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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2011

JIE ZHANG ,
RICHARD C. ANDERSON ,
QIUYING WANG ,
JEROME PACKARD ,
XINCHUN WU ,
SHAN TANG  and
XIAOLING KE
JIE ZHANG
Affiliation:
Western Kentucky University
RICHARD C. ANDERSON*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
QIUYING WANG
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
JEROME PACKARD
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
XINCHUN WU
Affiliation:
Beijing Normal University
SHAN TANG
Affiliation:
Beijing Normal University
XIAOLING KE
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Richard C. Anderson, Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 51 Gerty Drive, Champaign, IL 61820. E-mail: csrrca@illinois.edu
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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.

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Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 753 - 779
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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