Dvandva Compound Words in Chinese and Japanese Languages: Comparative Aspect

Abstract

Based on the data of two typologically different languages, Chinese and Japanese, this article analyzes words with coordinative relations between components or the so called coordinated dvandva. The analyzed words were taken by way of sampling from Chinese and Japanese dictionaries and online web sites. The aim of this study was to compare structural and semantic characteristics of these words. Coordinated dvandva are widely used in both languages as nouns, adjectives and verbs. The peculiarity of word-formation of coordinative types in Chinese and Japanese is that the word-formation models are a union of homogeneous components, which occurs regardless of the type of semantic relations between the components. In Japanese the words of different origins ( kango , wago and gairaigo ) are included in the process of word formation so that the word-formation models absent in Chinese are used. Moreover, since in Japanese word-building of kango is more productive than that of wago and gairaigo , coordinated dvandva- kango prevail. The order of the components in coordinated dvandva in Chinese and Japanese is determined by the concept of “priority”, as well as phonetic rules and the rules of accentuation of each language, respectively. The rule comes with a few exceptions: when the components of the adjective or verbal dvandva specify or duplicate each other and when the components of the adjectival dvandva have an antonymic relation. There are different semantic relations between the components of a compound dvandva in both languages, wheresome substantive dvandva can express the meaning of indefinite plurality. The meaning of coordinated dvandva that exist and in Chinese and Japanese, as a rule, is the same.