Analysis of Splitable Compounds (离合词liheci) in Mandarin Chinese and Comparable Grammatical Units

Abstract

Academic studies often explain the usage patterns of separable words (离合词 liheci) in Mandarin Chinese by stating that, when other semantic constituents, such as noun modifiers, verb complements, or aspect markers, are present, they must be inserted between the two morphemes of the separable word. However, in this language corpus, separable words were found to appear as post-elements in certain contexts. Based on this linguistic phenomenon, the aims of this study were: 1) to investigate the use of separable words as post-elements, 2) to analyze their syntactic characteristics at the sentence level, and 3) to discuss notable findings arising from the analysis. The methodology comprised an analysis of separable words functioning as post-elements, as identified from the new Level 1–9 HSK test manual according to specific criteria; an examination of grammatical units comparable to these separable words at the sentence level; and a discussion of notable findings from the study.

The findings showed that the post-elements of separable words may take the form of a noun, a predicate, or a clause. When these final units co-occur with separable words at the sentence level, the separable words function in ways that are comparable to other grammatical units.