Abbreviated Chinese Words of Coronavirus Era with a Structural-Semantic Component ‘in a Cloud Format’

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description of the analysis of compound words results built according to the model “云xx”. The material was the vocabulary that appeared or became widely used since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Particular attention is paid to the study of word-formation and semantic patterns of the emergence of new words in modern Chinese, built according to the model “云xx”. The need to study the mechanism of the emergence of such words in order to determine their linguistic status and establish the specifics of their functioning in speech determines the relevance of this study. 15 abbreviated words built according to the “云xx” model were analyzed, naming current events in the life of Chinese society in the era of coronavirus. It was found that the morpheme 云 ‘in a cloud format’ is an affix that has regular reproducibility and forms a productive construction “云xx”, which creates a word-building mechanism for generating a whole group of new compound abbreviated words. It has been proved that this word-formation model has a high productivity, which makes it possible to regularly produce words expressing new concepts and phenomena associated with the development of network technologies.