City University of Hong Kong CLASS CLASS
Making Sense of Grammar
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asked Dec 1, 2021 in Questions about Chinese Grammar by M (4,830 points) | 148 views

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The captured nominal compound is formed by two antonymous adjectives.The meaning of this noun is a quality whose bipolar extremes are signaled by the Ttwo adjectival constituents. Here are some illustrations:

好坏 ‘good-bad=quality’

大小 ‘big-small=size’

真假 ‘true-false=truthfulness’

Reference

Li, C. N., & Thompson, S. A. (1989). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar (Vol. 3). Univ of California Press.

answered Dec 1, 2021 by M (4,830 points)

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1,613 questions
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15,645 users