A Study on the Sinicization Mechanism of Euro-American Foreign Words Based on Memetic Calque
Words of foreign origin in Chinese are the outcome of language contact,and their sinicization process involves the social,cultural and linguistic mechanisms of both parties concerned,as well as the cognitive subject who plays a dominant role in the contact-induced changes in language.This study believes that foreign words in Chinese are a natural derivative of language contact,just like genes acting on human heredity.All languages in the world are composed of unique language and cultural"genes"——the memes.The elements of contact-induced changes in language contact are memes.The process of the sinicization of foreign words and the spreading of their memes are susceptible to a continuous and natural evolution in the subject's cognition.The subject can seamlessly integrate the language and cultural memes of the source language into Chinese by imitation and replication.This paper,starting with the current situation of the research on foreign words,attempts to adopt the Conceptual Integration Theory to explore the sinicization mechanism of foreign words by means of memetic calque,and establishes a set of operational basic methods for the further research on words of foreign origin(e.g.decisive definition,classification and standardization).
language contactwords of foreign originsinicization of foreign wordsmemetic calquelanguage covariation
万方数据
维普
