy toy, platinum handshake, rapid reaction force, and four-two-one syndrome. 4. 1.

3 Clipping or Shorting Clipping or shorting is a method of shorting a word without changing its meaning. Words like gas (from gasoline), bus (from omnibus) are formed by clipping. Clipping is an important device of forming new words in Modern English.It is used widely in scientific writing and journalistic style. This method is of a character of using words precisely and conveniently.

In Modern English not only single words but also phrases can be replaced by the use of clipping. For instance, chemo (from chemotherapy), con (conversation or conference), demo (downward mobility), slomo (slow movement), etc. 4. 1. 4 Acronyms Acronyms are a special kind of clipping. An acronyma is a word formed from the initial letter of a word that makes up a name.

Radar and snafu (situation normal all flucked up).For example, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), DINK (dual employed, no kids), DEWK (dual employed, with kids), NILKY (no income, lots of kids), etc. 4. 1. 5 Blending Blending is a very productive process, especially in commercial coinages. A blend is a compound

word made by blending one word with another word.

Though not all blends become standard, most of them have been more or less acceptable in the English language. That is to say, blending is a process of word-formation, in which a new word is made by using the parts or the full form of the two words and combining their meaning.For example, Amerindian is derived from American India; Europort is formed from a European port, Demopublican from Democrat and Republican, Cineplex from cinema and complex, kidult from kid and adult, edutainment from education and entertainment, etc. 4. 1.

6 Back-formation Back-formation is an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from an already existing longer word in the vocabulary. The word “beg” for example, comes from the word beggar, and not the other way round. That is to say, the noun beggar appeared first in the English vocabulary, and then the verb beg.Take another new word for example, information technology informates as well as automates. The word information comes from informate, and the word automation come from automate.

Affixation and back-formation are two contrary processes of word-formation. The former is a method of forming new words by means of affixes while the latter by cutting imagined affixes. 4. 1. 7 Analogy The process of analogical creation is one of the tendencies in English word-formation. A new word or a new phrase is coined by an analogy between a newly created one and an existing corresponding one.

The word marathon, for instance, is an existing word, which appeared at the Olympic Games held many years ago. It means “a

running race of about 26 miles”. Through analogy Modern English has the following new words derived from marathon: telethon, talkathon, etc. There are two types of analogically coined words: one is single word, and the other is phrase. For instance, from the words blue-collar worker and white-collar worker, a lot of collative neologisms born, such as gray-collar worker, pink-collar worker, gold-collar worker, new-collar worker, bright-collar worker, open-collar worker, no-collar worker.

. 1. 8 Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the oldest device of word-formation used to name a thing or an action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it. In other words, onomatopoeic words are echoic words whose sound suggests sense. In Modern English people often coin new words for the purpose of vividness and imagination, e.

g. grunt, cuckoo, coo, and murmur. 4. 2 By Adding New Meaning to Existing Words In English many existing words have added new meanings in the course of time, especially in the past few decades.

These words with new meanings have become important new words.For instance: the word Watergate appeared in 1972, then –gate adding its meanings, gradually means the scandal like Watergate, especially refers to the scandal of important person in political fields, such as: Camillgate, Ricegate, De-bategate, Winegate. 4. 3 By Borrowing Words from Other Languages A number of new words are borrowed from other languages. The English language has vast debts.

In any dictionary some 80% of the entries are borrowed. In the fourteenth century vast numbers of French words were introduced into the English language. In the sixteenth century large numbers of new words were borrowed from Latin.In the nineteenth century there was a

great expansion in the vocabulary of science and technology.

Borrowed words are nevertheless immensely useful in enriching the vocabulary and making the language flexible and resourceful. We have known a lot of borrowing words, for example, the words karaoke and ikebana borrowed from Japanese, opening-up policy, one country and two systems, iron rice bowl, vegetable-basket project, laid-off workers from Chinese, black humor and ye-ye from French, sputnik from Russian, lebensraum and gemutlich from German, pizza and dolce vita from Italian, tabla (from Indian. ttp:// www. ask oxford. com/ globalenglish/ borrowings) 4.

4 By Creating Completely New Words Completely new words in English constitute a tiny minority because of lack of clues to their meanings from the established vocabulary. There are three types as follows: 4. 4. 1 Words from Proper Names of People Words of this group are from names of scientists, inventors, or famous persons. For instance, the new expression Clinton-speak comes from the former USA president Clinton. It refers to “the speaking way of Clinton”.

4. 4. 2 Words from Proper Names of PlacesSimilarly, quite a number of our familiar words are derived from the names of places. These words usually denote that products, objects or materials come from the names of places where they were first produced. For example, champagne from Champagne in France where the wine champagne was first produced.

4. 4. 3 Words from Trademark or Brand of Commodities Thanks to the popularity of the products they stand for, some trademarks have become common words. Words such as Carrefour, Colgate, Sprite, and Safeguard become familiar with us. 5.

New Characters of Modern English VocabularyDuring the development of modern English vocabulary,

there are three main characters, that is, continuous increase in number, various sources in borrowing and a tendency to be short in form(R. P. Wang& J. Z. Wang, 2006, p.

152). 5. 1 Continuous Increase in Number The number of modern English vocabulary is exceedingly added. It’s estimated that the amount of neologisms is beyond 2 million.

It will be out of count if all the specialty terms are taken into consideration. Just take the species of creature in the world for example, in August 18. 997, American news and the world report has supplied the number of certain species, which are already 1359500 in all. And there are 13000 new species added every year (Xie, 2003, p.

368). 5. 2 The Variation of the Origin English is the international language, which is spoken as a mother tongue by 300 million people, and another 300 million people use it as a second language. The estimated number of people who are learning English as a foreign language in countries where English has no official status is 1 billion (Liu & Jiang, 2002, p. 23). It is calculated in the end of the 20th century that 1.

to 1. 5 billion people can use English in different levels. The development of new English vocabulary actually is the process of borrowing words. It’s calculated that English vocabulary comes from more than 120 languages. Each nation all supplies new words. 5.

3 A Tendency to be Short in Form Nowadays, with rhythm of living and working turning into more rapidly, the language used for communication becomes simpler and shorter, especially the vocabulary. More and more new words appear in

the form of initialism, acronyms, shortenings, blends, phonetic spelling and so on.Take a few words for example: B2C (business-to-consumer), B2B (business to business). In a word, it’s quite clear that simple and short is the trend of new vocabulary in form.

6. Conclusion American linguist Mario Pei said in his English in 2061: A Forecast: “It will be the multiplicity of new words that will really make the English of 2061 a startling different language from that of today” (1967, p. 78). Knowledge of source, word-formation and future development of new words is, therefore, one of the most aids to the expanding of one’s vocabulary of neologisms, and is of great value in inferring the meaning of new words.It is hoped that the present study will stimulate English learners’ interest in studying English vocabulary and help them enlarge their vocabulary in order to meet the demand of new ideas, theories and science technology. So this paper is hopeful of having some practical value.

References Borrowings into English. (n. d. ). Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http:// www. ask oxford.

com/ globalenglish/ borrowings Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Erin, M.

(Ed. ). 2003. Oxford Essential Dictionary of New Words.New York: Berkley Pub.

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Michael Quinion. 1998, January. Some new words from the Oxford Archives. Retrieved Nov.

19, 2007, form http://www. worldwidewords. org/articles/ wordsof97. html Pei, M. 1967.

English in 2061: A Forecast. New York: Harper & Row. Pyles, T. & Algeo, J.

1982. The Origins and

Development of the English Language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.