A Comparative Study On Word-formation Of Polysyllabic Words In Chinese And Tibetan

With the successful application of historical comparative method in historical comparative linguistics, momentous achievements have been made in the argumentation of language kinship. However, historical comparative method sometimes fails in Sino-Tibetan languages since most of the Sino-Tibetan languages have no or little morphology and some of them are even not phonogram. Through a comparative study on the word-formation of polysyllabic words in Chinese and Tibetan, this thesis aims to aid the research of Sino-Tibetan language kinship by probing into the following aspects:the common and individual characters of word-formation in Chinese and Tibetan; whether some kind of intimate relationship exists between Chinese and Tibetan in word-structure and word-formation; and whether Chinese and Tibetan have some deep commonality.Polysyllabic words in Chinese and Tibetan are the research object of this thesis. Their word-formation is re-classified according to the classification of word building and coinage. The discussion mainly focuses on word formation by compounding, derivation, word reduplication and phonetic-based word formation.To start with, this thesis describes and compares the coordinate, subordinate, verb-object, subject-predicate, predicate-complement and other forms of compound words in Chinese and Tibetan. Through the comparison, this thesis finds out the common as well as individual characters of the two languages and presents relevant explanations. It points out that in both of the two languages, syntactic structures are closely associated with compound words in that the latter originated from the concise or shortened forms of the former. That is the common character of Chinese and Tibetan.Secondly, the thesis carries out a comparative study on the derivation way of word formation in Chinese and Tibetan. After defining the affixes and would-be affixes, it divides affixes of the two languages into word-formation affixes, word-complement affixes and grammatical affixes according to their attributes and function. Thirdly, by a comparative study conducted on words formed by reduplicating in Chinese and Tibetan, this thesis tells the difference between word of geminate syllables and word of reiterative characters. Word of reiterative characters is the focus of the comparative study. After describing and comparing each of the reiterative forms that are basically the same in the two languages, the paper points out that reiterative locution is not only a syntactical device but also a word-formation means and that as a most important general character of Chinese and Tibetan, it distinguishes the two languages from other linguistic families. The corresponding reiterative forms and means in the two languages indicate possible affiliation in origination.Fourthly, the thesis chooses onomatopoeia words, alliterative words and loan words from phonetics perspective and compares the way they are formed. For onomatopoeia words in Chinese and Tibetan, the paper discusses their structure, word form, systematicness and the external factors. For alliterative word comparison, the derivation strategy of disyllable, trisyllable and quadrisyllable words in Tibetan is revealed and it is proved that some of the trisyllable words derive directly from root instead of all coming from quadrisyllable words. According to the strategy comparison, alliterative words whose syllable consists of both initial consonant and compound vowel differ Chinese and Tibetan from other language families. Chinese and Tibetan have a lot in common in the way they bring in loan words and morphemication of loan words. This phenomenon probably has something to do with monosyllabism of the two languages.Finally, the thesis probes into the feasibility of comparative study on word-formation of Chinese and Tibetan. It points out that word-formation which is very stable can be separated from grammar structure and there are some common features between Chinese and Tibetan in word-formation of polysyllabic words, for example, monosyllabism, common compound word structure and syntactic structure. Besides, morphemes in both Chinese and Tibetan possess high independence and composability. The paper also compares the word-formation in Chinese and Tibetan with compounding, derivation, word reduplication and phonetic-based word formation in languages from other families so as to explore common features of polysyllabic words in Chinese and Tibetan from a wider perspective and provide some clues for the kin relationship of Sino-Tibetan family.The thesis breaks new grounds in that it describes systematically and in chapter the word-formation of polysyllabic words in Chinese and Tibetan, finds out and explains the similarities and difference in word-formation. Moreover, it further highlights the similarities by comparing their word-formation characters with these in other languages. To investigate whether word-formation can serve to prove kin relationship between languages, the paper studies the Sino-Tibetan affiliation from a new angle--word-formation perspective.The research is significant in several aspects. First, by means of describing and comparing the word-formation of polysyllabic words in Chinese and Tibetan, it explores the common and individual characters of the two languages in word-formation, thus providing original analysis materials for Sino-Tibetan affiliation. Second, it discusses whether word-formation can be used to judge language kin relationship as corresponding phonetics and paronym do.