A Construction Morphology account of derivation in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

In the Chinese language, morphologically complex words have been attested since the remote past of the language, including both stem-modifying processes and agglutination of morphemes, mostly lexical and free in the classical language. However, in Chinese, grammaticalization typically entails no phonological alteration (Bisang, Studies in Language 20:519À597, 1996) and it is still a matter of debate whether compounding and derivation are two distinct phenomena in Modern Mandarin Chinese (see, among others, Pan et al, The research on word formation in Chinese, 2004). In this paper we shall tackle this issue in the framework of Construction Morphology (Booij, In: Dressler et al (eds) Morphology in demarcations, 2005; In: Montermini et al (eds) Selected proceedings of the 5th Décembrettes: morphology in Toulouse, 2007), also taking into account the diachronic perspective. Our proposal is that it is possible to analyse as instances of grammaticalized derivational formants the right-hand elements in word formation schemas such as [[X] X 性] N [[X] X xìng] N Ôthe quality of X/connected with XÕ (抽象性 chō uxiàngxìng ÔÔabstractnessÕÕ), which undergo processes of semantic shift analogous to those of e.g. English -hood. Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010relational meaning, as e.g. Eng. 1 bakery from (to) bake, which can indeed be distinguished from (root) compounding. Our claim is that derivational affixes in Mandarin are the evolution of compound constituents, appearing in a fixed position with a certain meaning in a number of complex words. In order for a lexeme to become a derivational affix, it has to undergo a shift in meaning, which can be either more ''general'' than when used in other contexts, or it can be the extension of one of the possible (non-core) meanings of the lexeme.In a Construction Morphology framework (Booij

A Construction Morphology Approach to Neoclassical Compounds and the Function of the Linking Vowel

“…For (39), it was a schema proposed by Booij for Germanic languages such as English, German, and Dutch. Similar schemas are also proposed by Booij and Hüning (2014) for expressions containing bound forms in German and Dutch, and by Arcodia (2011) and Arcodia and Basciano (2018) for those in Chinese. Thanks to this kind of research in CxM, it has become easier to discuss the similarities of compounds and the expressions containing bound forms in different types of languages.…”

Exemplar-based compounds: The case of Chinese

“…Modern Mandarin Chinese fits very well in the 'traditional' definition of the isolating language type, as it has virtually no inflection (no obligatory expression of grammatical categories), few (uncontroversial; see Arcodia, 2012) derivational affixes, no cumulative exponence, no or little blurring of morpheme boundaries, and no allomorphy or suppletion (see Bisang, 2004;Packard, 2006). Most morphemes are realised by a syllable, which in turn corresponds to a character in writing, as e.g.…”

Advances in Morphological Theory: Construction Morphology and Relational Morphology

“…Construction-based accounts of affixoids have appeared for, among other languages, German and Dutch (e.g., Michel 2013, Hüning & Booij 2014, Hartmann 2019, Italian (e.g., Masini & Micheli 2020), Hungarian (Kenesei 2007), Chinese (Arcodia 2011, Arcodia & Basciano 2018, and Aivaliot Greek (Ralli 2019). The particular challenge posed by such formations is their inbetween status: They resemble compounds on the one hand and affixations on the other.…”