Syntactic, phonological, and morphological words [PDF]

This universal definition assumes ru division between syntax, the component of grammar dealing with struc- tural levels

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Idea Transcript


i-l

Syntactic, phonological, and morphological words in Chinesel Iohn Xiang-Ling Dai

l.

Introduction

l(cscarch in Chinese grammar needs to make crucial reference to the ntrtion of word. This is not only true of Chinese morphology, or word lolrnation as represented in the current volume, but also true of the phorrology and syntax of the language. The point at issue is whether the rrotions of word are independent of each other in these three grammatical , omponents or whether the relationship among them is simply a one-to,rnc oorrespondence. In this paper, I motivate the independent notions of ,r ntactic word, phonological word, and morphological word in Mandarrrr Chinese, as these concepts have been proposed for other languages. Section 2 characterizes the notions of word cross-linguistically. After ,r rcview of previous investigation of words in Chinese in section 3, I ,l('vclop the notions of syntactic word (section 4), phonological word (seclrorr 5), and morphological word (section 6) for the language. SectionT ,,,rrsiders methodology for differentiating words in a phrase from morI'lrcrnes in a word. Theoretical, empirical, and methodological conse,lutrrces are discussed in section 8, concerning mismatches of words in , lrl icization and compounding.

.1.

'l'he notion of word in natural languages

llrt' nolion olword seems to be well-motivated and taken for granted in rr,rlrrrirl litnguage. For Bloomfield (1933: l7B), word is purely a syntactic ,rr,tr()n, clcfincd as a minimal free form. Following the lead of Lyons rl')(rli: (r9), Arrdcrson (1985: 152), and Zwicky (1990: 201), I maintain, lr,'11'1'yg'', tlrirt thc wrtrd is not a unified construct throughout grammar, ,rt rs rlrlhcr chlrnrctcrizccl as ccrtzLin domains within which rules of difI ri rrl lilirrttrrutticlrl corr;-loncnts rray upply (Dai 1990c:333).

-104

John Xiang-Ling Dai

Morphological words in Chinese 105

, A word may be the object of syntax, thus the term "syntagmatic unit,, (Sadock 1985, Di Sciullo and williams 19g7, Zwicky tiso: iotl.I call it the syntactic word. Th's, cat's in (r b) may be anaryiedas containing two syntactic words, car,which is the head N of the sutject Np, and 's, which is the auxiliary verb of the predicate vp, parallel ti cat rs in ( l a). (l

) a. The cat is going to eat. b.

The cat's going to eat.

A phonological word is a word-like prosodic domain in which certain automatic phonological rules2 may apply. These phonorogical rules are traditionally called internal sandhi irr.r, u, opposed to external (or phrasal) sandhi rules, which may apply across word boundaries.3 Theiefore, cat's in (l b) is one phonologicalword, evidenced by the applicability of a word-internal sandhi: lsl in cat's is voiceless, as opposed io lsl in cat rs, which is voiced. The phonological rule of devoicing assimilation applies within a word, the same domain as the voicing a'iternations of thc plural -s, possessive -'s, and third person singular piesent tense -s. Notc that catb as one phonorogical word to two syntactic words, "o.r"rponds overriding the default one-to-one mapping between them. In many other Ianguages, a word is phonologically mark.d. po. example, porish a worcl is usually penultimately accented; in czech, the acceni is on the word_

initial syllable. A word may also be the object of morphology. A morphologicar definition of word can be used for highly inflecting ranguages (Anderso' 1985: 153). The obligatory inflectional morphe-"s c"lose the word, "t*u-y, indicating the word class. In Latin, nouns are marked with case ancr number, and verbs with tense, mood, and voice. For instance, in bon,.-.; libro,s'good books' (accusative prural), two morphological words courrr be defined: bonots consists of the base bon andan endin! of case, numbcr and. gender of adjectives; ribro;s is composed of the base libr and arr ending of case and number. The term *ori i, thus used in the morphorogical or paradigmatic sense, parallel to the forms of a lexeme. I cail it trrc

morphological word. Thus for the remainder of this paper word as follows (cf. Dai 1990c: 333). (2)

A

I

characterize three notions .r-

syntactic word is a minimar constitr.rcnt to which synt.ctir. rules may refer; a pho'ologic,l w.rtl is ir cc'tiri'r prosticric tr.main in which intcrn.l pho''r

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