The Study On Mandarin Noun-Noun Compounds

In Chinese language, a new concept is usually expressed by a noun or a nominal compound. Noun-noun compound is the direct product of nominal compound with an integrated lexical form. Based on the previous studies and guided by the related theory on linguistics, this paper systematically and comprehensively explores a series of problems in the noun-noun compound of modern Chinese, such as the grammatical structure, semantic structure, semantic type, lexical pattern, and fully shows the great advantage of cognitive linguistics in the study of noun-noun compound. This paper consists of8chapters, with the first as the introduction and the last the conclusion. The main contents of other chapters are as follows:Chapter2mainly focuses on an analysis of the grammatical structure patterns of the noun-noun compound:headword-modifier pattern, modifier-headword pattern and parataxis pattern. The headword-modifier noun-noun compound has long existed since ancient times but only in a small number because of its relatively low productivity. According to the study, compared with the restriction of the former morpheme in the modifier-headword compound, the classification of headword-modifier compound is weaker and much more presents its descriptivity. Therefore, the order of the morphemes in the headword-modifier compound partly accounts for its function. The modifier-headword compound takes up the largest proportion in the noun-noun compound of modern Chinese, whose productivity is incomparable to any other word formation patterns. Parataxis pattern can be further divided into homonymous parataxis, antonymous parataxis and synonymous parataxis patterns.Chapter3mainly deals with the semantic structure of the noun-noun compound. According to the related theory on the frame semantics, the two nominal morphemes are the reflection of the event behind on the surface level of language. Therefore, the description of its semantic structure is actually the description of the semantic relationship between the verbs and the related nominal elements. The predication theory is adopted here to illustrate formally the semantic structure of the noun-noun compound.Chapter4mainly contains a comprehensive analysis of the semantic types of the non-parataxis noun-noun compound. By applying the word-formation method, the non-parataxis noun-noun compound can be divided into the strengthened type and differentiated type. The one of strengthen type is formed by adding morpheme with strengthening function to the monosyllable noun to achieve a replacement by the synonymous disyllables, thus making the compound’s rational meaning identical to one morpheme within it. While the one of differentiated type is formed by adding morpheme with differentiating function to the monosyllable noun to present the sub-categorized cognitive results, thus making it possible the hyponymy relations between the rational meaning of the compound and meaning of the headword morpheme.Chapter5mainly exemplifies the lexical pattern of the noun-noun compound of possessive type. The lexical pattern is a kind of morpheme-arrangement pattern with certain principles and productivity, which is the combination of the lexical form and lexical meaning. The fundamental objective of studying the lexical pattern is to seek for the corresponding lexical meaning of the very lexical form so as to help better understand the compound’s meaning of the compound. The study on the noun-noun compound of possessive type mainly focuses on human’s possession of the things, human’s possession of the interpersonal relationship, and the whole-part relationship. The study indicates that the human’s possession of the things in the noun-noun compound is manifested as "the possessed things+the possessor" or "the possessor+the possessed things"; the human’s possession of the interpersonal relationship manifested as the possession of the human’s affinity; the whole-part relationship manifested as "the whole+the part" or "the part+the whole". Besides, the attributive possession does not belong to the typical possessive relation. Instead it represents a certain attribute of things or events and is manifested as "attributive subject+attribute".Chapter6mainly analyzes the lexical pattern of the non-possessive noun-noun compound. The non-possessive noun-noun compound can be divided into the connective type and the attribute-mapping type, which correspond to the two separate cognitive mechanisms of "scenario building" and "structure para" respectively. For the study of the one of connective type we adopt the concept of "semantic parameter". Semantic parameter is the suggestive character or basis for the sub-categorization of the headword morpheme. It suggests the lexical meaning to some extent because the same semantic parameter always means the same lexical understanding mode. The understanding strategy of the attribute-mapping type compound is that the metaphorical-object morpheme exerting the metaphor descriptive function and mapping certain characters of the object onto the referent of noumenon morpheme. The commonly seen semantic combination patterns can be generalized as:location+things, color+things, shape+things, form+things (or things+form), internal attribute+things (or things+internal attribute). Chapter7mainly deals with the word order of the noun-noun compound of parataxis pattern. Compared with the semantic combination law, its morpheme order can better reflect the morphemes’combination law because it is a brand new content that has never appeared in any other studies on the compound word formation. The study shows that the word order of noun-noun compound of parataxis pattern is not random but is restricted by such factors as the tone pattern, the voiced or voiceless initial consonant, cultural norms and the meaning.