The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach

Contents

1. Introduction sample chapter (PDF format)
   1. Rationale: why investigate Chinese words?
   2. The scope of this work
2. Defining the word in Chinese
   1. What is a 'word'?: different views
      1. Orthographic word
      2. Sociological word
      3. Lexical word
      4. Semantic word
      5. Phonological word
      6. Morphological word
      7. Syntactic word
      8. Psycholinguistic word
   2. The Chinese concept of 'word'
      1. The reality of 'word' in Chinese
   3. How we will define 'word' in Chinese
3. Chinese word components
   1. Describing the components
      1. Possible descriptions
         1. Relational desciption
         2. Modification structure description
         3. Semantic description
         4. Syntactic description
         5. Form class description
   2. Form classes of the components
      1. Form class identities within words
   3. Criteria for determining form class of Chinese word components
   4. Morphological analysis of Chinese word components
      1. Distinguishing 'free' and 'bound'
      2. Distinguishing 'content' and 'function'
      3. Morpheme types
         1. Two types of affix
         2. Word-forming affixes vs. bound roots
      4. Summary and some test cases
         1. Determiners, classifiers and numerals
         2. Location morphemes
   5. The nature of the components
      1. Affixes as word components
      2. Bound roots as word components
      3. Free ('root') words as word components
4. Gestalt Chinese words
   1. Word types
   2. Nouns
      1. Noun types
         1. Noun compound words
         2. Noun bound root words
         3. Noun derived words
         4. Noun grammatical words
      2. N1-N 2 words: kinds of relations
   3. Verbs
      1. Verb types
         1. Verb compound words
         2. Verb bound root words
         3. Verb derived words
         4. Verb grammatical words
      2. V1-V2: kinds of relations
      3. Resultative verbs
         1. Three classes of resultatives
         2. Lexical resultatives vs. syntactic extent resultatives
         3. Other properties of resultatives
      4. Verb-Object words
         1. The problem
         2. Previous analyses
         3. A proposed solution
            1. The underlying lexical identity of V-O forms
            2. Lexicalization and phrase criteria
               1. Construal as either word or phrase
   4. Nouns and verbs by component form class: statistical tendencies
   5. Chinese words: special properties
      1. Other word properties: Y.R. Chao's insights
         1. Versatile-restricted
         2. Positionally free or bound
5. X-bar analysis of Chinese words
   1. Basic X-bar properties
   2. X-bar properties applied to words
      1. Expectations regarding 'X-bar' notation applied to words
   3. X-bar morphology: previous proposals
      1. Selkirk
      2. Sadock
      3. Other proposals
         1. Scalise
         2. Di Sciullo and Williams
      4. Discussion of Selkirk and Sadock
         1. Problems with the Selkirk proposal
            1. The limited role of X^-1
            2. Lexical listing of predictable information
      5. Previous X-bar analyses of Chinese words
         1. Tang
         2. Sproat and Shih
   4. An alternative proposal for Chinese X-bar morphology
   5. The concept of 'head' applied to Chinese words
   6. The proposed analysis applied to English
6. Lexicalization and Chinese words
   1. Lexicalization and the relationship between word and constituent
   2. Lexicalization and the availability of word-internal information
   3. Lexicalization and grammaticalization
   4. Lexicalization and the formation of new words
7. Chinese words and the lexicon
   1. What is 'the lexicon'?
   2. The lexicon and lexical access
   3. Lexical access in Chinese
      1. Chinese speech comprehension and the lexicon
      2. Chinese speech production and the lexicon
      3. Experimental evidence demonstrating whole-word processing
   4. The Chinese lexicon: what is 'listed'?
      1. What is 'listed'?: a proposal
   5. Chinese characters and the lexicon
      1. Character sound and meaning ocme from the natural speech lexicon
      2. How do characters access the lexicon?
      3. Is Chinese writing 'ideographic'?
8. Chinese words: conclusions
   1. What have we discovered about words?
   2. The reality of the 'word'

• References
• Index