First, the definition of "old words with new meanings"
It seems impossible that every time a new thing or phenomenon appears in the world, there must be a new form in language. Because if the external form and meaning of words correspond one by one, not only the human brain is overwhelmed, but also it is not economical. The economic principle of linguistics is that polysemy is more economical than single meaning. This is the background of the concept of "old words with new meanings". So how to define "old words with new meanings"? First of all, let's take a look at the academic statement about "old words with new meanings".
Some scholars believe that as long as old words have new meanings, they can be counted as "old words have new meanings", such as Xiong Kejia and Li Changyou. Li believes that "the relationship between the new meaning and the old meaning of old words in network language has two forms: non-source and source." The former is to borrow the old word form to load the new meaning, which has nothing to do with the old meaning, and the latter is to derive the new meaning on the basis of the old meaning. " They believe that as long as the old word forms have new meanings, they all belong to "old words with new meanings", regardless of whether the old and new meanings are related or not.
Scholars such as Zhong, Wang and others believe that there must be a connection between the new meaning of "old words and new meanings" and the old meaning. Zhong believes that "the new meaning of old words actually produces new meanings in some way on the basis of the meaning of old words, which is the relationship between the old and new meanings in the same meaning system and belongs to the internal change of the meaning system." However, some use cases in their discussion are contrary to their views, such as Zhong Wenzhong's "gossip" and "turtle", and Zhang Wenzhong's "cat", "hero" and "bamboo", which have no connection between the old and new meanings. So they didn't thoroughly implement the "old words and new meanings".
Comparatively speaking, Mr. Zhou Jian's exposition on "old words with new meanings" is more comprehensive. "If for some reason, the external form of a symbol is similar to that of another symbol, but the meaning and content of each form have nothing to do with it, then it is hard to say that it is an old form and a new meaning. At most, it can only be said that the forms used in the old meaning and the present meaning are accidental. Old form and new meaning' is a question of how many sememes are produced by one morpheme, not a question of different morphemes; Homographs are different word positions. " (Zhou Jian, 2009) We appreciate Mr. Zhou's above statement. Taking the words included in China New Words in 2006 as an example, the new meaning of "Sun" is "making the content of private life public on the Internet and discussing it with netizens". This new meaning is closely related to the explanation of "the sun gives off light and heat to objects" in Modern Chinese Dictionary (5th edition), so the new meaning of "the sun" belongs to the new meaning of "old words". Let's look at another word "air conditioning" in "New Words in China in 2006", which means that many adjustment policies of the state on the real estate market have not been implemented due to various overt and covert resistance. The modern Chinese interpretation is: "Air conditioning can adjust the air temperature, humidity, cleanliness and airflow speed in houses, engine rooms, cabins and carriages to meet certain requirements". There is no connection between the two, so the new meaning of "air conditioning" is not "new meaning of old words"
2. Several concepts related to "old words with new meanings"
1. "Deepening the understanding of concepts" is not "old words with new meanings"
The basic viewpoint of dialectical materialism epistemology is that people's ideological knowledge comes from objective reality. People's understanding, observation and experience of objective things and phenomena are from the outside to the inside, from perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge, thus producing concepts. Then through continuous re-practice, re-understanding and repeated processing and production processes, the concept can more accurately reflect the reality. It records the whole process of language participants' cognition of the objective world and the achievements of people's cognitive activities. When the objective world produces new things and phenomena, words corresponding to them will generally be produced in language. But in many cases, writing is just a perceptual knowledge, the most superficial reflection of new things and phenomena, and it often takes several leaps to reach the essential understanding. Compared with the initial perceptual knowledge, after several leaps in understanding, people's understanding of the concept has also changed, or people's understanding of the concept is deepening. However, the words corresponding to concepts in language are stable to some extent. They don't always change with people's deeper understanding of concepts, and people often insist on using the original words in daily communication. People's understanding of the concept of things has deepened, but the vocabulary in the language has not changed accordingly. Does this situation belong to "old words with new meanings"? It is worth pondering.
Give two common examples. For example, "whale", because its living environment is the ocean and its appearance is very similar to that of fish, people thought it was a fish for a long time in the past. Shuowen: "Whales are big fish in the sea." This understanding of "whale" can also be reflected in its glyph. "Whale", from fish to Beijing, "fish" is its semantic symbol, which also proves that people originally thought it was a fish. With the deepening of the understanding of "whale", people no longer regard it as a kind of fish, but have a more scientific and comprehensive understanding of it. People realize that the whale is not a fish, but the largest mammal in the world. Their ancestors, like cattle and sheep, lived on land. Later, due to the change of environment, they lived in the shallow sea near the land. After a long time, their forelimbs and tails gradually become fins, their hind limbs completely degenerate, and their whole bodies become like fish (so people mistakenly think they are fish), thus adapting to marine life. Although the understanding of "whale" is completely different from the original work, people still call it "whale" without changing its name. Another example is "solar eclipse". The ancients had different explanations such as "dogs eat the sun" and "wolves eat the sky". For the ancients, the solar eclipse was terrible, and the folks often beat gongs and drums to deal with it. Now people know that it is an astronomical phenomenon, which only happens when the moon moves between the sun and the earth. At this time, for some parts of the earth, the moon is in front of the sun, and some or all of the light from the sun is blocked, so it seems that some or all of the sun has disappeared. Nevertheless, people still insist on calling it a "solar eclipse".
Words in the language have not changed with the deepening of people's understanding of the corresponding concepts. Can they be called "old words with new meanings"? We don't think so. There are two reasons: first, people's understanding of things and phenomena in the objective world can be said to be constantly changing. Because of this, most words in our language can be regarded as "old words with new meanings"; Second, to what extent has people's understanding of things and phenomena changed? This standard is difficult to grasp.
2. Does "revival of old words" belong to "new meanings of old words"?
Some scholars regard "revival of old words" as a new word, which seems to have become the knowledge of many people. Many scholars believe that new words include three forms: brand-new words, old words with new meanings and old words resurrected. Such as Yao Hanming, Diao and Xiao Yan. Yao believes: "New words include: those that have not appeared before; It existed before the founding of the people's Republic of China, almost disappeared after the founding of the people's Republic of China, and it has revived in recent years; There have always been, but recently new meanings have appeared frequently. "
In fact, there are different situations within the "old talk". Since it is the resurrection of "old words", the word forms are of course the same, so the internal differences are mainly reflected in the meaning, which can be divided into the following three situations: the old word forms resurrect the old meaning, the old word forms resurrect the new meaning related to the old meaning, and the old word forms resurrect the new meaning unrelated to the old meaning. We can't treat "revival of old words" as a new word in general. Generally speaking, neologisms have three forms of expression: new forms and new meanings, only new forms and only new meanings.
First of all, look at the first situation of "revival of old words", "revival of old words carries old meanings". Words in this case, such as "Mr.", "Miss" and "Boss", are not new words in either sense or external form, and it seems inappropriate to classify them into any of the three manifestations of the above-mentioned new words. Moreover, it is also a question of how long the old words have been dusted off. Is it 100 years that counts as a new word, or is it 200 years or more that counts as a new word? This standard is not easy to determine. Therefore, this situation is not a new word, let alone an "old word with a new meaning".
Let's look at "the revival of loading old words and linking new meanings with old ones". Take the words "boss" and "job-hopping" as examples. The new meaning of "boss" is "the title of some graduate tutors in colleges and universities". In some colleges and universities, there are dozens of graduate students under the names of individual tutors. Graduate students do projects for tutors, and tutors also give students some subsidies symbolically. Because of this relationship, these tutors are nicknamed "bosses" by students (and then the scope of "bosses" continues to be generalized). "Job-hopping" originally meant that livestock ate food in containers, ate this and then ate that. Ming and Qing dynasties refer to the love between men and women who like the new and hate the old, and change their minds. Ruming? Yang Shen's Poems on Saint Ann? Ascending from Zhenhoutang: "Wei Mingdi was the king at the beginning, Yu Na was the concubine, Shi Mao was in favor, and Yu Shi was in favor ... Later, Mrs. Guo was in favor, and she died of relaxation after her hair ... The legend of Yuan people thought that she was jumping ship, as the saying goes." Then "job hopping" was silent for a long time. Now "job hopping" is used to mean "changing jobs". Modern Chinese is interpreted as: "People leave their original occupation or unit to another unit or change their occupation." Because the old and new meanings of "boss" and "job-hopping" have a certain connection, this kind of "revival of old words" should belong to "old words with new meanings", but it is not a new word.
Finally, look at the situation that "the old word forms are loaded with new meanings that have nothing to do with the old meanings". With "?" For example, Shuowen: the windows are bright and clean (the windows are interlaced and bright), pictographic. ”"?" Originally it meant "transparent window", but later it was extended to "bright", and it was included in the large-scale dictionaries "Chinese Dictionary" and "Chinese Dictionary". "?" (jiǒn？ This Chinese character, which has long disappeared in the same language, was reborn because of the Internet and was rated as one of the "Top Ten Internet Catchwords in 2008" by netizens. "?" This is a hieroglyph. The big one outside represents a person's head, the eight inside represent eyebrows and eyes, and the small one represents the mouth. The drooping eyebrows and the open mouth make up "?" Natural expression function. This kind of expression can express many unspeakable emotions such as surprise, dumbfounding and frustration. , and has a powerful meaning function. Because "?" There is no connection between the new meaning and the old meaning, so this "resurrection of old words" does not belong to the "new meaning of old words", but it is a new word.
3. "Old words have new meanings" and "new wine in old bottles"
Many scholars equate words like "old words with new meanings" with words like "old bottles with new wine". In their view, "bottle" and "wine" are just metaphors, that is, bottle refers to the external form of words, and wine refers to the meaning content of words. However, not all the words "new wine in old bottles" can be regarded as old words with new meanings. As mentioned above, "air conditioning" is not an old word with new meaning, but we can use it as a metaphor. Another example is that "super life" originally belonged to Buddhism. Buddhism believes that the soul can be reincarnated after death, which is called "super life". For the first time in "Officialdom in the Sky": "People who are imprisoned are dead ghosts and will never be reborn." Now "violating the family planning policy and exceeding the prescribed fertility index" is called "super-birth". And the list goes on.
Three. The expression of "old words with new meanings"
How to understand "new meaning" is the key to determine the concrete manifestation of "new meaning of old words" Is it understood as "the content referred to by the new meaning" or "the content with other meanings related to the original meaning of the old words"? We think it should be the latter. But it does not rule out that some people make the former understanding.
In fact, "new meaning" not only refers to the content of new meaning. Let's look at the following example. The word "Bird's Nest" was included in the new words of China in 2006, and its definition was "referring to the main stadium of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games". Named for its shape like a woven bird's nest. "2007 China New Words" included the word "water drop", which was defined as the common name of Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium. Because it looks like a water drop, it is called a water drop. "Bird's Nest" and "Water Drop" are the existing morphological expressions in modern Chinese, and what they refer to here are really new things. The "water drop" and "bird's nest" in the above example belong to the case that "new meaning" refers to the content of new meaning. Another example is Duanzi and Modern Chinese, which shows that drum sets, cross talk and storytelling can be performed at one time. Now, "jokes" can also be used to refer to pornographic jokes. Another example is "vase", which is explained in Modern Chinese: the bottle used for flower arrangement is placed indoors as an ornament. Now metaphor refers to a beautiful woman without connotation. No matter what the new meaning of "Duan Zi" or "vase" refers to, it does not belong to new things or phenomena, but to old things and phenomena that have long existed in people's minds. In this way, the "new meaning" in the "old words and new meanings" not only refers to new things and phenomena, but also includes old things and phenomena that have long existed in people's minds.
To sum up, "new meanings of old words" refer to other meanings besides those expressed in the original form. No matter whether these meanings are new or have been produced in people's minds, they are often produced by extension, metaphor and metonymy on the basis of the original meanings, so they have some connection with the original meanings. If the relationship between "bottle" and "wine" is used as a metaphor, then the word "old words with new meanings" includes two parts: one part is "old bottle with new wine" and the other part is "old bottle with old wine". The "part" here refers to the part of the "wine" after the "bottle" related to the "wine" in the original bottle.
References:
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Zeng Zhu, Ph.D. student majoring in Chinese language and literature, School of Literature, Nankai University, majoring in lexicology and lexicography. He has published many papers in China Architecture, China Academic and Changjiang Academic. This article is edited by Hong Ming.