I may just be misunderstanding the etymology of certain words, but I think of
certain jukugo e.g. 「大学生」as being derived from patterns like 「大 **学** の **学**
生」, where there is a kanji-level shiritori, leading to a single occurrence of
overlapping kanji when the two are merged. Is this merely a misconception on
my part, where in fact it is properly treated as 「（学）～生」applied to 「大学」; or is
this actually valid?

* * *

In general, is there a [name for the] phenomenon where jukugo consisting of
several atoms have certain kanji elided (*but not as in the case of 「東京大学＞東大」)
?

Other examples that I would tentatively cite as possible examples of this
unverified pattern would be cases where duplicated/overlapping kanji are
elided, such as:

  * 「新入部員」(new club member) = 「新 _入_ 」+「 _入_ **部** 」+「 **部** 員」 (newly enter + enter a club + club member) 
    * If this is not the case, would it be 「新-」+「入部」+「～員」, or something between the two?

or cases where non-overlapping kanji are elided such as in

  * 「 **入院** 」=「[病] **院** に **入** ること」, as opposed to 「×入病院」?
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2017-05-24T21:38:25.380
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kanji etymology compounds morphology linguistics
Analyzing breakdown of jukugo
I've never thought about the structure of a _jukugo_ before, but I find it
very interesting.

As for 新入部員, I think another interpretation like: 「新入」 _newly
entered/entering_ + 「部員」 _club member_.

I searched for something relating to this topic on the Internet, and I found
some of them [here](http://neccoya.com/Japanese/kanji/kanji302.html).

But I couldn't find the article that explains the way of making _jukugo_ by
eliding _kanji_ s; I would call it an " ** _Eliding Technique_** or _Shritori
Technique_ " only in this answer.

Based on your Technique I recalled several _jukugo_ s like
営業部部長⇔営業部長、横浜市市長⇔横浜市長、町内会会長⇔町内会長.

As for 営業部部長 and 営業部長, both mean a general manager of the sales department. We
usually use 営業部長 based on your Technique but we use formally 営業部部長. When you
write 営業部部長, I recommend you to write it as 営業部 部長 by inserting a space
between the two words. So are the other examples other than the combination of
営業部部長 and 営業部長.

There are various commentaries and opinions, for example, [right
here](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11163386521)
about the difference between 営業部部長 and 営業部長, but I understand both phrases
have the **same meaning** and are used **as the same meaning** commonly.

It is obvious that these opinions on the Internet couldn't explain rightly the
cases of 横浜市市長⇔横浜市長、町内会会長⇔町内会長.

As for 営業部部長, in general, 営業部 is the name of an organization and 部長 is the
name of the position/post of the organization.

As the combinations of organization names and the posts of the organization
are almost eternity and there are a lot of examples where the last _kanji_ of
the organization name and the first _kanji_ of the post name are same, there
may be very many same cases that are managed by your **_Eliding Technique_**.
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The simple answer is: The assumption is incorrect. The merger of words does
not happen in the way you described. There are a huge number of patterns for
forming jukugo, some historical, some current and many not very logical, but
the one shown I never encountered.

In the case of 大学生 we know its ethymology.

学生 is the older word, commonly used at least since mmiddle Chinese. 大学生 was
created at the end 19th century in Japan when an equivalent for "universtiy
student" was needed. 大学 on the other hand is a shortening of 大学校 to 大学。Where
学校 is the older word (and used since middle Chinese).
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