A Study on the Combination of the “Artificial/Natural” Semantics in the Chinese NN Attributive-Head Compounds

The semantic combination within a compound word affects the characteristics of the whole word. This paper focuses on Chinese noun-noun attributive-head compounds, using “natural/artificial” as classification criteria, and utilizing the theory of qualia structure to explore the qualia relationship between components of compound words and their implicit predicates under consistent and inconsistent modes of semantic classification. The research indicates that there is a selection tendency between the qualia role played by attributive components in compound words and their implicit predicates. Additionally, the semantic type of constituents in a compound word can influence its overall semantic type; this in turn restricts the qualia relationship between constituents within a word and selection for implicit predicates.