Separable Word Usage in Chinese with Particular Reference to the Verb Liuxue (留学)

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  • 中国語の離合詞の用法について : 動詞"留学"をめぐる問題
  • チュウゴクゴ ノ リゴウシ ノ ヨウホウ ニ ツイテ : ドウシ"リュウガク"オ メグル モンダイ

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A Chinese separable word is a verb which appears to be a single word but can be separated into two parts, with other words in between. The verb “liuxue” (留学) is a separable word which can be turned into a grammatical phrase “liuguo xue” (留过学) through the addition of an aspectual particle after its verb part. However, “liuxueguo” (留学过) is also considered grammatical by many Chinese native speakers. Besides, the verb “liuxue” is the type of separable words which can take objects, but it can only take country names such as “China” and “Japan”. Rather the constructs with city names as its objects such as “*liuxue Beijing” (留学北京) are ungrammatical. This difference in grammaticality results from the motivation to set boundaries. This paper attempts to analyze such syntactic phenomena with the focus on the usages of the separable word “liuxue”.

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