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Running head: A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 1

A Comparison of Compounding in Chinese and English

Yuanyuan Sun

Colorado State University


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 2

Introduction

This paper was submitted as a part of requirements for E 514: Phonology/Morphology

for ESL/EFL.

According to Mayila (2010), compounding is a commonly seen phenomenon in all

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

comprehensive discussion in the following aspects: definition and formation of

compounding, the distinctions between compounds and phrases, and the classifications of

compound words.

Chinese and English compounds: Definition and formation

In order to successfully identify compounds in both Chinese and English, it is

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

morphemes ch(rule) and cn(inch); huoche(train) has two free morphemes

huo (fire) and che(vehicle) (Yu, 2003); jiaoshi (teacher) has a free

morpheme jiao (teach) and a bound morpheme shi (combined with other

morphemes to indicate a certain type of person who masters a skill). Compounding

contributes to creating a high percentage of new two-syllable words in the modern Mandarin

Chinese (Sproat and Shih, 1996, cited in Pirani, 2008).

There are different views on defining Chinese compound words and on

compounding as a typical pattern of word formation for Chinese. According to Arcodia

(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

morpheme. In addition, Chinese doesnt have a compulsory morphological marker of word

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

free morphemes, two examples in Pirani (2008) are listed in (2):

(2) lao shi gong cheng shi

old teacher, master project teacher, master

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

contrast to shi (master) as below (Pirani, 2008) :

(3) tou nao tou lu cheng tou

head brain first road city top

mind first class, good, etc. top of the city wall

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

possible confusion in (4):

(4) riben fa-guo ying fa deng guo

Japan France-country England France other country


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 5

Japan and France England, France, and other countries

According to Packard (2000), as shown in (4), fa must be used with a morpheme

guo for country, but it can also be used without the morpheme for country, and that

when fa seems to be a word. It is hard to tell, in this case, is fa a bound root or a

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

bound root words in Chinese based on Packard (2000)s proposed definition.

Furthermore, Lin (2006) defined a Chinese compound as a word composed of two or

more words, and it can be formed productively by reduplication, which is not commonly

seen in English compound formation. Examples are listed as below in (5):

(5) V: jiao jiao wo zou zou lu yanjiu yanjiu

teach teach me walk walk road research research

teach me walk research/ analyze/ consider

Adj: hong hong de pang pang de gan gan jing jing de

red red particle fat fat particle dry dry clean clean particle

red fat clean

Noun: ba ba jie jie mao mao yu

father father sister sister hair hair rain


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 6

father elder sister drizzle

Another difference between English and Chinese compound words indicated by

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

compounds such as party crasher can be found in Chinese:

(6) whu chanjn zh

party crash derivational affix

party crasher

However, Lieber (2005) also noted that this type of synthetic compound such as

whuchanjnzh (party crasher), which usually involves derivation, is the only

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

the synthetic compounds such as party crasher, as shown in (7):


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 7

(7) wuhui chuangjin de ren

party crash particle people

people who crash in the party

Distinctions between compounds and phrases

Distinguishing compounds from similar constructions is also important as a part of

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

help people solve the problem in both languages.

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

does not vary with two types of concatenation.


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 8

On the other hand, the existence of particle de, as the (7) illustrated, can be a

useful criterion to determine if a concatenation is a phrase or a compound in Chinese. Yu (2003)

offered two examples to illustrate in (8):

(8) he de hzi he hzi

black particle box black box

black box a cockpit voice recorder

As shown in (8), he de hzi (black box) is a syntactic phrase with the

particle de, while he hzi (a cockpit voice recorder) is a compound word

without this particle.

Delahunty & Garvey (2010) stated another criterion of English compoundhood

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

circumstances. Arcodia (2007) showed two examples as follows:

(9) da panzi bai da panzi hen da panzi

big plate white big plate very big plate

big plate big white plate very big plate

(10) Da guar bai da guar hen da guar


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 9

big gown white big gown very big gown

big gown doctors very big gown

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

Currently, there are many approaches discussed by a large amount of papers to

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

and English compound words.

Before discussion on specific approaches, a repeatedly mentioned concept in various


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 10

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

(2010) offered two examples as below:

(11) guo tie dong zuo

pot sticker move do

fried dumpling activity

In guotie (pot-sticker, fried dumpling), the head guo (pot) is in the left

position; in dongzuo (activity), the head is in neither right or left positions.

The first type of classification is related to the internal organization of the

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

as verbs. Compared to English, Chinese is very productive in forming compounds as verbs. To

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

from her work:

(12) a. Resultative verbal compounds (RVC)

V1-V2, where V1 is an action and V2 the result caused by the action of V1.

la kai da po

pull open hit break

pull open, unzip break

b. Parallel verbal compounds (coordinated verbal compounds)

V1-V2, where V1 and V2 are identical or similar in meaning.


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 12

piao liu pi fa

drift flow exhaust exhaust

drift wear out

c. Modifier-Modified verbal compounds

X-V, where V is the head of the compound and X provides a modification to V.

an sha man pao

dark kill slow run

assassinate jog

d. SP (subject-predicate) compounds

N-V, where N functions as if it is the subject of the predicate P.

yan hong xin suan

eye red heart sour

envy feel sad

e. VO compounds

V-N, where N is the object of V.

bi ye man yi

complete work fill wish


A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 13

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):

(13) a. Subject-predicate construction:

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

to eat till one is full

e. Coordinate construction:

nan nu

male female

male and 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

Chinese, dufan(drug-vendor, drug trafficker) is a kind of fan(vendor). The second

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

greybeard is a person or animal with the grey beard; in Chinese, a fenling(pink-collar)

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-

translator is a poet and translator; in Chinese, shuguo(vegetable-fruit) indicates

vegetables and fruit.

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

are listed as below (Mayila, 2010; Wang et al., 2013):

(14) a. TT: both elements of compound words are transparent.

English example: cheekbone is the bone of the cheek.

Chinese example: bei pan

hide something from, betray

betray

b. OT: the head element is transparent, while the non-head element is not.

English example: strawberry is a kind of berry, but it is nor related to the

meaning of straw.

Chinese example: zhui dao


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.

English example: jailbird is related to jail but not bird.

Chinese example: zhi shang

intelligent commerce

I.Q.

d. OO: Neither of the elements is transparent.

English example: neither element in the word honeymoon contributes

to the whole meaning of the compound.

Chinese example: ma shang

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

characteristic of English compounding. For example, the stress pattern in English

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

stress-timed language while Chinese is syllable-timed, Chinese students may be very

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

able to comprehend the most accessible first classification approach to English

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

of English compounds such as meaning transparency using their background knowledge of

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

students to remember vocabulary or help teachers to assess students understanding of

vocabulary informally.
A COMPARISON OF COMPOUNDING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH 19

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