Now that we have a framework for classifying Chinese word component morphemes and a procedure for assigning them form class identities, in this chapter we take a look at the range of complex noun and verb words viewed by the form class and morphological identities of their constituents.

Why is gestalt word identity important? Following the discussion in 2.3, we proceed from the assumption that the operation of the language does indeed revolve around the word as a fundamental construct, with all the properties and grammatical identities that this implies. The grammatical identity of the word is what marks it for availability and selection for use in a syntactic slot. In terms of native speaker awareness, a word has a definite – if often implicit – form class identity. The grammatical identity of the word constitutes an important aspect of what the native speaker knows about its properties and distribution. Also, as argued in 3.3, knowledge of gestalt word identity provides the native speaker with implicit knowledge of word structure.

Word types

First of all, let us consider gestalt words in terms of what types of morphemes compose them. We may consider all two-syllable complex Mandarin words to be combinations of the four morpheme types – root words, bound roots, word-forming affixes and grammatical affixes – presented in 3.4. This yields four types of complex word in Mandarin: compound word, bound root word, derived word and grammatical word.