Understanding Chinese compounds

dc.contributor.advisorLamb, Sydney M.en_US
dc.creatorZhang, Xiuhongen_US
dc.date.accessioned2009-06-04T07:59:43Zen_US
dc.date.available2009-06-04T07:59:43Zen_US
dc.date.issued2001en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation investigates the relationship between word-internal structure of verbal compounds and the grammatical properties of the compounds, focusing on their transitivity. Adopting a functional point of view, it provides a syntactic as well as semantic account of the seemingly chaotic syntactic features that verbal Chinese compounds possess. By being able to predict the grammatical properties of newly created compounds, the findings of the present work can be used to help students of Chinese as a foreign language have a better grasp of the language, especially the compounding patterns. The results can also be applied in computational applications, such as natural language understanding and processing. In Natural Language Processing (NLP), information about the formation and syntactic behavior of compounds is necessary for a system to be able to understand and/or translate any sentence containing newly created compounds. The method of investigation is that of general functional linguistics guided by cognitive considerations, and the study is mainly data-driven. In this work, compoundhood in Chinese is considered to reside in a continuum, i.e. there is no clear-cut boundary between words and phrases. The properties, including transitivity where it is relevant, of the five types of Chinese verbal compounds---Verb-Resultative, Verb-Noun, Verb-Verb coordinate, Subject-Predicate, and Modifier-Verb---are explored and characterized, along with means of distinguishing the five types of compounds and the subtypes with similar formal appearances. The transitivity of Verb-Resultative compounds, a highly productive type, is explored in the most depth.en_US
dc.format.extent251 p.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.callnoTHESIS LING. 2001 ZHANGen_US
dc.identifier.citationZhang, Xiuhong. "Understanding Chinese compounds." (2001) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/18052">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/18052</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/18052en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectLinguisticsen_US
dc.titleUnderstanding Chinese compoundsen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentLinguisticsen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineSocial Sciencesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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