Tautological Compounds：Examples in Chinese

WU Xiaojing
Peking University

Tautological compounds form a special type of the reduandant/ploenastic compounds. If they are rare in your language, you might be surprised to see a lot of them in Chinese. Examples given below are grouped into four subtypes.

Entity_Entity
goudu (ditch): gou ditch, du ditch
ziji (self): zi self, ji self
yiyi (meaning): yi sense, yi meaning
shengyin (sound): sheng sound, yin sound
chengshi (town/city): cheng town, shi city
tudi (earth/soil): tu earth/soil, di earth/soil

Quality_Quality
yonggan (brave): yong brave, gan bold
nuoruo (weak): nuo feeble, ruo weak
meili (beautiful): mei beautiful, li pretty-looking
qiguai (strange): qi strange, guai odd
fengfu (abundant): feng abundant, fu rich

Action_Action
tingzhi (stop): ting cease, zhi stop
jixu (continue): ji go on, xu continue
bangzhu (help): bang help, zhu assist
xuanze (choose): xuan choose, ze select
youyong (swim): you swim, yong swim
zhixiao (know): zhi know, xiao know

Mode_Mode
huxiang (each other): hu each other, xiang each other
yongjiu (forever): yong forever, jiu for a long time
bixu (must): bi must/necessarily, xu must/necessarily
gangcai (just now): gang just now, cai just now
jiaru (if): jia if, ru if
zicong (since): zi from/since, cong from/since

It is hard to decide which constituent is X and which is Y since both constituents are synonyms and the combined form remains synonymous to each of them. One of my assumptions about this type of compounds is that one of the two constituents, somewhere in the history, was chosen as the duplicatum of which the other constituent was the duplicant.

Historical motivations, however, have become vague. What can be made certain now is that 1) they are compound words; 2) each constituent can be considered as X or Y to the other, since they are synonyms; 3) the whole is less ambiguous than the parts when they stand alone.
There might have been, among other things, some social motivations urging people to expand a certain set of words into the XY Structure, i.e., to insert a friendly interface which could facilitate communication between regional dialects. Take zhixiao (know) for example, zhi and xiao, both meaning ‘know’, come from different regional dialects. When a native speaker of zhi spoke to a native speaker of xiao, he or she would presumably say zhi and immediately make it easier for the hearer by saying xiao. Native speakers of xiao might 1) in turn accommodate the native speaker of zhi by saying zhixiao, 2) treat zhi as a borrowed item and make it more transparent by saying zhixiao, or 3) take both 1) and 2) into consideration and accept zhixiao as a whole.

The friendly interface might be also needed between social dialects. For example, communication between the educated and the uneducated could create some expressions that were pleasant to both sides. One of the results was the appearance of some tautological compounds (most probably phrases from the very beginning) each of which consist of a more learned word and a less learned word. We can imagine that when an educated speaker talk to an uneducated hearer, the former would, in order to make himself well understood, use easier words to repeat the meaning of the more learned ones which served as markers of his own identity. In other words, tautological compounds form a friendly intermediate level between the more technical (and often more formal) level and the less technical (and often less formal) level. For example, goudu is less formal (and more transparent) than du and more formal (and less transparent) than gou (ditch).

As I know, there are not many tautological compounds in English (See Adams 1973, Bauer 1983. Also see Sauer 1985, Liberman 2006). It does not necessarily mean that English does not like the XY Structure. In fact, we often come across expressions like PIN number, rules and regulations. PIN Number belongs to the variant form xy. Rules and regulations belongs to the variant form x…y, even though it is not clear which one was originally treated as x/y, the duplicatum/duplicant.

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Originally uploaded (at 10:53 Feb. 16, 2007) to http://www.linguaroom.com, which will expire soon.