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Technically each character is a morpheme, not just a syllable—-a syllable is a unit of sound but a morpheme carries some meaning along with the sound. And in Ma

• bradrn 6y ago
  Syllables and morphemes are not the same! In Chinese languages, all (or nearly all) morphemes are syllables, but not all syllables are morphemes. From Li and Thompson’s Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar: > The relatedness between the meaning of a compound [i.e. bisyllabic word] and those of its components can vary from close to nonexistent … For example, qūzú ‘to chase’ is composed of two morphemes from Classical Chinese … neither of which exists any longer as a morpheme in modern Mandarin. That is, in many cases, the syllables of disyllabic Mandarin words are no longer synchronically analysable as morphemes, though at one point in the past it was possible to analyse them in this way. In this particular case, neither the character for qū nor the character for zú represents a morpheme, at least when used in this context.
  • canjobear 6y ago
    That's right, more properly stated, each character represents a morpheme in Classical Chinese, with a few exceptions for bimorphemic words like 蝴蝶 which are probably of foreign origin. There are also a few modern characters in informal use which indicate multiple syllables/morphemes like 圕 for "túshūguǎn".