Popular Etymology and Analogous Separable Words

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201127.102How to use a DOI?

Keywords

popular etymology, semantic change, anti-lexicalization, analogous separable word

Abstract

The paper, by comparing and summarizing the classic definitions of the popular etymology in China and abroad, points out the features distinguishing the popular etymology from other language phenomena: the old form and the old meaning are obscure; the old form is interpreted with the known form or meaning; the new interpretation is the distortion of the old meaning, resulting in the “deformation” of the old meaning or the old form; the “distortion” will “pass into common usage”. The paper further reveals the fundamental nature of the popular etymology — a phenomenon of semantic change with anti-lexicalization as the key part of the changing process. By adopting the features and the nature to define the popular etymology and comparing analogous separable words with typical popular etymologies, the research concludes that the irregular analogous structure, of which the irregular analogous separable word is a typical type and can be categorized into the popular etymology. The semantic change occurs in the irregular analogous separable word, which also reveals the anti-lexicalization of the popular etymology. The finding shows that some language phenomena that are not considered as the popular etymology actually share the same essential features, which means the popular etymology covers a wider range of language phenomena than usually thought.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Wen Zhao
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/28
TI  - Popular Etymology and Analogous Separable Words
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Education, Language and Inter-cultural Communication (ELIC 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 521
EP  - 524
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201127.102
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201127.102
ID  - Zhao2020
ER  -