Abstract: Since the raise of the linguistic concepts of semantic prosody and semantic preference in the early 1990s, it has drawn increasing attention from the linguists. Semantic prosody refers to an evaluative meaning which a node word is imbued by its habitual collocates. Semantic preference refers to the relation between a word and a set of semantically related words. This paper aims to demonstrate that semantic prosody and semantic preference also exist in affixes. Using corpus-based techniques, this paper attempts to reveal the emergence and change in semantic prosody and semantic preference of two synonymous affixes “cyber-” and “e-”, and to compare the similarities and differences between them, thus providing a new perspective and method for studying meanings of prefixes. 

Key words: semantic prosody; semantic preference; corpus; “cyber-”; “e-”

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Semantic Prosody and Semantic Preference-2

2.1 Semantic Prosody-2

2.2 Semantic Preference-4

2.3 Semantic Prosody and Semantic Preference of Affixes-5

3. A Corpus-based Comparative Study of “cyber-” & “e-”-6

3.1 Introduction to COCA-7

3.2 Origins of “cyber-” and “e-”-7

3.3 Semantic Prosody and Semantic Preference of “cyber-” and “e-”-8

3.4 The Semantic Similarities and Differences of “cyber-” and “e-”-18

4. Conclusion-20

References