tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2851981677644878233.post4041948319792284808..comments2023-10-25T02:16:28.192-06:00Comments on Ryan's linguistics blog: CompoundsRyan Denzer-Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015316224715016479noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2851981677644878233.post-59435441241799531242010-09-25T09:12:25.423-06:002010-09-25T09:12:25.423-06:00The so-called non-compositional compounds is likel...The so-called non-compositional compounds is likely to be a universal phenomena in many languages. I have no idea if in German or Russian those synthetic languages it is the same case. But in Chinese, yes! It's hard to predicate the relation between two components in a word. Here is an example:<br />pi2xie2 - leather shoes<br />pao3xie2 - track shoes<br />nan2xie2 - shoes for male<br />liang2xie2 - sandal<br />(Numbers here stand for tones within a syllable)<br /><br />Each word has two morphemes, respectively means:<br />xie2: shoes<br />pi2: leather<br />pao3: run<br />nan2: male<br />liang2: cool or cold<br /><br />Obviously, semantically the structures are different. In "pi2xie2", the first morpheme (or we may say "zi" as a single character) indicates the material the shoes are made of. In "pao3xie2", "pao" indicates the specific way of doing sports. In "nan2xie2", "nan2" is the gender of a person who'll wear the shoes. While in "liang2xie2", "liang2" simply tells you that in summer when you put this kind of shoes on, you'll feel not so hot.<br /><br />There is a lot to say on this kind of compound words. You can say both nan2xie(shoes for male) and nv3xie2(shoes for female). You can say pi2xie2(leather shoes), bu4xie2(cloth shoes) and even mu4xie(wood shoes). You can say pao3xie2(running shoes), but you can't say tiao4xie2(jumping shoes) or ti1xie2(kicking shoes). You can say liang2xie2(sandal) but not nuan3xie2(warm shoes).<br /><br />It's quite interesting if you have enough time to discover more.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03268013676250297313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2851981677644878233.post-81026933020181686132010-09-20T00:31:53.421-06:002010-09-20T00:31:53.421-06:00I love the thing about the horse.
'Holy water...I love the thing about the horse.<br /><br />'Holy water' isn't a fair comparison because it's adjective+noun, not compound noun. Also, I wouldn't define it with reference to purpose, but rather as 'water that has undergone the process of being made holy'.<br /><br />In a sense, you can think of spring water as water that has undergone the process of being in a spring, but I would be the first to agree that that is a very tenuous sense indeed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2851981677644878233.post-5180623956251139262010-09-18T20:41:19.383-06:002010-09-18T20:41:19.383-06:00Interestingly, you produce novel compounds that ar...Interestingly, you produce novel compounds that are nonetheless correctly understood. There's been a lot of interest among psycholinguists over the years in this topic. I believe Lila Gleitman did some of the early work. There was just a paper in the last issue (I believe) of Cognitive Science looking at the role of prosody in determining the interpretation of the compound (short story is there appears to be a role in some cases, but there's a lot of variance left to be explained).GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.com