Wordhood and Disyllabicity in Chinese

doi:10.1017/9781108329019.005

3 - Wordhood and Disyllabicity in Chinese

from Part Two - Morpho-lexical Issues in Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022

Edited by

I-Hsuan Chen and

Chu-Ren Huang: Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yen-Hwei Lin: Affiliation:
Michigan State University
I-Hsuan Chen: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Yu-Yin Hsu: Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Summary

Words pose a theoretical challenge in Chinese, but words pose a challenge in any language. Even though Chinese is written with monosyllabic, monomorphemic characters and no overt word boundaries, there is as much evidence here as there is in English or any other language for a level between the morpheme and the phrase, interfacing between the lexicon and the grammar. Yet their interface role makes words dynamic things, subject to distinct and often conflicting constraints from processing, semantics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. To emphasize the universality of this situation, the chapter starts with a quick look at the dynamic nature of English words before turning to focus on Chinese words, which a wide variety of data reveal as surprisingly English-like, including a strong preference for disyllabicity. The chapter ends by sketching a formalism that may help capture the universal yet dynamic nature of wordhood, showing how it helps account for some of the Chinese facts.

Keywords

wordhood disyllabicity psycholinguistics computer modeling grammatical analysis

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics , pp. 47 - 73

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108329019.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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