Vocabulary (or vocabulary), pronunciation and grammar are the three major elements of a language. The appellation of "vocabulary" may be more scientific than "vocabulary". Vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation all take "language" as the first morpheme of word formation, which is logically classified. In order to follow the convention, this paper still uses the term "vocabulary" for the time being.

Language is constantly developing and changing, which is reflected in pronunciation and grammar. Grammar is relatively stable, followed by pronunciation, vocabulary constantly updated. The reason is very simple. People in society are metabolizing everything, and words are metabolized accordingly. New things emerge one after another, and new words emerge one after another. The world has created a magical thing "computer", and the new word "computer" will be added to the dictionary. As the material shell of language, the grammar of pronunciation and the rules of word formation and sentence formation do not need to be changed frequently because of the emergence of new things. So vocabulary has really become a difficult problem in language research. Compared with the study of modern Chinese grammar and vocabulary, there are many schools of grammar research, which have flourished several times in the past 30 or 40 years, with famous masterpieces as evidence. Lexical research is a bit inferior.

The theoretical results of grammar research have been absorbed by teaching grammar, forming a new teaching grammar, which has played a very good role in popularizing grammar and improving the level of basic Chinese education. The theory of vocabulary research is also needed by Chinese education. This paper first attempts to explore the lexical features of modern Chinese in order to attract more attention.

Although modern Chinese vocabulary is a great part of language development and change, it does not mean that all its laws are changing. It should be said that there are two kinds of lexical rules: static and dynamic. The static law is mainly the law of word formation, while the dynamic law is the metabolism in vocabulary. The following is discussed in two parts.

First, the static law of relatively stable vocabulary.

(1) Word-formation morphemes take monosyllabic morphemes as the basic form.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of language and the smallest unit of word formation. It can be seen that from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese, monosyllabic morphemes have accounted for the vast majority of morphemes for thousands of years. Verbally, monosyllabic morphemes refer to syllables with sound words; Literally, it is a Chinese character. It used to be said that words are composed of words, because in most cases, a Chinese character represents a morpheme. The scientific view should be that words are composed of morphemes.

Most Chinese words are composed of monosyllabic morphemes. Monosyllabic morphemes have magical power in word formation. Monosyllabic morphemes are written as a word, and we can calculate the number of monosyllabic morphemes by the number of words. There are about 3,000 commonly used morphemes and more than 3,000 commonly used morphemes. More than 6,000 monosyllabic morphemes, combined with a certain grammatical structure, can form tens of thousands of words and tens of thousands of commonly used words.

Therefore, when a new thing or concept appears and a new word is needed to express it, there are thousands of morphemes to choose from, so it is not difficult to choose a suitable "candidate word". For example, when people create the process of converting images and sounds (sounds) of moving scenes into electrical signals and transmitting them by radio waves, they create televisions that receive these images and sounds. As a result, the new word "TV" came into being to express the above concepts. The two morphemes "electricity" and "sight" have existed since ancient times, but I didn't expect to be chosen to form new words to express modern things. It can be seen that new words don't have to create new morphemes to form, but most of them are formed by screening existing morphemes.

There are two conditions to see whether a monosyllabic morpheme has strong word-formation ability. One is whether you can form words independently, and the other is whether you can form words with other morphemes and whether the word formation is orderly. Those with these two abilities are called free morphemes. There is only the second condition, that is, it can be combined with other morphemes to combine semi-free morphemes with flexible positions. A morpheme can only be combined with other morphemes, and its position is not flexible, which is called an unfree morpheme. A large number of monosyllabic morphemes are free and semi-free. There are many free morphemes, so there are many monosyllabic words. Strong word-building ability can easily add new life to the Chinese lexicon. For example, ice is a free morpheme, which can be independently formed into words (a piece of ice) or combined with other morphemes (popsicle, hail, glacier, roller skating, skating, roller skates). As the elimination of meaning, "interpretation" can only become a semi-free morpheme, such as: dispelling doubts, interpreting and refreshing. The prefixes and suffixes of inflexible morphemes or appellations are mostly fuzzy morphemes (zhe, xing, pai, Jia, Shou, Zi, Er, Tou, A, Zhi, Chu, Di, etc. ).

Disyllabic and polysyllabic morphemes are always a minority in number, and there is no trend of development. Judging from the "Lian Mian characters" left by ancient Chinese, the number is only a little less than that in the pre-Qin and Western Han dynasties. Loanwords are mostly composed of disyllabic and polysyllabic morphemes (coffee, chocolate, proletarians). The total number is more than ever, but it is still limited, which is caused by the restriction of Chinese itself.

(2) The basic forms of morpheme word formation are five grammatical structures.

Morphemes and morphemes form compound words in sequence, which is grammatically regular, and it is the same as the five basic structures of word-group compound words. The internal structure of natural phrases is more complicated than word formation, because the combination of phrases is not limited by syllables.

These five combinations are juxtaposition, deviation, verb-object, verb-complement and subject-predicate. Another way to put it is to associate, modify, dominate, supplement and state these five relationships.

We look at the structure of words by quoting new words in recent years:

Tied with elite opportunity drinks, community education and culture

Regression definition, struggle, report and development

Demand exceeds supply, weak, peaceful and tolerant.

Pianzheng Computer Laser Love Kanye Rong Yuan

Also bribed and offered a reward for calling sci-fi webcasts.

Gao Qi Food Hotline Daigou Chun Qing

Move guests to acupoints, rejuvenate, thaw heart to heart, and bake oil.

Weight loss motivation, dieting, borrowing books, error correction

Invest in gold speculation, beauty contests and anti-vice projects.

Dynamic replenishment is full, bearish, and cool.

Talking about martial arts publishing laser marriage and family education

Advanced shelling rules and probation mail order.

The above five structures are the main structures used in the production of new words, especially the three ways of juxtaposition, deviation and verb-object. It is worth noting that there are more verb-object structures than in the past.

(3) The syllables of commonly used words are monosyllabic and disyllabic.

The development of Chinese vocabulary from monosyllabic words to disyllabic words is an important feature of the development of ancient Chinese to modern and modern Chinese. Judging from the psychology of Chinese speakers, disyllabic words are the most popular. Because disyllabic words adapt to the development of precise changes in thinking, two morphemes form words, and words and words can correspondingly become word families. For example, words with "electricity" as the first morpheme and another morpheme are:

Rod telegraph ammeter electric wave electroplating electric field trolley battery

Electric boats, telephones, electric lights, electricians, welding motors, electric keys and electric bells.

Circuit, battery, fan, TV, computer, power grid, electric eye drill.

At the same time, disyllabic words also avoid the phenomenon that too many monosyllabic words will produce too many homophones. Chinese phonetic system is developing towards simplification. If there are more monosyllabic words, there will be more homophones, which is not conducive to communication.

Compared with ancient times, the number of modern three-syllable words has obviously increased, especially in recent years. Three-syllable words with suffix "sex" have quite a few words and become a word family. Such as: multidisciplinary, logical, representative, sensitive, feasible, blind, scientific, principled, systematic and decisive. It is probably not difficult to list hundreds. Suffixes such as "sex" include: Hua, Jia, Yuan, Zhe, Pai, Ghost, Offender, Boundary, Sheng, Su, Lun, Style, Pin, Gang, Degree, Fa, etc. When they are used as non-free morphemes, their meanings are blurred. However, three-syllable words can't grow any more.

Up to now, Chinese disyllabic words have developed to four syllables, not to more syllables. Four-syllable words are the saturation point of syllable number, and the original idioms are four syllables, so are the new idioms that imitate the "four-syllable". Other proper nouns, scientific terms and even general terms like to combine two disyllables into four-syllable words: spiritual civilization, material civilization, genetic engineering, marginal science, launch vehicle, machine translation and so on.

When a word reaches more than four syllables, it is usually reduced to two or three syllables. After the advent of "electronic calculator", "computer" appeared to replace it, which is an example. Five syllables are too long, and "computer" is a double syllable. Its function is vividly shown by metaphor. The appearance of UFO is another example. The earliest word representing this newly discovered thing is "UFO in the air" or "UFO", but there are problems in popularization. The former is seven syllables, and the latter is the abbreviation of English letters. Finally, it is represented by "flying saucer" and is gradually used.

In a word, monosyllabic morpheme is the basic form of word formation, which relatively restricts the number of syllables of words. In addition to a considerable number of monosyllables, the most popular disyllables and trisyllables have also been recognized, and four syllables have reached the limit of tolerance. Words with more than five syllables are mostly scientific terms or proper nouns, and will not be common words. This situation has formed a relatively stable law.

Second, the dynamic law of vocabulary changes

This part mainly explains the metabolic law in thesaurus. And compare the word "dynamic" with "static". According to the amount of storage in the dictionary, words are fluid. Some have died, some have been reborn, some have come back to life, and some have maintained long-term vitality for thousands of years, so on the whole, they are dynamic. The following questions are not comprehensive.

(A) standardize the composition of words

Mandarin, the standard language of modern Chinese, pronunciation standard. The Chinese Pinyin scheme accurately describes the standard of "pronunciation based on Beijing dialect". Grammar is standardized, which is also described in theoretical grammar and teaching grammar, and is illustrated by typical modern vernacular Chinese. The standardization of vocabulary is a difficult problem. It is unscientific to take northern dialect as the standard of vocabulary standardization. There are many branches of northern dialects, and there are often many ways to address a name. Dialect vocabulary is taken as the standard of vocabulary standardization, and community vocabulary is ignored (which will be involved below). I once put forward that "the words used in typical works of modern Chinese (including various works of social science and natural science) are the lexical norms of modern Chinese", on the basis that written language is the standardized form of advanced literary processing in which all ethnic groups speak the same language. Words with strong colloquial colors are generally reflected in literary works.

Generally speaking, normative words include basic words, common words, professional words, as well as absorbed classical Chinese words, dialect words and foreign words. I think we should also include community words different from dialect words. Community words can be juxtaposed with dialect words.

Where can I see the thesaurus size of this standardized word? At the current research level, the Modern Chinese Dictionary (revised edition) compiled by the Dictionary Editorial Office of the Institute of Linguistics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences can roughly reflect the scale of thesaurus, with more than 70,000 articles. Although this is a medium-sized dictionary, the number of commonly used words should be appropriate. Modern Chinese Dictionary was compiled from 1958, and a trial version was published in 1965. It has been revised many times since then, and the latest version is 1996. The supplement was published in 1989. The revised version 1996 has absorbed the supplementary contents. Modern Chinese Dictionary is recognized as the most authoritative medium-sized Chinese vocabulary dictionary based on contemporary Chinese norms. It is essential to write standard modern Chinese.

At present, the research on modern Chinese vocabulary norms is further deepened. This is directly related to the national language and writing policy in the new period. At present, the central task is to promote the standardization of language to adapt to the rapid development of economy and science and technology. The standardization standard of vocabulary should be embodied in tangible dictionaries. It is reported that China linguists will compile another dictionary of modern Chinese norms, which has been included in one of the key projects of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, with Li Xingjian as the editor and Lv Shuxiang as the consultant. Li believes that this dictionary is characterized by "standardization", which requires standardization in terms of word collection, interpretation, phonetic notation, font and example sentences. The meaning of each word is arranged in the order of meaning development, and the part of speech is marked according to the meaning. Example sentences retain the strong flavor of life in the language, give complete and flexible hints from the perspective of standardization, and interfere with irregular phenomena. The words collected are still about 50 thousand entries, and they will not be collected until they are standardized. It is expected that there will be discussions and debates on vocabulary issues during the compilation of this standardized dictionary, thus promoting the in-depth study of vocabulary standardization.

(B) standardized words and community words

Community words are a new concept and term put forward in this paper. Its connotation refers to the words that adapt to the local social region because of different social backgrounds, social systems, political, economic and cultural backgrounds, and differences in people's psychological factors brought about by different backgrounds. The extension of community words mainly refers to words popular in Hongkong, Macau, Taiwan Province Province and overseas Chinese communities. Overseas Chinese communities have a wide range, including Southeast Asian Chinese communities, American Chinese communities and European Chinese communities.

In the article "Words in Circulation and Social Life in Hong Kong", I pointed out that the word formation methods of these community words are the same as those of standard words, and they are also selected from the Chinese morpheme library and combined into new words by the usual word formation methods. Therefore, although the written language is popular in a certain community, it is easy to be understood by other people in China and China, so it is easy to be absorbed by the standardized written language and become a part of the standardized written language. It does not include dialects recorded with dialect words or other Chinese characters used to record dialect sounds, nor does it include equivalent words that are used to this concept standard word.

Some words, such as those popular in Hong Kong communities, can be used as standard words, while others have already been used in Mandarin:

Civil servants, enthusiasts, office workers, groupies, underworld bowling

Shuttle through flying boat to kick the Mark Six Lottery Resort.

Frame media, public housing, snakehead, mafia, definition and identity

Discussion on indecent tea drinking is full of caring volunteers.

Grass roots in suburban parks of single aristocrats

However, Cantonese dialect words popular in Hong Kong cannot enter the standard words, such as "Bo" and "Zuo Sao". In Putonghua, "Qiu" and "Zuo Sao" have been widely used, and "Bo" and "Zuo Sao" cannot enter the standard words. Dialect words commonly used in a certain area cannot be counted as community words.

In recent ten years, there have been more and more comparative studies on community words. Yao Rongsong, a scholar from Taiwan Province Province, pointed out in the article Comparative Analysis of New Words across the Taiwan Strait: "The new words across the Taiwan Strait in recent 40 years are mainly classified from the background factors of the separation between the two sides of the strait, including new words with ideology, new words produced under specific social conditions, new words reflecting new things, foreign words or buzzwords, and emerging regional words (dialects)." I think most of the "new words produced under specific social conditions" mentioned in Chinese Analysis are community words. )

The book Interpretation of Words Across the Taiwan Strait, compiled by China Standard Technology Development Company, was published in Chinese mainland on 1992. The book points out that due to historical and geographical reasons, the two sides of the strait have been separated for more than 40 years, resulting in some differences in daily language. In order to promote cross-strait exchanges, according to the requirements of the cross-strait joint working group on standardization of Chinese information technology and with the joint efforts of experts from both sides of the strait, this dictionary of definitions has been compiled. Among them, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the main languages, with 5030 words, and Chinese mainland has 374 words. This book can be regarded as a description of some community words, which has great practical and research value.

Community words will greatly enrich the inventory of normative words, and people can have more choices when expressing concepts in communication, and there are more rhetorical ways. For example, the normative term "spaceship" refers to "an aircraft that is launched from the earth and can sail in space with multi-stage rockets as the carrier." Hong Kong is often called "spaceship", and the morphemes used in "space shuttle" are easy for everyone to understand. "Spacecraft", "spaceship" and "space shuttle" can all be used in general, with different rhetorical colors. The "astronaut" in Hong Kong is derived from the "spaceship" and is often used as a metaphor. It means that the husband and wife are separated because of immigration. Mr. Wang often flies to visit his home and becomes an "astronaut." This word is limited to common use in Hong Kong, and it can't enter the standard word for a while. Another example is You Che River and Yacht River. As a word, Hong Kong is also absorbed as a three-syllable word. This is much easier than saying "take a ride in the street" or "play in the river by boat" Among them, "river" is a metaphor for the route of vehicles and ships flowing like a river.

The emergence and use of community words completely conform to the general law that the development of vocabulary develops with the development of society. It enriches modern Chinese vocabulary, and vocabulary research should also pay attention to this new topic and new field.

(3) Standard words and dialect words

There are seven major dialect areas in China, among which there are small dialects, and the common words in each dialect area are dialect words. Each dialect also has its own pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary system, and the dialect system is gradually established and improved. Modern Chinese standard language is formed on the basis of dialect, and developed by absorbing the nutrition of dialect in the process of development.

The concept of dialect words has at least two meanings. First, it is popular in a dialect area and has a large extension; First, it refers to being absorbed by the standard language with little expansion. What is discussed here is the dialect words absorbed for the standard language.

In Modern Chinese Dictionary (revised edition), the interpretation part explains that any standard represents a dialect. As far as the dialect words collected at present are concerned, there are a wide range, both authentic dialect words and dialect words absorbed by standard language. If a standard dictionary is compiled, only standard language absorption can be retained.

Taking the dialect words included in Modern Chinese Dictionary (Supplement) as an example, I think the following dialect words have entered the standard vocabulary, common words in brackets, or standard usage for comparison:

Listen to (hear) mosquitoes (mosquitoes) (excuses, excuses)

Ji Xiang (Xiang 'an) is diligent (diligent) and irritable (impatient, irritable).

The water pipe (faucet) has not been exposed (leaked) after its life.

The falling force (effort, downward force) to solve the knot (knot)

Remember (miss) to be obedient (obey) to care (take care of)

Love (miss), hate (disgust), touch your eyes (conspicuous)

Drawer (drawer) bus (bus)

There are also some words marked as dialects, which are circulated in dialect areas, at least the standard vocabulary can not be absorbed at present. For example, the commonly used dialect words in brackets are:

Jumping cat (fingerprint) hitting rain (shower) bra (bra)

Work (salary) drops (rest assured) don't laugh (especially) insist (angry)

Say (refreshed) to have a rest (chat). The old man (grandson) is holding his son (pistol).

The door mortar (pier) was in trouble (originally, as a result) and collapsed (collapsed, broken)

Dead children (stubborn) cast their eyes (look around) into (let go of their feet and run)

Jump to the end (to God)

Most dialect words that are easy to enter the standard thesaurus are word-formation morphemes, which directly express their meanings. It is easy for everyone to understand, and it is also convenient for popularization and application. For example, obedient (dialect words) and obedient also have the meaning of obedient, and the word obedient is synonymous. And "spreading ducks" is a dialect in Beijing, and most people outside Beijing don't understand that it means "let go of your footsteps". Although "scatter" means "put down" and "yazi" means "feet", it is still difficult to understand.

Northern dialect words are the basis of Putonghua words. So the standard vocabulary will absorb more northern dialect words. Professor Li Xingjian edited Basic Vocabulary of Northern Dialect in China, and Professor Chen Zhangtai conducted a preliminary survey of vocabulary of Northern Dialect in China and wrote a paper. These studies have a positive effect on determining the scope and extension of standardized words.

The use of dialect words (not absorbed by normative language) is mostly in literary works or in some columns of local newspapers and periodicals, which is allowed, because this kind of function is not big, the number is not much, and it can increase expressiveness. Take the recent popular novel White Deer Plain as an example. The author Chen is from Shaanxi, and there are many Shaanxi dialects in it, such as: soju (white wine), sudden (sudden), picking up (tidying up), tying (how), blindness (terminal illness), single collapse (only child) and grave. Dialect words add local color to literary works and have certain expressive force.

It is necessary for Standard Glossary to absorb dialect words to enrich its lexicon. It is a problem worthy of serious investigation that what words each dialect area sends to the standard thesaurus. Experts who study local dialects in various dialect areas can pay special attention to this topic when describing the local dialect system.

(D) standard word and loanwords

To standardize the use of words, we should constantly absorb foreign words to enrich ourselves, rather than excluding them. The number of loanwords absorbed by Chinese is always limited, first of all because of the influence of Chinese's own laws. Chinese characters are not pinyin characters, which are not as easy and simple as the languages of pinyin characters absorbing words from each other. Secondly, social factors such as whether the whole society is open, whether countries communicate frequently, and whether the level of foreign languages is improved also affect the number of foreign words absorbed.

In the past ten years, China has been opening to the outside world in all directions, with frequent exchanges with other countries, and the level of foreign language education has been continuously improved. In addition, there are many international students who come and go at their own expense. From the social point of view, it is a good social environment to absorb foreign words. There are frequent political, economic and cultural exchanges between Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Province provinces and Chinese mainland, but there are a large number of loanwords in popular words in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Province provinces, which provides rich materials for the Standard Vocabulary to absorb loanwords and is an excellent external condition for the Standard Vocabulary to absorb loanwords.

The composition of loanwords includes transliteration, transliteration plus Chinese morphemes, transliteration plus free translation and borrowing. At present, we can also see a new situation, that is, the word-formation form is composed of English letters and Chinese characters, and the word "karaoke" can be used to represent its wide application. Karaoke has been used in newspapers and commercial signs in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This word formation was rare in written language before and should not be advocated. In recent years, it has become more and more popular, for example:

A-share B-share H-share X-ray B-ultrasound T-shirt A Jun B city

Miss c VIP card (VIP card) 24K gold BP machine

Vitamin b and vitamin c

Whether there will be more karaoke words in the future depends on the development of nature. Arabic numerals did not appear in the writing of Chinese characters before, but now they appear, and they are officially stipulated by the official Chinese language and writing institutions in the Mainland. This is a change in horizontal written language. English letters have also appeared, which is also a change. The word "karaoke" is so widely accepted for the first time.

It is a common phenomenon that some written languages in Hong Kong are mainly Chinese with many English words. In English, not only names of people, places and brands are directly used, but also some predicates are used. I think it's best to use all the words in Chinese and put the English words in brackets after the words. For example, Ming Pao Monthly (June 1993) has an article entitled "The Interference of Drugs on Nutrition Absorption". The whole article is in Chinese, with many drug names and terms, first in Chinese and then in English. Anti-cholesterol drugs such as Questran and Colestid have been widely used. They all reduce the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, K and folic acid. This is more standardized than writing in Chinese and English.

At present, the Thesaurus Working Group of China Chinese Society is discussing the establishment of a thesaurus of foreign concept words. On July 1993, 1 1, the thesaurus construction newsletter was published, which aroused the interest of Chinese and foreign scholars. It is very important to sort out loanwords comprehensively. Standardizing the status of foreign thesaurus is an advanced expression of language.