Compounds are often characterized as a word composed of more than one word (or free morpheme), but Japanese exhibits compounding of two bound morphemes as well. A productive example is found in two-character Sino-Japanese VNs of the pattern“verbal morpheme + nominal morpheme”. Such VNs range from those that are highly productively expandable to those of low productivity, but as one example of high productivity, we can point to the patternrai-Xmeaning‘come to some country
or city’(Sibata 1978). As long as there is a place name that can be represented by a single character“X”, the possibilities are unlimited. All of these can be used with suru‘do’suffixed.
(11) a. Cities:rai-han来阪 ‘come to Osaka’,rai-sin来神 ‘come to Kobe or Kanagawa’,rai-yoo来葉‘come to Chiba’,rai-huku来福‘come to Fukuoka or Fukushima’,rai-satu来札‘come to Sapporo’
b. Countries and states:rai-niti来日 ‘come to Japan’,rai-bei来米 ‘come to the U.S.A.’,rai-hutu来仏‘come to France’,rai-ei来英 ‘come to England’, rai-goo来豪 ‘come to Australia’,rai-in来印 ‘come to India’,rai-hu来布
‘come to Hawai‘i’,rai-ka来加‘come to California’
On the other hand, two-character words of the pattern“satu‘kill’+ noun (target of killing)” are not very productive. Words of this pattern include sak-kin [kill- microbe]‘sterilize’,satu-zin[kill-person]‘murder’,sas-so[kill-rat], andsat-tyuu[kill- insect], but of these only sak-kin can function as a verb by attaching suru as in sakkin-suru‘sterilize’. Sincesatuzin‘murder’can be used in a collocation likesatuzin o okasu‘commit murder’, but not withsuruas *satuzin-suru, it is considered to be a noun, not a VN. Furthermore,sasso and sattyuu are bound roots and in order to stand as a word require support from a following element as insasso-zai[kill.rat- drug] ‘rat poison’ or sattyuu-ki [kill.insect-container] ‘bug zapper’. In spite of the limited productivity, it is clear that VNs of the formsatu-Xinvolve a morphologically transparent structure comprising two bound morphemes. The internal structure ofkango and their productivity will be further discussed in Chapter 3 (Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, this volume).
As we saw above, both independent words and non-independent bound roots can participate to varying degrees in word formation in Japanese. Bearing this fact in mind, let us examine some concrete examples of compounding. In compounds of the pattern“X-Y”, the part of speech of the compound as a whole is archetypically determined by lexical category of the element that comes after. For example, in hude-bako‘pencil box’(N-N), nage-nawa‘lasso’ (V-N), and naga-banasi ‘long talk’ (A-N), the categories of thefirst element are all different (N, V, and A), but, since the second elements are all N, the whole combination is a compound noun. Rephras- ing, the right-hand element is the head that determines the lexical category of the whole compound (there are also quite a few examples that do not follow this“right- hand head rule”and they will be discussed in Chapter 6 [Namiki and Kageyama, this volume]).
The examples given in (12) through (14) all have right-hand heads that determine the category of the compound and transparent internal semantic relations.
Vocabulary strata and word formation processes 33
(12) Compound nouns
a. Native: N-Nhude-bako‘pencil box’, VINF-Nnage-nawa[throw-rope]‘lasso’
ASTEM-Nnaga-banasi‘long talk’
b. Sino-Japanese:zen-zitu[previousBOUND-dayBOUND]‘previous day’,koo-en [publicBOUND-gardenBOUND]‘park’,denki-zidoosya[electric-car],yuumei- haiyuu[famous-actor],kokusai-kankei[internationalBOUND-relation]
c. Foreign:geemu-sentaa[game-center]‘amusement arcade’,onrain-geemu
‘online game’,sohuto-tenisu[soft-tennis]‘soft-ball tennis’
d. Mimetics:garagara-pon[rattle-pop]‘lottery wheel’,don-pati[bang-flick]
‘gun battle’ (13) Compound verbs/VNs
a. Native: N-Vnami-ut(u)[wave-hit]‘to wave, ripple’, VINF-Vnagare-oti(ru) [flow-fall]‘toflow down’, Adv-Vsaki-basir(u)[ahead-run]‘to jump the gun’
b. Sino-Japanese:syuk-ka (suru)[break.outBOUND-fireBOUND(do)]‘outbreak of fire’,doku-syo (suru)[readBOUND-bookBOUND(do)]‘book-reading’,enkaku- soosa (suru)[remote-control (do)]‘remote control’
c. Foreign:reberu-appu (suru)[level-up (do)]‘improve’ (14) Compound adjectives/ANs
a. Native: N-Ahara-guro(i)[heart-black]‘black-hearted’, ASTEM-Ahoso-naga(i) [thin-long]‘long and narrow’, VINF-Amusi-atu(i)[steam-hot]‘sultry’, N-AN hude-mame[pen-be.diligent]‘be a good correspondent’
b. Sino-Japanese: N-ANisi-hakuzyaku[will-weak]‘weak-willed’, VN-AN kokyuu-konnan[breathing-hard]‘difficult breathing’
As contrasted with the examples of hybrid compounds combining words of different vocabulary strata given in Table 2, the examples presented in (12), (13), and (14) are intended to illustrate combinations from the same vocabulary stratum, i.e.wago+ wago, kango + kango, foreign + foreign, and mimetic + mimetic. Considering the vocabulary strata involved, while compound nouns (12) allow all four strata, since mimetics do not function alone as predicates, they do not appear in compounds that do function as predicates, namely compound verbs or VNs (13) or compound adjectives or ANs (14), which are restricted to thewago,kango, and foreign strata.
According to Lieber (1992), in English, compound nouns are plentiful but the productivity of verb-based compounds is low. Compared to this, it is a characteristic of Japanese that not only are compound nouns productive but also compound verbs and compound adjectives are also highly productive as categories that can stand
alone as predicates (Kageyama 2009). Moreover, as shown in (13a), a wide variety of categories can come before the V head in compound verbs, such as N innami-utu
‘wave, beat fast’, V in nagare-otiru ‘flow down’, and Adv in saki-basiru ‘be im- pertinent’, and as seen in (14a), a variety of categories can also appear before the A head in compound adjectives, such as N inhara-guroi‘black-hearted’, A (stem) in hoso-nagai‘long and slender’, and V (inf.) inmusi-atui‘sultry’. This word formation pattern seen in compound verbs and compound adjectives has been characteristic of Japanese since the time of Old Japanese (Sakakura 1966). Compound verbs of the pattern N-V will be discussed in Chapter 7 (Kageyama, this volume), the V-V pattern in Chapter 8 (Kageyama, this volume), and compound nouns will be covered in Chapter 9 (Yumoto, this volume).