A Contrastive Study Of Compound Nouns Between English And Chinese

Compound words, especially compound nouns are growing quickly in English and Chinese vocabulary, and their internal structure and semantic relations are very complex. This thesis analyzes how English and Chinese compound nouns are composed through internal structure relations and semantic relations, describes and interprets the similarities and differences in internal structure and semantic relations between English and Chinese, and further explores the characteristics of structure and semantic and compositive rules of English and Chinese compound nouns, so as to reveal the morphological and semantic motivations which will provide a basis for the formation of the new compound nouns. This study will not only help students grasp the motivation of the compound nouns better, but also accelerate the mastery and applications of English and Chinese compound nouns.This thesis first contrasts the internal structure of English and Chinese compound nouns. English and Chinese compound nouns can be composed through five structure relations which are subject and predicate,verb and object,attribute and head,adverbial and head and coordinate. Chinese compound nouns can be composed with head and complement structure relation specially. In the form of structure, English and Chinese compound nouns not only have corresponding part, but also reflect different characteristics. English compound nouns have normal and reverse word order, but Chinese only has normal word order. These reflect English and Chinese have different characteristics in composing compound nouns with internal structure relations. Then, the thesis contrasts the semantic relations of English and Chinese compound nouns. The endocentric compound nouns have similarities and differences in the form of structure and semantic relations. English and Chinese back head endocentric compound nouns follow a model "hint features" + "kinds of things" for generating such nouns. English endocentric compound nouns are mostly right-headed. The right component determines the central meaning of the compound noun. The head of Chinese endocentric compound nouns is not fixed in place. English and Chinese exocentric compound nouns both expand their meaning through metaphor and metonymy. English and Chinese exocentric compound nouns have similarities and differences in the form of structure and techniques of word formation.