Compound Headedness in Chinese: An Analysis of Neologisms.

This paper is based on a corpus of Chinese neologisms. It aims at discussing current theoretical approaches to compounding and presents a novel analysis of Chinese compounds. We first discuss the issue of the classification of Chinese compounds, modifying the proposal put forth by Bisetto and Scalise (2005), which has first been adopted for Chinese compounding by Ceccagno and Scalise (2006). After presenting a new classification for Chinese compounding, we show the variety of structures existing in Chinese compounds. We then discuss the much debated notion of headedness in compounding, challenging the widspread idea that any language must be either right-headed or left-headed (as partially highlighted by Packard, 2000). Crucially, Chinese seems to display three different productive patterns: right-headedness, left-headedness and two-headedness. These conclusions represent a challenge for the cross-linguistic study of compounding.