An Analysis of Myanmar Compound Nouns and The Right­-hand Head Rule

Abstract

Noun is the very basic category in the study of language and compounding is an important method to build more words in a language. Among compound words, the compound noun seems to be more productive than other compounds. After studying the compound nouns in English and their formations, I developed a desire to analyze the compound nouns in Myanmar, my native language. This thesis analyzes the compound nouns in Myanmar in the order of their formation patterns, the hierarchical order among compounding members when compounding, and whether they obey the Right-­hand Head Rule. While I was analyzing it, I noticed a lot of differences between English and Myanmar, exceptional cases and very interesting combination patterns of the Myanmar compound nouns. There are six different ways to form the Myanmar compound nouns in general. There are from at least two compound members to five compound members in the Myanmar compound nouns. These compound members may be the same parts of speech or the different parts of speech of noun, adjective and verb. There are totally 24 different patterns as the number of compound members and the combination order are different. The interesting point is that the combination pattern of 'noun and adjective', and 'verb and verb' can become compound nouns in Myanmar. The compound nouns which obey the Right-­hand Head Rule is quite more than those which do not obey RHR in Myanmar. I hope this thesis helps those who want to know about the Myanmar language and those who want to do more on the Myanmar compound nouns.