Regularity and idiomaticity in Chinese separable verbs

Abstract

This paper deals with the lexical representation of Chinese Separable Verbs (thereafter SVs) within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). We argue that SVs are syntactically flexible, but semantically decomposable or non-decomposable expressions, which are similar to the idiomatic expressions in English. For decomposable SVs, we specify the verbal parts of SVs selecting the nominal parts via the LID feature proposed by Sag (2007a). For decomposable SVs, we introduce a special lexical entry of the head verb to specify the idiomatic meaning with the co-occurring nominal part. For non-decomposable SVs, the syntactic structure is represented as a head-complement- phrase consisting of the head verb and the complement with an empty slash value. The meaning of idiomatic SVs is represented at the head. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.