Words vs phrases
Defining 'word'
In Mandarin Chinese, a native (grammatical) word is a lexeme realised by
Tip
In pre-modern Chinese, the lemmata in commentaries are probably the best
evidence we have for the native speakers' intuition in the matter of
wordhood.
- a free morph or
- a fossilised compound of two or more morphs or
- a compound of a bound root as head and a word as dependent or
- a fossilised NP.
Implementation
Huang–Shih §8.5.1 gives up trying to distinguish between compounds and NPs; Chang
(p. 273) meekly accepts Lü's arbitrary rule. The following analysis implements
the defition above on Chang's examples:
|
人造 |
絲 |
| Rule 1 |
|
free morph |
|
adjective |
noun |
| NP |
complement |
head |
|
人造 |
纖維 |
| Rule 1 |
|
free morph (Japanese, 1897) |
|
adjective |
noun |
| NP |
complement |
head |
|
豆 |
製品 |
| Rule 3 |
word |
bound morph (Japanese, 1880) |
|
noun |
nominal bound root |
| noun |
dependent |
head |
|
生物 |
製品 |
| Rule 3 |
word |
bound morph (Japanese, 1880) |
|
noun |
nominal bound root |
| noun |
dependent |
head |
|
耐火 |
磚 |
| Rule 1 |
|
free morph |
|
adjective |
noun |
| NP |
complement |
head |
|
耐火 |
材料 |
|
|
word (s.xi) |
|
adjective |
noun |
| NP |
complement |
head |
|
自由 |
泳 |
| Rule 3 |
word |
bound morph |
|
adjective |
nominal bound root |
| noun |
dependent |
head |
|
自由 |
體操 |
| Rule 1 |
|
free morph (Japanese, 1887) |
|
adjective |
noun |
| NP |
complement |
head |
and for examples in Huang–Shih §3.4.2:
|
光 |
線 |
| Rule 1 |
|
free morph |
| fossilised NP (1761) |
complement |
head |
| Rule 4 |
|
|
|
水 |
土 |
| fossilised (Chou) |
morph |
morph |
| Rule 2 |
|
|