How to distinguish morphemes, words and phrases?
Make clear the concepts of the three first.
In modern Chinese, morpheme is the smallest phonetic and semantic combination and the smallest language unit. "A language fragment, divided layer by layer, is divided into the smallest unit that can no longer be divided, which is morpheme." ①
A word is the smallest language unit that expresses a certain meaning, has a fixed phonetic form and can be used independently.
A phrase is a combination of two or more substantive words, which is a language unit larger than a word but smaller than a sentence.
For example, the Chinese nation has a long history.
Divided into morphemes:
China people, China people, nationality and furniture have a long history.
Divided into words:
The Chinese nation has a long history.
If divided by phrases, it can be divided into phrases such as "Chinese nation", "long history", "long history" and "Chinese nation has a long history".
It can be seen that words are composed of morphemes and phrases are composed of words. The three are closely related and have different boundaries. The relationship between morphemes and words, words and phrases is discussed below.
Let's talk about the relationship between morphemes and words, and then look at the following four groups of language units:
(a), heaven, earth, people, cattle, horses, walking, eating, big, red, one, two.
(2), swing, spider, lingering, wandering, absurd, rose, bat, sister-in-law.
(3), grapes, poker, humor, fascism, aspirin, Bolshevik.
(4) Teeth, phrases, fat people, improvement, boats, timidity, sadness.
The 1 1 units in the first group are all composed of one syllable, which is the smallest phonetic semantic combination and morpheme.
The nine units in the second group are all composed of two syllables. If these two syllables are separated, they all lose their meaning and cannot be regarded as morphemes. The combination of the two makes sense and can be regarded as a morpheme.
The six units in the third group are all transliterated from foreign languages. Like the second group, they all lose their meaning after splitting, so some of them are composed of multiple syllables, but they are still only one morpheme.
The above three groups of morphemes can be used freely, so they are all words composed of one morpheme, which are called simplex words.
The fourth group of seven linguistic units can be divided into two meaningful units, that is, they are composed of two morphemes. A word consisting of two or more morphemes is called a compound word.
So what is the fundamental difference between words and morphemes? The difference is whether you can use it freely.
The so-called "free use" refers to the independent generalization of objective things, phenomena and concepts and their independent use in sentence-making. For example, in the fourth group above, although "tooth" and "tooth" are morphemes, they are essentially different. In modern Chinese, we can say "He is brushing his teeth" and "My toothache is coming again". But you can't say "he's brushing his teeth",
My tooth hurts again. It can be seen that "tooth" can be used freely and is a word; But "tooth" can't be used casually, it's a morpheme. Similarly, Wei in greatness, woman in us and towel are not free to use, but only morphemes, not words. On the contrary, "Da", "I" and "Mao" are not only morphemes, but also morphemes that can be used freely, that is, words.
Therefore, whether words can be used freely is the fundamental boundary between words and morphemes. ②
On the relationship between words and phrases. The difference between words and phrases can be explained in two ways:
First, from the perspective of grammatical structure, words are ready-made and stereotyped; Phrases are temporary and extensible.
No matter how many syllables and structures a word has, it is used as a ready-made single unit to make sentences. On the other hand, phrases are temporary combinations and can be expanded. Syntactic rules can only act on phrases, not on the inside of words. For example, "new workers" can be expanded to "new workers" and "glorious greatness" can be expanded to "glorious greatness" and "glorious greatness". But "worker" cannot be extended to "worker" and "worker's woman", nor can "glory" and "greatness" be extended to "glory" and "greatness".
Secondly, from the aspect of sound and form, there is no pause in words and there is pause in phrases. Try to compare "things" as words (referring to things) and "things" as phrases (referring to east and west). The pronunciation of the former (d not d not dō ngxi) has a fixed structure, and "Xi" reads softly without stopping in the middle. In the latter, "Xi" is not pronounced softly, and its grammatical structure is not very fixed, allowing a pause in the middle, which can also be said to be "something". So words like "wooden box" and "rubber wheel" are words, while "wooden box" and "rubber wheel" are phrases; "Party branch secretary" and "Communist Youth League Committee" are words, and "Party branch secretary" and "Communist Youth League Committee" are phrases.
The most commonly used method to distinguish words and phrases is "insertion expansion method".
If a language unit is inserted into another language unit to expand it without changing its original meaning, the language unit will
Not words, but phrases; If the meaning changes or becomes meaningless, it is a word, not a phrase. For example, the words "red flower" and "green leaf" in "red flower is good, but it needs the support of green leaves" can be inserted into "red" or "color" and expanded into "red flower" and "green leaf", and their meanings have not changed. "Red flowers" and "green leaves" in this sentence are phrases. The meaning of "safflower is a precious medicinal material" will change if "colored" is added, so "safflower" in this sentence is a word, not a phrase. Similarly, "handle" as a tool name is a word, while "handle" representing an action is a phrase. Look at the following two sets of examples:
(1) Blackboard, white characters, flesh and blood, playground, headache and manuscript paper
(2) White walls, white flowers, flesh and blood, tigers, sore hands and writing letters.
Can you tell which words are? What phrases are there? I believe you can clearly distinguish between insertion and expansion.
However, there are certain conditions for distinguishing words and phrases through insertion and expansion:
1. The inserted language unit must be a direct component at the same structural level. For example, "people and businessmen" cannot be inserted between "workers" and expanded to "workers and businessmen".
2. It is necessary to be able to insert different language units continuously in order to accurately judge whether it can be extended. For example, you can insert "no" or "de" in the middle of "see", but you can't continue to insert other components because it is still a word, not a phrase.
Grammatical units are large and small. The largest grammatical unit is a sentence, and the smaller grammatical units are phrases, words and morphemes in turn. Human language is a combination of sound and meaning, which is the basic feature of grammatical units. Morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit, that is, the smallest combination of pronunciation and semantics. Let's look at the following sentence: He is sitting on the sofa reading a book. This is the largest grammatical unit. We divide it as small as possible, and it becomes: every part he cuts from the book is meaningful and can't be divided any more. It is a morpheme. The "sofa" here is just a morpheme, which is a transliteration of English sofa, expressing the same meaning, so it can't be segmented. This shows that morphemes have two characteristics: first, they are the smallest and inseparable; One is meaningful. Monosyllabic words in Mandarin do not exceed 1400, and morphemes are much larger than this number. Why? Because a syllable must represent many different meanings. For example, the syllable xοon can express several morphemes such as "Xin (hard work), Xin (new person), Xin (heart), Zn (zinc mine), salary (salary), Xin (fragrance) and Xin (joy). Because Chinese characters are not pinyin characters, syllables X and N are written in different forms, which has done the work of morpheme analysis for us. However, it cannot be said that a word of a Chinese character is a morpheme. The relationship between the form, sound, meaning and morphemes of a Chinese character is as follows, except that a syllable represents several morphemes, which can be represented by several Chinese characters respectively. A Chinese character represents several different morphemes and reads the same sound. For example, the word "fu" can represent three morphemes: "fu ①", which means the second and second meanings, such as "deputy director" and "non-staple food"; "Deputy ②" means proportionality, such as "the name is not true"; "Deputy ③" means the unit of measurement of something, such as "a pair of gloves" and "a stretcher". A syllable represents only one morpheme and is written as a Chinese character. For example: shé i-who, Z Ο n-How, wá-wa, sēng-monk, hé n-mark, cé-extremely. There are few examples of this situation. A morpheme can be represented by different Chinese characters. For example, the word "search" of "set" can be written as "Lu" and the awakened "Su" can be written as "Su", which is the so-called variant. Several different syllables representing different morphemes are written in the same Chinese character. For example: chā- poor (poor), chà-poor (poor), chāI- poor (poor), cā- poor (uneven). A syllable, written as a Chinese character, can contain two morphemes. For example, "two (li)" and "three (sā)" have only one syllable, but in fact they all contain two morphemes, namely "two"; "Three" means "three". Some Chinese characters are meaningless and do not represent any morphemes. For example: Portugal, grapes, witches and anchovies ... some Chinese characters represent morphemes in some cases, but they do not represent morphemes in some cases. For example, "Sha, Fa, Qiao, Li, Ma, Ke and Da" are morphemes respectively; In "sofa", "chocolate" and "motor", they are just a syllable symbol, not a morpheme. Morphemes can be divided into monosyllabic morphemes, disyllabic morphemes and polysyllabic morphemes. Examples are as follows. Monosyllabic morphemes: heaven, earth, people, running, jumping, singing, red, white, people, friends, thinking ... There are thousands of these morphemes. Disyllabic morphemes, mainly ancient Lianmian characters and transliterated loanwords. Lian Mian's words, such as: hesitation, confusion, gourd, grapes, hesitation, wandering; Transliterate loanwords, such as pipa, nylon, coffee and khaki. Polysyllabic morphemes are mainly transliterated loanwords. For example: vaseline, Olympiad, Bolshevik. Some monosyllabic morphemes can be used independently, so they can become words independently. For example, morphemes like "Man, Run, Me, La, Red ……" are called "morphemes". Others can't be used independently, so they can't become words independently. Morphemes such as "people, friends, machines ……" are called "morphemes without words". A morpheme cannot be a word alone, and it can never be a word; A morpheme that can become a word independently cannot guarantee that it is a word at any time and any occasion. For example, the word "ren" in "ren" is not a word, but it appears here in the form of morpheme, which is a component of the word "ren" and cannot be separated or inserted with other components. It is worth noting that a few morphemes cannot form words independently, or their positions are often fixed when they are combined with other morphemes. For example: first, boss, amao, scissors, paintings, stones, and us. The positions of "head, old, a, Yu, er, head and son" are fixed in front or behind and cannot be changed. We call such morphemes additional elements, and some people call them affixes. Although the meaning of this additional ingredient is not so obvious, it is different from the previous words "Portugal, grapes, witches and Pteris". The former is vague and the latter is meaningless. Morphemes that can form words independently, the extension of words and morphemes are coincident. A morpheme and a word, such a word is called a simplex word, which is composed of a morpheme. Its structure is simple and there is no need for further study. Morphemes that cannot be independently formed into words can be combined with other morphemes to form a word, which is what we call compound words. Here are some examples about the structural relations of compound words. First, two morphemes are combined into words according to a certain relationship. This combination is called compounding. It can be divided into six forms: 1. The relationship between the two morphemes is equal, regardless of primary or secondary, and is joint. For example, a friend's language struggle is great and brave. Things will become unstable sooner or later. 2. There are primary and secondary morphemes, and there is a positive correlation between them. The former morpheme describes or restricts the latter morpheme: the advantages of trains and railways attach importance to snow-white as long as the stone tools are well-intentioned and enthusiastic. There is a dominant relationship between these two morphemes. The former morpheme indicates a behavior, and the latter morpheme indicates something dominated and influenced by this behavior. For example, the revolution took the lead in mobilizing a limited number of officers to tie their legs, be conservative, feel at ease, be faithful, lose faith, admit defeat and applaud. 4. The latter morpheme is the statement of the former morpheme, and there is a declarative relationship between them. For example: earthquake winter solstice, distressed youth, impatience, timidity, sunrise, palpitation and thirst, heavy civil desire, other answers ① have different definitions, and morphemes are the smallest combination of sounds and meanings, such as "person" and "glass"; A word is the smallest combination of sound and meaning that can be used independently, such as "person" and "book"; Phrases are language units equivalent to words, which are composed of words but larger than words, "English teachers" and "scientific research".
(2) Different functions. Morphemes are word-forming units, which cannot directly form sentences, that is, they cannot directly form any syntactic components. Only independent words or compound words can be used independently. For example, "Jian" and "She" are morphemes, so they can't be directly formed into sentences. Only when the word "see" is formed can a sentence be formed.
Words are sentence-making units, which directly form sentences, and can also be combined with other phrases to form sentences. For example, the phrase "flowers are blooming" is composed of three words: "flowers, flowers, flowers".
Phrases can also be used alone or directly into sentences. For example, "Chinese rose is in bloom" and "Chinese rose" is a phrase.
③ Different structures: morphemes cannot be divided into smaller grammatical units, such as "person" and "sofa".
A word is a larger grammatical unit composed of morphemes. For example, "person" is composed of two morphemes: person and person. But the text can't be expanded. For example, "Chinese cabbage" is a word and cannot be extended to "Chinese cabbage"
Phrases are composed of words, so they can be expanded. "White cloth" is a phrase that can be extended to "white cloth".