A Study Of The "N-M" Two-syllable Nouns From Multiple Perspectives

In the past years there have been continuous disputation on the nature ofcertain two-syllable nouns such as "qiangzhi"(枪支),"huaduo"(花朵),"chuanzhi"(船只),"renkou"(人口) among the scholars of Linguistics. The main reason is that peoplestart to discuss on their inner structure before clarifying systematically these wordsclass. There are various definitions on the two-syllable word inner structure. Basedon the <Modern Chinese Dictionary>(6th Edition), this paper will study21"Noun+Measure word" structure two-syllable nouns on synchronic and diachronicperspectives. This paper will be divided into four parts:The first part is an introduction. This part will introduce the basis of our topic,research content and scope. It includes the previous research achievements, thetheory and method and the source of language materials. As a result, we can clarifythe theoretic and practical significance of this research.The second part can be subdivided into two parts: Chapter1and Chapter2.There2chapters will study the structural and semantic characteristics from thesynchronic perspective. Chapter1will define the "N-M" two-syllable nouns accordingto the characteristic of their second morphemes, clarify the range of the "N-M"two-syllable nouns and describe their syntactic functions and semantic features.Chapter2will study each morphemes of the "N-M" two-syllable nouns to prove thatthe dominant power of N-morpheme and the particularity of theM-morpheme,pointing out that he M-morpheme has been turning vague andfunctioned as a suffix.The third part is the chapter3. Chapter3will divided21"N-M"two-syllable nouns into6groups and respectively trace the semantic developmenttrack of each two-syllable noun. Diachronically find the period of the maturation of M-morpheme, the lexicalization of the "N-M" two-syllable nouns and the causes andmechanism of the lexicalization.The fourth part is the conclusion. The conclusionsums up the whole paper and point out the significance and characteristics of "N-M"two-syllable nouns both on synchronic and diachronic perspectives. To sum up the3causes of lexicalization of the "N-M" two-syllable nouns, the grammaticalizationtrend of M-morpheme and scope the range.