Newbie -- Compound Words With Repeats

[fij]

Hi Everyone,

Is there a particular reason why some compound words are created by (almost) repeating the same word twice? For example, as far as I can tell 朋 and 友 both mean friend and so the word "朋友" sounds like "friend friend". Or do the two parts have a different meaning (role) within the compound?

Another example is the following: as far as I can tell 真 means something like genuine and the meaning of 正 is close to "right, proper". So the compound "真正" sounds like "genuine and correct".

Do you know of further such compound words/expressions where the two parts have a very similar meaning?

Thanks a lot.

[Don_Horhe]

This is just one of the types of word formation patterns in Chinese - a compound word made up of two morphemes with similar or identical meaning. You can find a description of Chinese word formation in my post here.

[renzhe]

Somebody once said that Chinese characters like to come in pairs. At least in modern language, this is the case, as most words are bisyllabic. This is more common with nouns and adjectives than with verbs, which are very often monosyllabic.

Don Horhe posted a good summary of different ways modern words were created by combining simpler morphemes. Combining two characters with (essentially) same meaning is one common way for this to happen.

[jbradfor]

The expand a bit what renzhe said, there are relatively few "sounds" in modern Mandarin. Compare that to the number of concepts one wants to express, you'll see that if you use only one character (sound) when speaking, the number of potential meanings is huge, and it would be difficult to communicate. By using (typically) two sounds per meaning, you'll get enough different sound-pairs to significantly reduce ambiguity and communication is easier.

When writing, you'll note that fewer of the "repeats" are used, since there are many more characters than sounds. It won't be a huge difference, as written Chinese largely follows spoken Chinese, but you'll see some difference in reading newspapers, where space is important, and you'll really see it in classical Chinese, which does not really attempt to have the written text follow how one speaks.

At least, that's how I look at it....

[Aixer]

The expand a bit what renzhe said, there are relatively few "sounds" in modern Mandarin.

I won't say that's exactly true. I think Mandarin actually has more phonemes than English because of the 4 tones. The problem isn't that Mandarin have relatively few sounds but rather that, all characters in Mandarin have only one syllable while many English words are multisyllabic.

[dumdumdum]

classical chinese usually use single word. modern chinese borrowed a lot of grammar/vocab rules from japanese kanji so its a diff story.

and yes, single-word phrases are not adequate to express evergrowing modern ideas and buzz words.

[jacob22]

It's likely due to the fact that a single sound of a character can have so many different meanings. One way of looking at this is to look at how Japanese incorporated Chinese characters into their language. They sometimes use a single character where Chinese would always use them as a pair. On the other hand, the single characters used in Japanese are often not mono-syllabic, so they are easier to understand on their own, or have characters around them to make it clear. The Chinese system really is quite amazing in how concise it makes itself.

[aristotle1990]

The expand a bit what renzhe said, there are relatively few "sounds" in modern Mandarin. Compare that to the number of concepts one wants to express, you'll see that if you use only one character (sound) when speaking, the number of potential meanings is huge, and it would be difficult to communicate. By using (typically) two sounds per meaning, you'll get enough different sound-pairs to significantly reduce ambiguity and communication is easier.

This is the correct explanation, of course, but I've always wondered how this situation actually came about -- the 老百姓 didn't just sit down one day and decide that, well, nobody would understand one other if everyone just said 朋, so hey, let's throw a 友 on the end for clarity. Here are two guesses:

1. 朋 was originally a word with a unique pronounciation that was represented with the single character "朋" (back when classical Chinese reflected common speech). As the number of sounds in the Chinese language gradually decreased, the 友 somehow got tacked on out of necessity. (How this would have happened, I don't know.)

2. Characters were rarely used by commoners to represent those sounds, and the two syllables of Mandarin word "péngyǒu" (or its equivalent at the time) were given 朋 and 友 when people began writing Mandarin with characters.

I should note that I am no expert in Classical Chinese or Middle Chinese or historical linguistics (these theories being entirely the product of my frustrated mind -- I don't even know whether 朋友 is used in other dialects), and I know I'm confusing Mandarin with classical Chinese in theory 1 (I know very little about the historical relationship between the two), so I would certainly appreciate clarification from someone who is!

[renzhe]

I won't say that's exactly true. I think Mandarin actually has more phonemes than English because of the 4 tones.

According to DeFrancis, Mandarin has about 1200 phonemes, Cantonese about 1800, and English around 8000. This accounts for the tones as well.

The main issue is that Classical Chinese expressed a concept with one character (mostly). Modern spoken Chinese dialects have developed towards multi-syllabic words, although dialects like Cantonese use more monosyllabic words.

It is disputed whether ancient Chinese was ever a monosyllabic language to begin with.

[Glenn]

Is that really the phoneme count? It seems awfully high. It's not the morpheme count?

[Zomac]

I won't say that's exactly true. I think Mandarin actually has more phonemes than English because of the 4 tones. The problem isn't that Mandarin have relatively few sounds but rather that, all characters in Mandarin have only one syllable while many English words are multisyllabic.

I'm sure there's a lot of kanji loanwords in modern Chinese, but can you give me some examples about Japanese influence over modern Chinese grammar? In my understanding, modern Chinese isn't really 'modern' and it's been spoken over a few centuries. The major reform, Baihuawen, is just an attempt to put them on paper. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

[renzhe]

Is that really the phoneme count? It seems awfully high. It's not the morpheme count?

Actually, it's a syllable count, because he was discussing syllabaries and the like. My bad.

[jbradfor]

Even more fun is when you have more than 2 characters with similar/identical meanings, think of all the fun you can have!

I just ran across this example today:

Start with 詐, 騙, and 欺. Then put them together in various ways:

詐騙 -- to defraud / to swindle / to blackmail

詐欺 -- fraud / deception

欺詐 -- to cheat

欺騙 -- to deceive / to cheat

[騙詐 and 騙欺 don't seem to be listed.]

This is the correct explanation, of course, but I've always wondered how this situation actually came about -- the 老百姓 didn't just sit down one day and decide that, well, nobody would understand one other if everyone just said 朋, so hey, let's throw a 友 on the end for clarity. Here are two guesses:

I was wondering this as well. I think the answer is that it goes the other way around: language started with the spoken form, and then the written form came later. So, as spoken language develops, people "naturally" choose word choices that are less ambiguous. The next step, from spoken form to written form in a non-alphabet based language, is more of a mystery to me.

[Altair]

According to what I recall, one way to understand how such compound words arose is to realize that especially in Classical Chinese, "and," "or," or "and/or" can sometimes be understood when two nouns or verbs are juxtaposed. As a result, "AB" can sometimes mean "A and B," "A or B," or "A and/or B." By using two words of similar meaning, you can enrich your expression and/or reduce ambiguity.

These structures occasionally appear in English with phrases like "lord and master" or "will and testament." For instance, "Lord and master" is similar in meaning and structure to 君主 ("monarch"). Sometimes AB implies that A modifies B, so that AB may sometimes mean something a little different from BA.

Another use for these compounds is to clarify the part of speech, since some combinations may be unambiguously verbs or nouns.

[jbradfor]

Just encountered another fun example: 尷尬

尷尬 means "awkward / embarrassed"

尷 by itself means "embarrassed / ill at ease"

尬 by itself means "in an embarrassing situation"

Interesting enough, 尷尬 is the ONLY word in CEDict that both 尷 and 尬 appear in.

[Glenn]

You mean that either of them appear in? It would make sense if it were the only one both appeared in, unless there were some 成語 that used them. :-P (I kid, but I was genuinely confused for a second)

[renzhe]

Just encountered another fun example: 尷尬

尷尬 means "awkward / embarrassed"

尷 by itself means "embarrassed / ill at ease"

尬 by itself means "in an embarrassing situation"

Interesting enough, 尷尬 is the ONLY word in CEDict that both 尷 and 尬 appear in.

I think that in cases like this one, the word was polysyllabic to begin with, and the individual characters "borrowed" the meaning from the compound word.

See also 蝴蝶 and 蜘蛛.

[jbradfor]

OK, Glenn, it's grammar police time. :angry: I don't think "either" is correct either. What I want to say is "both 尷 and 尬 only appear in 尷尬", that is, there is no other word that contains either 尷 or 尬. This is in contrast to my previous example, 詐, 騙, and 欺, in which all three characters appear with other characters as well.

Could we get a third party ruling on this?

[Glenn]

Sorry, I didn't mean to get the police involved. That's a scary face too. :o But I appreciate that you spelled my name correctly. It seems surprisingly difficult for people to do.

It may be best to just wait, but in my mind, at least, "both" is conclusive, while "either" isn't (it's like an "and" versus an "or" operator, I guess you could say). But I'll wait for a third party ruling.

[SiMaKe]

This is not a "ruling" but rather another way to look at this situation. Because of the nature of the example, both of you are correct.

Let A be the set of all polysyllabic words (two, three, whatever syllables BUT NOT ONE ) that contain 尴

Let B be the set of all polysyllabic words that contain 尬.

The set of all polysyllabic words that contain both of these characters (the intersection) is just 尴尬. (using CEDict as the universe).

The set of all polysyllabic words that contain either one or the other or both (the union) is also just 尴尬.

The two sets that each contain one but not the other are both empty sets (we are only talking about polysyllabic here).

So the union and the intersection are the same and you are both correct.:rolleyes:

(with liberal borrowing of phrases from the Wiipedia article on ""either") The problem arise because, "either/or" is ambiguous. Therefore logic/math distinguishes "inclusive or" (logical disjunction) from "exclusive or" (exclusive disjunction). In investments, "either/or" orders are considered exclusive, while in law it just gets argued out in court: (and I can provide case law in the event you are interested).

"In philosophy, the first book Søren Kierkegaard published under a pseudonym was titled Either/OrDanish: Enten/Eller). Written under the name Victor Eremita (Latin: the Victorious Hermit), the book contains his reflections on aesthetics and ethics, and argued against the Hegelian dialectics of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; Kierkegaard concludes that neither aesthetics nor ethics offers a way out of the human race's existential despair, and concludes that only a leap of faith can solve that problem, arguing that making such a leap cannot have, and does not need, a rational justification.In philosophy."

So, like religion, it's just a leap of faith who is correct....so you both are!!