The 生 shēng/sheng Complex Words in Chinese between Morphology and Semantics

In the long history of the Chinese language we may find a number of complex words with the morph ည shng, meaning “to be / to be by nature”, as one of their constituents. For some instances of ည shng (also in the neutral tone) in such words, this morph may be regarded as a suffix-like formative, derivating nouns (such as e.g. in ሌည xinsheng “sir, mr.”, lit. “born earlier”, ኧည xuésheng “student”, “study + scholar”, ጛည yshng “physician”, “medicine + professional”), verbs (߲ည chshng “to be born”, “go out + be born”) and adverbs (ੑ ည hoshng “quite, exceedingly”, “quite + very”). There are also instances, albeit rare and non-productive, of ည shng being used as a prefix-like element, specifically as an intensifier preceding verbs of perception (as in e.g. ညᄅ shng téng “very painful”). Here we shall first analyze and describe, basing on historical data, the nature and the importance of complex words with ည shng; in a typological-comparative perspective, we shall then turn to the examination of “parallel” complex words of some Indo-European languages, where one of the consitutents is a grammatical / lexical form which may be traced back to one of the two I.E. roots *h1es- / *s- and *bhweh2-, whose original meaning is “to be / to be by nature”, just as the Chinese morph under examination here. Excluding, for obvious reasons, genealogical kinship between Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European languages, the fact that they have parallel morphological phenomena hints to the possibility of the existence of “semantic universals” operating at a cognitive level.