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A Comparison of Compounding in Chinese and English
A Comparison of Compounding in Chinese and English
Yuanyuan Sun
Introduction
for ESL/EFL.
languages and very productive for word formation. Modern Chinese is regarded as a
language of compound words (Arcodia, 2007), while compound words are an important
source of English new lexicon which has been studied by many linguists (Lieber, 2005).
Finding the similarities and differences between Chinese and English is a worthwhile
endeavor because this contrastive analysis may benefit learners with more efficient and
effective ways of acquiring either or both languages (Aiguo, 2003). This paper focuses on
analyzing similarities and differences between Chinese and English compounding, based on a
compounding, the distinctions between compounds and phrases, and the classifications of
compound words.
important to know what are the basic constituents required to make a compound word.
According to Delahunty & Garvey (2010), English compounds contain two or more
roots, which can be free or bound morphemes. For instance, the English compound word
classroom has two free morphemes (Zhang et al., 2012) while astronaut has two bound
morphemes (Delahunty & Garvey, 2010). Chinese compound words consist of two or more
free or bound roots (Mayila, 2010). Zhou et al. (1999) pointed out that though the morphemes
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 3
used in Chinese compounds are usually words by themselves, Chinese compounds can
include bound morphemes. In this respect, Chinese compounds can be similar to English
ones. For instance, the Chinese compound word chcn (size) has two free
huo (fire) and che(vehicle) (Yu, 2003); jiaoshi (teacher) has a free
morpheme jiao (teach) and a bound morpheme shi (combined with other
contributes to creating a high percentage of new two-syllable words in the modern Mandarin
(2007), a peculiar characteristic of the Chinese lexicon is the almost perfect correspondence
between the syllable and the written character which, in turn, 90% of the times represent a
boundary and a sharp distinction between root, lexeme and word. Packard (2000) pointed
out that the majority of morphemes in Chinese have a lexical nature and a large proportion of
them all bound, termed by him bound roots. Packard (2000) argued that compared to
compound words defined by him as formed only by free morphemes, bound root words,
that is complex words formed by more than one bound root, are the most productive word
formation process in Chinese. Generally speaking, Packard (2000) claimed that there are two
kinds of bound roots in Chinese. One kind of bound root is positionally restricted and selects
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 4
teacher engineer
As shown in (2), the bound root shi (master) is at the right hand, and it selects
morphemes such as adjectives, verbs or two-syllable nouns and always carries the same
meaning. On the other hand, there are bound roots in Chinese that are less positionally
restricted and select bound morphemes, and their meaning can change as they combine with
different morphemes (Packard, 2000). The bound root tou is shown as an example in
However, Packard (2000)s definition of bound roots and bound root words can still
cause confusion when defining compounds in Chinese. He gave an example indicating the
guo for country, but it can also be used without the morpheme for country, and that
word. It is an example showing the bound and free distinction in Chinese can be very
ambiguous and flexible, which may cause confusion in distinguishing compounds from
more words, and it can be formed productively by reduplication, which is not commonly
red red particle fat fat particle dry dry clean clean particle
Lieber (2005) is that while English is highly productive in synthetic compounds, Chinese is
not. Lieber (2005) indicated two forms of compounding in English. The first form is
synthetic compounds, which is also called verbal, deverbal, or verbal nexus compounds.
Synthetic compounds are ones in which the second stem is derived from a verb, while
another form root/primary compounds are ones in which the second stem is not deverbal
(Lieber, 2005). Examples for synthetic compounds are truck driver, gift-giving, waste
disposal, etc. (Lieber, 2005). Examples of root compounds are red hot, sky blue, blackboard,
etc. (Lieber, 2005). Lieber (2005) gave an example to show that the form of English synthetic
party crasher
However, Lieber (2005) also noted that this type of synthetic compound such as
type that can be found in Modern Chinese. Though the derivational affix zhe (-er) was
employed a lot to form compounds in Classical Chinese, it is rarely used in Modern Chinese.
In Modern Chinese, its more common to use phrase structure to convey the same meaning as
identification of compounds. There is the common problem in both English and Chinese of
how can people be sure that they are dealing with compounds without getting confused with
non-compounds, particularly phrases. Lieber (2005) pointed out that English spelling is erratic
as regards compounds, as they can be written as a single word such as daisywheel, two words
hyphenated such as daisy-wheel, or two separate words such as daisy wheel, which can cause
trouble for people identifying compounds. Wang et al. (2014) claimed that Chinese written
characters without spaces can cause trouble for people trying to locate word boundaries.
Therefore, this part of the paper mainly emphasizes discussion on if there is any criterion to
First of all, stress patterns, according to Yu (2003), Lieber (2005) and Delahunty &
Garvey (2010), often though not all the time can be helpful to distinguish compounds from
phrases in English. Typically, the compounds stress the first or left-hand stem, while phrases
formed by the same words and in the same sequence stress on the last word. However, in
Chinese, which is well-known as a tonal language not using stress pattern, the tone of the word
On the other hand, the existence of particle de, as the (7) illustrated, can be a
namely, that the first element of compound nouns cannot be modified, for example, a really-
blackbird is unacceptable. On the other hand, noun phrases allow modifiers, for example, a
really black bird. This criterion works in some cases in Chinese, but may not work for some
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 9
In (9), the compound da panzi (big plate) does not allow modification by
adjectives, which conforms to the criterion. However, in (10), the compound da guar
(gown) doesnt allow the intensifier hen (very) as modifier, but it accepts the adjective
bai (white). The reason is that when the adjective gets added to the original compound, a new
compound is formed, in this case, bai daguar in (10), which could mean doctors.
Last but not least, there is a criterion that could work in both Chinese and English,
that is, a compounds meaning may differ from the meaning of its corresponding phrase
(Delahunty & Garvey, 2010). An example in English is that loudmouth does not indicate a kind
of mouth if it is a compound, but a kind of person (Plag, 2003). An example in Chinese is the
compound majiao means clue as a compound but horse feet as a phrase (Wang et
al., 2013).
Classification of compounds
classify compound words. When it comes to English and Chinese, there are many similar ways
that linguists use to classify them. At the same time, based on the different characteristics of
the two languages concerned, there are preferable and most accessible ways to classify them.
This section of paper thus will focus on ways and approaches for the classification of Chinese
papers related to processing of the compound word and its classification should be discussed
first, which is headedness. According to Mayila (2010), the head in a compound is the
constituent that determines the basic property of the whole compound word, such as its
semantic meaning, meaning transparency and word category. Generally speaking, the English
compound words comply with the Right Hand Head Rule (RHHR) (Mayila, 2010). Delahunty
& Garvey (2010) mentioned the same pattern that the heads of English compounds are usually
the rightmost constituents, excluding suffixes. For example, within cheekbone, bone is the head.
And yet, RHHR is not always the case in English. For example, within bitter-sweet, both bitter
and sweet are heads. In the case of Chinese, according to Huang (1998, cited in Mayila, 2010),
noun compound words are usually right headed, which indicates that Chinese noun compound
words also comply to the RHHS rule, which is similar to English compounds (Mayila, 2010).
Nevertheless, there are exceptions in Chinese, since left-headedness was found too. Mayila
In guotie (pot-sticker, fried dumpling), the head guo (pot) is in the left
constituents within compounds. In English, according to Delahunty & Garvey (2010), the most
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 11
accessible approach of classification is the part of speech of the compound as well as the
subclassification of constituents parts of speech. Mayila (2010) listed the relatively more
commonly seen English compound words variants such as noun compound words, verb
compound words and adjective compound words. More specifically, Lieber (2005) pointed out
that the open word categories N, V and A are commonly used to combine root compounds.
Both Mayila (2010) and Lieber (2005) emphasized that the noun-noun compound is the most
productive English compound type. Additionally, Lieber (2005) also claimed that compounds
containing V as one or both members are barely productive types in English. Lin (2006) like
Lieber (2005), claims that there is a sharp contrast between Chinese and English compounds
illustrate her point, Lin (2006) listed five categories and more subcategories of compounds as
verbs in Chinese, the following list of five types of Chinese verb compounds is directly quoted
V1-V2, where V1 is an action and V2 the result caused by the action of V1.
la kai da po
piao liu pi fa
assassinate jog
d. SP (subject-predicate) compounds
e. VO compounds
bi ye man yi
graduate satisfy
Yu (2003) claimed that Chinese compounding is the most productive way of adding
words to the Chinese lexicon since Modern Chinese tends to become more and more
polysyllabic, and nearly two thirds of the basic lexicon of every day Chinese consists of
polysyllabic words. Therefore, instead of using the part of speech approach just mentioned
which could be way too complicated in Chinese compounding classification, Yu (2003) and
some other linguists categorized Chinese compounds into five major categories based on the
internal construction of the words, which are listed with examples in (13):
er ming
ear buzz
tinnitus
b. Modifier-head construction:
da hong
big red
crimson
c. Verb-object construction:
da zhang
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 14
fight war
to wage war
d. Verb-object construction:
chi bao
eat full
e. Coordinate construction:
nan nu
male female
Except for the aforementioned ways of classification based on syntactic structure, there
is an approach mentioned by Delahunty & Garvey (2005) based on the semantic relationship
between a compound and its head. This approach is used both in classification of English and
Chinese compounds. There are three types of compounds through this approach. The first one
is endocentric compounds which have their semantic head as the type inside the compound as
a subtype (Plag, 2003). The examples are in English, book cover is a kind of cover, and in
type is exocentric compounds which indicates the relationship of hyponymy, where the
semantic higher term does not appear in the compound. Two examples from English are, a
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 15
is an office lady. The last type is coordinative compounds which both constituents are heads
and each contributes equally to the meaning of compounds. Two English examples are, a poet-
Meaning transparency can be the semantic criterion of compounds. Mayila (2010) also
mentioned four categories of compound words ranging from fully transparent compound words
to fully opaque compound words. All the four categories apply to both English and Chinese
compound words. The four categories with examples of both English and Chinese compounds
betray
b. OT: the head element is transparent, while the non-head element is not.
meaning of straw.
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 16
chase mourn
commemorate
c. TO: the head element is not transparent, while the non-head element is
transparent.
intelligent commerce
I.Q.
horse up,
immediately
Conclusion
The similarities and differences between English and Chinese compounds were
analyzed and discussed in the paper, based on the topics of word formation, compounds
and phrase distinctions as well as compound word classification. As for the pedagogical
indications for ESL classrooms based on the English and Chinese compounding
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 17
comparison, it can be very beneficial for teachers to focus more on the differences between
English and Chinese compounds in the classroom, and at the same time make use of
Chinese English learners native language to help them comprehend and acquire similar
compounding is a very useful tool for Chinese students to distinguish English compounds
from phrases, especially for lower level students who are not familiar with English
grammar and semantics enough, so that they wont get confused by the unsystematic
English compound spelling. However, teachers should keep in mind that since English is a
unfamiliar with the stress pattern in English in the beginning. In addition, it is necessary
for Chinese English learner to be familiar with the parts of speech of English words to be
compounding listed in this paper. It may be beneficial for teachers to make use of
similarities between the two languages to encourage Chinese students to acquire features
their native language. For instance, for a lower-level English class, teachers could
incorporate games into classroom. In the games, the teacher could let students guess the
meaning of compound words from the pictures of its constituents contributing to its
meaning as a whole, for example, the picture of book and cover in the compound word
book cover. For the higher level class, students shouldve learned compound words in
which none of the elements has transparent meaning, and the teacher could still show
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 18
students pictures of the constituents in the compound words and encourage them to
associate pictures then guess the compound word. For example, the teacher could show
students the pictures of honey and moon to let them guess the compound honeymoon. This
kind of game could make the classroom atmosphere more motivating for learning and help
vocabulary informally.
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 19
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