汉语真假复合词

Real and Pseudo Synthetic Compounds in Chinese

自然语言的语序在句法和词法中有时恰恰相反。汉语复合词兼有句法和词法两种语序,造成其构造要遵循句法规则的假象。汉语真正的复合词的语序跟句法语序也是恰恰相反,在结构生成、题元结构两方面都符合普遍语法的原则。那些跟句法语序相同的复合词要么是从句法结构直接演变过来的词根,要么是“短语入词”的结构,并不是纯粹的词结构。

It is a well-known observation across languages that the canonical word order in morphology mirrors that of syntax. This is also true in Chinese, as reflected in its genuine synthetic compounds. But Chinese also has a good portion of synthetic compounds that appear to have the syntactic word order, which applies to either the whole or part of a compound. Such syntactic word ordering in compounds has thus led to the belief that Chinese compounds would be constructed under syntactic rules. In this paper we have shown, first, the word order of genuine Chinese synthetic compounds mirrors exactly that of syntax; secondly, pseudo compounds superficially of the syntactic word order are either root words that have evolved from syntactic constructs, or lexico-syntactic hybrids in which the syntactic part is a VP. These findings thus collectively argue against the misperception that Chinese synthetic compounds are generated by syntactic rules. Further investigation in thematic structures of synthetic compounds also supports this conclusion. And we believe that the current findings are also in agreement with relevant predictions from language acquisition and neurolinguistic studies.