The Comparative Study Of Predic Ate Compounds In Chinese And Eng Lish Languages

Compound word refers to two or more morphemes and bases which have actual meanings forming a word according to certain structural rules.Compounding is the most important means of word formation in both English and Chinese. In Chinese, compound word formation takes up an important position, while in English it is also the vital means next to derivation. However, there are some differences between English and Chinese compound words in morphological characteristics, construction ways and interior structures. The study on compound words mainly focused on nominal compounds, but predicate compounds were not concerned formerly. At present, there are no comparative analyses of compound words in English and Chinese.This paper consists of three parts. The first part is prolegomenon. Firstly, it organizes some correlational studies of Chinese-English predicate compound words and summarizes several enlightening literatures pointing out scholars usually study the predicate compound words or the whole modifying compound words. In the research of English compound words, scholars also center on the compound words and they never specialize in predicate compound words. In the comparative study of English and Chinese, little attention was paid to predicate compound words. Secondly, it makes a brief introduction of the research purposes, source corpora and methods of this study.The second part is the body part. It falls into three chapters. Chapter two and chapter three collect the predicate compound words in Modern Chinese Dictionary(sixth edition) and Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(eighth edition) thoroughly, upon which define the predicate compound words in Chinese and English respectively and meanwhile make analyses of their interior structure and semantic types in detail. Chapter four makes the comparative analysis of the predicate compound words in Chinese and English, indicating their similarities and differences in word formation, reflecting the universality of human cognition and the different ways of thinking. The third part is epilogue. It makes a conclusion of every parts of this research article.This paper is aimed at expounding the similarities and differences in the Chinese and English predication compound words through systematic comparative study and analyzing their word formations in a cognitive approach, thereby exploring the different cognitive styles of the two nations in the process of understanding objective world.