Compound headedness in Chinese: an analysis of neologisms

Compounding is the most significant morphological phenomenon of Chinese. In fact, it has been shown that up to 80% of Chinese words are compounds (Zhou et al. Language and Cognitive Processes 14(5/6):525–565, 1999; Xing Teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language: A pedagogical grammar, 2006). This paper is based on a corpus of Chinese neologisms. It aims at discussing current theoretical approaches to compounding and presents a novel analysis of Chinese compounds. We first discuss the issue of the classification of Chinese compounds, modifying the proposal put forth by Bisetto and Scalise (Lingue e Linguaggio 2:319–332, 2005), which has first been adopted for Chinese com- pounding by Ceccagno and Scalise (Lingue e Linguaggio 2:233–260, 2006). After presenting a new classification for Chinese compounding, we show the variety of structures existing inChinese compounds.We thendiscuss themuchdebatednotion of headedness in compounding, challenging the widespread idea that any language must be either right-headed or left-headed (as partially highlighted by Packard The morphology of Chinese, 2000). Crucially, Chinese seems to display three different productive patterns: right-headedness, left-headedness and two-headedness. These conclusions represent a challenge for the cross-linguistic study of compounding.

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