Abstract:
The “word-based” theory is beneficial and instructive to Chinese study, but it is disputable whether its theoretical basis and hypothetical process adapt to the reality of the Chinese language and whether the theory can help get rid of a set of troubles caused by the difficulty in determining the basic unit of the Chinese language. For distinction between graphic and structural units, it is better to introduce two sets of terminology. The word as the mortheme is available in Chinese whereas the “expression” is only obtained through analysis of syntactic structure. Therefore, since the “word”(morpheme) is simply a unit in stock but the “expression” a unit in use, a “word”(morpheme) is not necessarily a separate “expression” before it occurs in a certain structure. Moreover, a word may form different “expressions” in different structures.
