Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2018

Leiden University, 9-20 July 2018

Chinese morphology
汉语的构词法
Giorgio F. ARCODIA Bianca BASCIANO
(马振国) (白夏侬)
University of Milano-Bicocca Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Outline of the course

1 The typology of Chinese. Morphemes, roots, words. BB

2 Compounding – I BB
3 Compounding - II BB
4 Derivation GFA

5 Reduplication in Chinese (and beyond) BB

6 Word formation in Old and Middle Chinese BB
7 The Chinese lexicon I – historical strata in the Chinese lexicon. GFA
Lexical differences among dialects
8 The Chinese lexicon II - neologisms and ‘buzzwords’ BB
9 Grammaticalization in Chinese and Mainland Southeastasian GFA
Languages
10 Morphologisation in Chinese dialects GFA
The typology of Chinese

 Chinese: widely regarded as a “textbook example” of the isolating

language type, with little morphology and few affixes (Sagart 2004:123).
 Isolating type:
 1) words of a language are mostly monomorphemic (misconception).
“Being isolating is not a matter of the internal complexity of words,
but rather of how words behave when they occur in different
grammatical contexts.” (Goddard 2005: 6).
 2) whether the morphemes of a language are clearly identifiable:
sharply defined morpheme boundaries; no cumulative morphemes;
morphemes in the language have a single, invariant phonological form.
 1) Words of a language are mostly monomorphemic
 Chinese only moderately isolating: many plurimorphemic words.

 2) Whether the morphemes of a language are clearly identifiable.

 Modern Mandarin Chinese highly isolating: clearly defined morpheme
boundaries, no cumulative exponence and no allomorphy or
suppletion, i.e. morphemes usually have a single phonological form.
 The word form does not vary, no obligatory affixation, no agreement
 去 qù = go, goes, went…
 孩子 háizi ＝ child, children
 矮 ǎi = short (masculine, feminine, singular, plural)…
 工作 gōngzuò = work (N), work (V)
 聪明的朋友 cōngming de péngyou ‘clever friend’, ‘clever friends’

 Grammatical relations and word order:

我爱你
wǒ ài nǐ
I love you
‘I love you’
你爱我
nǐ ài wǒ
You love me
‘You love me’
 Some grammatical markers:
 Plural suffix marker 们 –men (bound form):
Obligatory only with personal pronouns:
我 wǒ ‘I’ 我们 wǒmen ‘we’
你 nǐ ‘you’ (SG) 你们 nǐmen ‘you’ (PL)
他 tā ‘he’ 他们 tāmen ‘they’
 Optional with [+human] nouns:
老师 lǎoshī ‘teacher，teachers’ 老师们 lǎoshīmen ‘teachers’
 If the noun is preceded by a sequence NUMBER+CLF, the use of 们 –
men is ungrammatical:
*三个老师们 sān ge lǎoshī-men ‘three CLF teacher-MEN’

But can be preceded by a NUMBER+COLLECTIVE CLF (Chao 1968):

一群孩子们 yī qún háizimen ‘one CLF (group) child, a group of
children’
 Iljic (1994): "[t]he speaker resorts to men whenever he has grounds to
view several persons as a group, either relative to himself or relative to a
third party"
 "‘personal’ collective[s]" (p. 96), function of grouping units.

 Cheung (2016), 们 -men suffixed nouns refer to a group of people are

known to both speakers and hearers, and indeed, they are regularly used
as a term of address in gatherings, such as 先生们、女士们 xiānshēng -
men nǚshì-men ‘ladies and gentlemen’.

 Marker of collective rather than plural (see Iljic 1994, Cheng & Sybesma
1999).
 No obligatory grammatical marker.
 Aspectual markers, e.g. perfective 了 le

我打破了花瓶。
wǒ dǎ-pò le huāpíng
I hit-break PFV vase
‘I broke the vase’

 No obligatory marker. Only in specific contexts (generally with

accomplishments followed by a quantized object) it is obligatorily used to
express a telic event in the past:

我(昨天)买了一本书。
wǒ (zuótiān) mǎi le yī běn shū
I (yesterday) buy PFV one CLF book
‘(Yesterday) I bought a book.’
 However, Chinese morphology has a number of interesting aspects: huge number
of complex words and other morphological processes in Mandarin as well as in
other Sinitic languages.
Morphemes

 One notable typological feature of Chinese: in the overwhelming majority

of cases, a syllable represents a morpheme.
 Chinese morphemes are generally monosyllabic.
 Quasi perfect correspondence between syllable and morpheme (1
character in writing).

Syllable gǒu jiā huā

1 syllable = 1 morpheme (= 1 character)
Morpheme dog home flower

Character 狗 家 花
 DeFrancis (1984 : 125) uses the term ‘morphosyllabic’:
“[ … ] morphosyllabic is intended to suggest that each character is
pronounced as a single syllable and represents a single morpheme”.

 Few polysyllabic morphemes, mostly phonetic loanwords:

 e.g. 琥珀 hǔpò ‘amber’, 玻璃 bōlí ‘glass’, 葡萄 pútao ‘grape’, 咖啡 kāfēi
‘coffee’
 Given the quasi-perfect correspondence between syllable and morpheme,
sometimes a syllable of a polysyllabic morpheme may be reanalyzed as a
morpheme in complex words:

 E.g. 咖 kā in 咖啡 kāfēi ‘coffee’ is not a morpheme. However, in some

compound neologisms it ‘absorbs’ the meaning of 咖啡 kāfēi ‘coffee’:

 奶咖 nǎi-kā ‘milk-coffee, latte’

 清咖 qīng-kā ‘pure-coffee, black coffee (without sugar)’
 冰咖 bīng-kā ‘ice-coffee, iced coffee’
 热咖 rè-kā ‘hot-cofee, hot coffee’
 啤 pí = phonetic adaptation, part of the hybrid form 啤酒 píjiǔ ‘beer’,where
酒 jiǔ ‘wine, liquor, spirits’ provides semantic information.

 In complex words it is used with the meaning of 啤酒 píjiǔ ‘beer’:

生啤 shēng-pí ‘raw-beer, draft beer’
淡啤 dàn-pí ‘light-beer, light beer’
 吧 bā, phonetic adaptation of bar, part of the hybrid 酒吧 jiǔ-bā ‘wine-bar,
bar’ = it is used in complex words with the meaning of ‘bar’:
 吧女 bā-nǚ ‘bar-woman, barmaid’
 网吧 wǎng-bā ‘net-bar, internet café’.
 As a morpheme appearing to the right of complex words: gradual
extension of meaning → Places of entertainments, places (actual or
virtual) where some kind of service is offered or where some information
may be exchanged (Arcodia 2010):
 烤吧 kǎo-bā ‘roast-bar, a restaurant specializing in barbecue food.’
 球吧 qiú-bā ‘ball-bar, a site offering information on football and other
ball games information on football and other ball games’
 陶吧 táo-bā ‘pottery-bar, a pottery workshop where customers may
create their own products.
 贴吧 tiē-bā ‘post-bar, online ‘ bar’ to publish fans’ posts related to
their idols.’
 New morphemes can also be created through meaning extension from an
existing morpheme (Packard 2000:275-280):
 面 miàn ‘flour, dough, noodles’: has acquired the meaning of ‘van’ in
words like:
面的 miàn-dí ‘van-taxi (cf. díshì 的士 ‘taxi’), taxi van’
微面 wēi-miàn ‘tiny-van, minivan’.
 From 面包车 miànbāo-chē ‘bread-vehicle, van’ (cf. miàn-bāo面包 ‘flour-
wrap, bread’) through a process of abbreviation/combination (Packard
2000:275-278).
Bound roots vs. free roots

 Both grammatical and lexical morphemes can be either free or bound.

 The great majority of Mandarin morphemes are lexical and correspond to
roots, hence the distinction between bound and free roots is crucial (e.g.
Packard 2000, Yang 2003, Basciano and Ceccagno 2009).
 Free roots = syntactic words, e.g. 书 shū ‘book’, 去 qù ‘go’:
她有很多书。 他去买东西 。
Tā yǒu hěn duō shū Tā qù mǎi dōngxi
she have very many book he go buy thing
‘She has many books’ ‘He goes shopping’
 Bound roots have a lexical meaning but cannot independently occupy a
syntactic slot. They have to combine with another root, word or affix
forming a complex word.
 70% of Chinese roots are BOUND ( Packard 2000), thus they are not
words
 e.g. 木 mù ‘tree’.

*有很高的木
yǒu hěn gāo de mù
have very tall DET tree
‘There are very tall trees’
cf.

有很高的树
yǒu hěn gāo de shù
have very tall DET tree
‘There are very tall trees’
 木 mù ‘tree’ may combine with other morphemes forming complex
words, e.g.:
 草木 cǎo-mù ‘grass-tree, vegetation’.
 红木 hóng-mù ‘red-tree, mahogany’
 衣 yī ‘clothes’: bound root (cf. free form 衣服 yīfu), normally found in
complex words:

 大衣 dà-yī ‘big-dress, coat’

 雨衣 yǔ-yī ‘rain-dress, raincoat’
 衣柜 yī-guì ‘dress-cupboard, wardrobe’
 衣钩 yī-gōu ‘clothes-hook, clothes hook’
桌 zhuō ‘table’ (cf. 桌子 zhuōzi)
桌布 zhuō-bù ‘table-cloth, tablecloth’
桌面 zhuō-miàn ‘table-surface, tabletop’
餐桌 cān-zhuō ‘meal-table, dining table’
书桌 shū-zhuō ‘book-table, desk’.

 椅 yī ‘chair’ (cf. 椅子 yīzi)

躺椅 tǎng-yī ‘lie.down-chair, reclining chair‘
长椅 cháng-yī ‘long-chair, bench’
椅背 yī-bèi ‘chair-back, back of a chair’
 Most of modern bound roots where free forms in previous stages of the
language
 e.g. 习 xí ‘practice, exercise’ (cf. 学习 xuéxí ‘study’, 练习 liànxí
‘practice’
 In Modern Chinese is bound: *我习⋯⋯
 In Old/Classical Chinese:

学而时习之，不亦悦乎 ？
xué ér shí xí zhī bù yǐ yuè hū
study and time practice it not this happy INT
‘Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due
intervals?’ (Analects 1.1)
 性 xìng ‘nature, character, disposition’
 In Old/Classical Chinese = free form

性相近也，习相远也。” (Analects 17.2)

xìng xiāng jìn yě, xí xiāng yuǎn yě
nature mutual close PART practice mutual distant PART
“[Humans] are close in their nature; they grow distant through
habit/practice’

 Modern Chineses, bound root:

 性能 xìng-néng ‘nature-able, natural capacity’
 个性 gè-xìng ‘personal-nature, individual character’
 可能性 kěnéng-xìng ‘possible-ness (SUFF), possibility’
 Old/Classical Chinese: strong(er) tendency towards monosyllabism

 Gradual change in the lexicon: disyllabification

 Before 200 BCE, disyllabic words about 20% of the lexicon (at least in
the written form)
 A stronger tendency to disyllabication in the Han period (206 BCE-220
CE)

 In Modern Chinese, disyllabic words = about 80% of the lexicon (Shi 2002:
70-72).

 Disyllabification process → the Chinese words becomes tendentially

disyllabic → roots used as constituents of compounds may loose
independence (see Dai 1990) → bound roots.
 Tendency to disyllabism: the majority of words are bimorphemic and
disyllabic:

 电脑 diàn-nǎo ‘electricity-brain, computer’

 同学 tóng-xué ‘same-study, classmate’
 斑马 bān-mǎ 'stripe-horse, zebra’

 Also words formed by more than two syllables/morphemes:

洗衣机 xǐ-yī-jī ‘wash-clothes-machine, washing machine’

自行车 zì-xíng-chē ‘self-go-vehicle, bycicle’
 Compounds formed by synonymic constituents are fairly common in
Mandarin.
 Progressive disyllabification of the lexicon led to the creation of a
considerable number of coordinating constructions, often made of two
synonymous or strongly related morphemes, easier to build for prosodic
purposes: you can combine (quasi-)synonymous morphemes without any
relevant changes in meaning (Feng 1998), .
 In other dialects the tendency toward disyllabification is not as strong;
many Classical Chinese monosyllabic words are still widely used as such
in Chinese dialects (see Yang 2003: 207).
 Boundary between free roots and bound roots not always clearcut, also
because there are no formal differences between the two.

 Sometimes, in specific syntactic contexts, bound roots may occupy a

syntactic slot, e.g.:
 鸭 yā ‘duck’ = bound form usually in complex words, e.g. 烤鸭 kǎo-
yā ‘roast-duck, roast duck’, but…
 一只鸭 yī zhī yā ‘one CLF duck, a duck’

 These have been termed ‘semi-free morphemes’ (半自由语素bàn zìyóu

yǔsù; Dong 2004 : 45), since they can act as free forms i specific syntactic
constructions. Packard (2015 : 264) speaks of “different degrees of
“free”” for Chinese morphemes.
 Bound roots often used as free forms in writing, which retains some
characteristics of Classical Chinese, much use of monosyllabic words.

 E.g. 殴 ōu ‘beat’ normally cannot occupy a syntactic slot (cf. the

corresponding free form 殴打 ōu-dǎ ‘beat-beat, beat’). But see the
following sentence from a newspaper:

中国一男子在东京机场被殴。
Zhōngguó yī nánzǐ zài Dōngjīng jīchǎng bèi ōu
China one man at Tokyo airport PASS beat
‘Un uomo cinese è stato picchiato all’aeroporto di Tokyo’
‘A Chinese man was beaten at Tokyo airport’
(Yang 2003:205)
Are bound roots similar to neoclassical
constituents?
 According to some (see Packard 1998, 2000, Pirani 2008) Mandarin
bound roots have much in common with the neoclassical constituents
(Latinate stems) of European languages, i.e. bound lexical items
originating from Greek or Latin, which cannot be used as free words, but
nonetheless have a clear lexical meaning: e.g. hydro (hydrology), morpho,
logy (morphology)

 They may combine with :

 another neoclassical constituent: hydrology
 a word: hydroelectric
 an affix: hydric

 These bound forms are typically used to form words belonging to technical
and scientific terminology.
 Similarity: bound forms originating from a classical language, i.e. Classical
Chinese, with a ‘full’ lexical meaning, which take part in word formation
processes but cannot occupy a syntactic slot (i.e. they are not words).
 Differences:
 the great majority of Mandarin roots are bound; these bound roots are
actively used to form complex words belonging to any area of the
lexicon and are not confined to technical or scientific terminology.
 Bound roots do not always originate from Classical Chinese: new
bound roots can be created anew, usually through a process of
reanalysis, as cases considered above (see Packard 2000:280-283,
Basciano and Ceccagno 2009:116).
 Mandarin bound roots are more similar to lexical roots in a language like
Italian, with a fairly rich inflection (see Basciano and Ceccagno 2009:116-
117; Packard 2000:77).
 English: lexical roots are generally free (book, chair, mouse)
 Italian: the great majority of lexical roots are bound and must be
combined with an inflectional affix in order to form words, e.g.:
tavolo ‘table: root tavol- ‘book’ + -o ([+ masculine], [+singular]).
 Since Mandarin does not have inflectional morphology, bound roots
must combine with other roots (either free or bound) or with
derivational morphemes in order to form words.
 Group of bound roots similar to neoclassical constituents, e.g.: roots with
a specialized meaning, forming complex words belonging to technical and
scientific terminology, or to a formal register.
 学 xué
 ‘study’ → free root
‘subject of study, branch of learning’
数学 shù-xué ‘number-branch of learning, mathematics’
哲学 zhé-xué ‘wise-branch of learning, philosophy’
法学 fǎ-xué ‘law-branch of learning, jurisprudence’
 家 jiā
‘family, home’ → free root
‘specialist’ → bound root
作家 zuò-jiā ‘write-specialist, writer’
哲学家 zhéxué-jiā ‘philosophy-specialist, philosopher’
艺术家 yìshù-jiā ‘art-specialist, artist’
畫家 huà-jiā ‘paint-specialist, painter’

 Fixed position.
 Affixes / affixoids?
 Other roots similar to neoclassical constituents.
食 shí vs. 吃 chī ‘mangiare’,
饮 yǐn vs. 喝 hē ‘bere’
函 hán vs. 信 xìn ‘lettera’

 Free roots in Classical Chinese and can be still used as such in writing,
e.g. in newspapers
 E.g. the root shí 食 ‘eat’ in the spoken language it is a bound root
meaning ‘meal, related to food’, usually found in complex words,食品
shí-pǐn ‘meal-product, food’:

食堂 shí-táng ‘meal-hall, dining room’

豬食 zhū-shí ‘pig-meal, pig feed/swill’
 Characteristics:
 They are drawn from a written classical language;
 in the spoken language they are usually bound and have a free
equivalent;
 positionally free, i.e. they can be either left-hand or right-hand
constituents in complex words;
 they can combine with one another, as e.g. yǐn-shí 飲食 ‘drinks-meal,
food and drink/diet’;
 they are not confined to technical or specialized vocabulary, but they
may be found also in ordinary words.
Word

 In many languages, the notion of words is quite intuitive, even though

difficult to define. In Chinese it is not intuitive at all.

 词 cí ‘word’: entered China in 1900 → translations of Western grammar.

 In the 1950s → 文字改革运动 wénzì gǎigé yùndòng ‘Writing reform

movement’ → a satisfactory definition of word cannot be found → Is it
useful at all to define this notion in Chinese? (see Chao 1968; Lü 1981).
 Chao Y. (1968: 138):

Whatever conception of the syntactic word we shall find scientifically

justifiable to define, it plays no part in the Chinaman of the street’s
conception of the subunits of the Chinese language. Thus, if one wishes to
ask what the syntactic word shianntzay ‘now’ means, one would say: “现在”
这两个字是什么意思？Shianntzay jey leanngg tzyh sh sherm yihsy? ‘What
is the meaning of these two zi “xianzai”?

 字 zì ‘character’ → rooted in the Chinese linguistic history

 But WORD ≠ CHARACTER:
 a character can be a word sometimes, e.g.书 shū ‘book’;
 but a word may be formed by more than one character (and it is often
the case): 火车 huǒ-chē ‘fire-vehicle, train’: two
characters/syllables/morphemes.
 The 词 cí ‘word’ is a learned notion, uncommon in non-specialistic use.
Generally, sentences are seen as sequences of characters.
 Character as the ’sociological word’, “that type of unit, intermediate in size
between a phoneme and a sentence, which the general, non-linguistic
public is conscious of, talks about, has an everyday term form and is
practically concerned with in various ways. It is the kind of thing which a
child learn to say, which a teacher teaches children to read and write in
school” (Chao 1968: 136)

 黃安 Huang An, 鸳鸯蝴蝶梦 Yuānyang húdié mèng:

爱情两个字好辛苦
àiqíng liǎng ge zì hǎo xīnkǔ
‘Love, how hard these two characters can be’

爱情 àiqíng: two characters (one word!)

 唐山大地震 Tángshān dà dizhèn (Aftershock), 2010
“我妈说: ‘救弟弟’。这三个字，就写在我耳朵边上”
Wǒ mā shuō: ‘jiù dìdi ’. Zhè sān ge zì, jiù xiě-zài wǒ ěrduo biān shàn
‘My mother said: ’save the younger’. These three characters have been
engraved in my ears.’

救弟弟 jiù dìdi: three character (two words! 救 jiù ‘save’ and 弟弟 dìdi
‘younger brother’)
 Here we consider the ‘syntactic’ word (词 cí). Chinese words may be:
 a) monosyllabic monomorphemic, i.e. words formed by one
morpheme/syllable, e.g.:
 花 huā ‘flower’, 脚 jiǎo ‘foot’, 买 mǎi ‘buy’

 b) polysyllabic monomorphemic words, e.g.:

 柠檬 níngméng ‘lemon’, 巧克力 qiǎokèlì ‘chocolate’

 c) polysyllabic plurimorphemic, i.e. words formed by more than one

morpheme/syllable, e.g.:
 书店 shū-diàn ‘book-shop, bookshop’, 篮球 lán-qiú ‘basket-ball,
basketball’, 洗碗机 xǐ-wǎn-jī ‘wash-bowl-machine, washing machine’.
 Summing up…
 Most of Modern Chinese roots are bound → polysyllabic
plurimorphemic words are the most common word type.
 Predominant pattern: bimorphemic/disyllabic word

two characters 电 话

two syllables diàn huà

two morphemes elettricità parlare

one word ‘telefono’