Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Insight into the Structure of Compound Words among Speakers of Chinese and English |
| Author: | Jie Zhang |
| Institution: | Western Kentucky University |
| Author: | Richard C. Anderson |
| Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Author: | Qiuying Wang |
| Institution: | Oklahoma State University |
| Author: | Jerome L. Packard |
| Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Author: | Xinchun Wu |
| Institution: | Beijing Normal University |
| Author: | Shan Tang |
| Institution: | Beijing Normal University |
| Author: | Xiaoling Ke |
| Institution: | Oklahoma State University |
| Linguistic Field: | Morphology |
| Subject Language: |
Chinese, Mandarin
English |
| Abstract: | Knowledge of compound word structures in Chinese and English was investigated, comparing 435 Chinese and 258 Americans, including second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college undergraduates. As anticipated, the results revealed that Chinese speakers performed better on a word structure analogy task than their English-speaking counterparts. Also, as anticipated, speakers of both languages performed better on noun + noun and verb + particle compounds, which are more productive in their respective languages than noun + verb and verb + noun compounds, which are less productive. Both Chinese and English speakers performed significantly better on novel compounds than on familiar compounds, most likely because familiar compounds are lexicalized and do not invite decomposition into constituents. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Applied Psycholinguistics Vol. 33, Issue 4, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
