Complex Words of the Coronavirus Era in Russian and Chinese: Word-formation Aspect

Abstract

The object of the study is the changes occurring in the vocabulary of the Russian and Chinese languages in the era of coronavirus, and the subject is complex words describing new realities during the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection COVID–19, and the mechanisms of their creation. The material for the analysis was scientific sources in Russian and Chinese, from which 48 complex words formed in various ways were selected by the method of target sampling. Among them are 34 Russian words formed by addition, as well as addition or fusion in combination with suffixation; 14 Chinese lexemes formed by methods of addition, definition using suffixation and control. The purpose of the work is to determine the regularities of the formation of complex words of the type under study in two typologically different languages and to identify their similarities and differences. Special attention is paid to the comparison of word-formation mechanisms and the description of their similarities and differences in the two languages. In the work, along with general scientific methods of observation, analysis and synthesis, the following research methods were used: descriptive method, lexico-grammatical commentary, method of component analysis and comparative analysis. The results of the study show that due to the pragmatic needs for the designation of new phenomena, objects, actions, feelings, etc. A number of words have appeared in Russian and Chinese, which is currently defined as "coronalexica". The main conclusions of the study are the revealed phonetic, morphological and syntactic differences in the mechanisms of formation of complex words in two languages. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time a comparative analysis of the vocabulary of the coronavirus era in the word-formation aspect is carried out on the material of the Russian and Chinese languages, while the interpretations of new words are given.