Insight into the structure of compound words among speakers of Chinese and English

• JIE ZHANG ^[1] ; RICHARD C. ANDERSON ^[2] ; QIUYING WANG ^[3] ; JEROME PACKARD ^[2] ; XINCHUN WU ^[4] ; SHAN TANG ^[4] ; XIAOLING KE ^[3]
  1. [1] Western Kentucky University

     Western Kentucky University

     Estados Unidos

     
  2. [2] University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

     University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

     Township of Cunningham, Estados Unidos

     
  3. [3] Oklahoma State University

     Oklahoma State University

     Estados Unidos

     
  4. [4] Beijing Normal University

     Beijing Normal University

     China

     

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• Localización: Applied psycholinguistics, ISSN 0142-7164, Vol. 33, Nº 4, 2012, págs. 753-779
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • 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.