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Do you have any examples of multisyllable words in Mandarin which don't break down like this? I have yet to find one. Note that just because a word is a compou

Do you have any examples of multisyllable words in Mandarin which don't break down like this? I have yet to find one. Note that just because a word is a compound word doesn't mean it's not a word. A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts; otherwise it wouldn't be used. But the meaning of a picture book museum, or fly machine, or language law, though, is still quite clear. But a library has nothing to do with lies or bras, and the last syllable isn't even a valid word. ('Airport's not a good example in English because it actually is a compound word. Contrast with 'sea port'.)

foldr 10y ago
>A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. And yes, there are plenty of examples of compounds with meanings that have nothing to do with their components, e.g.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are independently meaningful, it's easy to tell yourself some kind of story about how they actually do contribute something to the meaning of the whole. Similarly, there are cranks who insist that particular non-morphemic sound sequences in English carry an independent meaning. It really is amazing how confused people can get by orthography. Chinese has words composed of multiple syllables whose parts are not independently meaningful. Period. Again, this is information that's available all over the place, e.g.: http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html Or from Wikipedia: >The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.[b] Or here: http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklingid=200365409 http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklin...
- david-given 10y ago
  > Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. ...but I never said it didn't. I think you're trying to respond to a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm not trying to say that Chinese only has single-syllable words. I'm saying that it has multisyllable words made up out of single syllable words --- that's what compound words are. All the examples you've given are clearly compound words, including 'flower born' (which I'll admit is not very like a peanut). The article you just linked to uses jī as an example of a word which is only used to make up compound words. But they're still compound words. jī has a meaning of its own (well --- several meanings, depending on context). You glue it together with another word to produce a compound word with additional meaning. That's pretty much the definition of a compound word. I don't know where you're going here --- sorry.
  - foldr 10y ago
    >But they're still compound words. Only in an orthographic sense. For example, the linguist list post that I linked to talks about the bound morpheme -zi. This is written using the character which in classical Chinese was the word for 'child'. But clearly there's no sense in which 'zhuozi' (table) is a "compound word" containing the word for child. It's just that since the final syllable of the word happens to be pronounced the same way as the classical Chinese word for child, it's written using that character. This is a purely orthographic fact. And in fact 'zi' cannot be used by itself as a noun in modern Chinese (except in a few fixed idioms). It's as if English (a) was written like (b): (a) I realize that. (b) I real eyes that. And we then said that 'realize' is a compound word made up of the monosyllabic words 'real' and 'eyes' (which of course "have a different meaning depending on the context").

foldr 10y ago

>A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. And yes, there are plenty of examples of compounds with meanings that have nothing to do with their components, e.g.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are independently meaningful, it's easy to tell yourself some kind of story about how they actually do contribute something to the meaning of the whole. Similarly, there are cranks who insist that particular non-morphemic sound sequences in English carry an independent meaning. It really is amazing how confused people can get by orthography. Chinese has words composed of multiple syllables whose parts are not independently meaningful. Period. Again, this is information that's available all over the place, e.g.: http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html Or from Wikipedia: >The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.[b] Or here: http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklingid=200365409 http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details1.cfm?asklin...

david-given 10y ago
> Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. ...but I never said it didn't. I think you're trying to respond to a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm not trying to say that Chinese only has single-syllable words. I'm saying that it has multisyllable words made up out of single syllable words --- that's what compound words are. All the examples you've given are clearly compound words, including 'flower born' (which I'll admit is not very like a peanut). The article you just linked to uses jī as an example of a word which is only used to make up compound words. But they're still compound words. jī has a meaning of its own (well --- several meanings, depending on context). You glue it together with another word to produce a compound word with additional meaning. That's pretty much the definition of a compound word. I don't know where you're going here --- sorry.
- foldr 10y ago
  >But they're still compound words. Only in an orthographic sense. For example, the linguist list post that I linked to talks about the bound morpheme -zi. This is written using the character which in classical Chinese was the word for 'child'. But clearly there's no sense in which 'zhuozi' (table) is a "compound word" containing the word for child. It's just that since the final syllable of the word happens to be pronounced the same way as the classical Chinese word for child, it's written using that character. This is a purely orthographic fact. And in fact 'zi' cannot be used by itself as a noun in modern Chinese (except in a few fixed idioms). It's as if English (a) was written like (b): (a) I realize that. (b) I real eyes that. And we then said that 'realize' is a compound word made up of the monosyllabic words 'real' and 'eyes' (which of course "have a different meaning depending on the context").