The lexical features of Chinese

(1) The basic form of Chinese morpheme is monosyllabic.

Because there are many monosyllabic morphemes in Chinese, monosyllabic morpheme is the basic form of Chinese morpheme, and it occupies an absolute advantage in Chinese morpheme. Relatively speaking, there are few disyllabic and polysyllabic morphemes in Chinese morphemes, most of which come from ancient disyllabic words, alliterative words, Loanwords and onomatopoeia. So there are more monosyllabic words and disyllabic words composed of monosyllabic morphemes. At the same time, the monosyllables in Chinese are basically semantic undertakers. These monosyllables can be used as morphemes to form a large number of monosyllabic words, or combined to form compound words. Such as "learning, people, earth, heaven, sheep, fire" and so on.

(2) The root compound method is widely used to form new words.

Modern Chinese word formation method is very flexible, the number of morphemes is also a lot, etymology is rich, so modern Chinese vocabulary is rich. Compound word formation can be "root + root", such as "country, people, army, snow white, moon", or "root + affix (prefix)", such as "stone, fat man, painting", or "affix (prefix) + root", such as "second, aunt, tiger", or "affix (prefix) + root + affix (prefix)", Such as "old woman, old Zhang tou" and so on. Because the meaningful monosyllabic morphemes in Chinese can almost act as root morphemes, affixes morphemes are few and the ability of word formation is weak, so the compound method "root + root" is used to combine root morphemes in Chinese to form compound words, that is, compound compound words.

(3) Disyllabic words are dominant.

Chinese vocabulary tends to be disyllabic in the process of development. In the past, some monosyllabic words were replaced by disyllabic words, such as "father", "student", "Moon", "wood", "eye". In ancient Chinese, a monosyllabic word is used to express the meaning. In modern Chinese, a disyllabic method can be used to form a group of words. That is to say, some monosyllabic words are decomposed into several synonymous disyllabic words, such as "Yue --- happy, joyful", "seek, plan, seek", "protect --- love, protect, support, shelter, defense, protection, guardianship, rescue, etc Care, partial protection, protection, partial protection, maintenance, protection, cover and maintenance ". Some polysyllabic phrases have also been reduced to disyllabic words, such as "science and technology - Science and technology", "four modernizations - four modernizations". The newly created words are mostly disyllabic, such as "laid-off" and "retired". The three syllable words in modern Chinese vocabulary have also developed, such as "versatile, automatic, spontaneous, unprecedented, proletarian", but the two syllable words are still the majority.