Antonymous quadrinominals in Chinese
汉语的对立四字格
Chinfa Lien 连金发

Abstract 摘要
This paper examines various aspects of antonymous quadrinomials (AQs for short) derived from affixing the bipolar terms to a disyllabic base in Chinese, a ubiquitous device of word-formation that often escapes linguists’ attention. Two questions that are of central concern to me are: (1) How can a proper output of an AQ be derived by inputting the base to the affix? (2) In what ways is the interpretation of an AQ adequately processed? In addressing the first question I explore such issues as the formation of AQs in line with the syntactic and morphological conditions, the output condition which hinges on syntactic categories and functions, co-occurrence and selection restrictions, and the linear order constraints including those of the bipolar affix and the base and the configuration in AQs. Discussion of the second question centers around such topics as the semantics of bipolar compounds and the meaning of the base–totality, zenith and iteration–and the asymmetric behavior of AQs and bipolar compounds. The wordhood and the productivity of AQs are also looked into.

本文旨在探讨汉语里对立四字格（简称对格）的各层面。对格是由对立词附加于词基所形成的，这种汉语中屡见不鲜的构词形式常为人所忽视。有两个问题构成本文的焦点：1)如何由词基加词缀得出切当的对格；2)对格的语义是如何解析的。有关第一个问题，我讨论了以下几点：衍生对格时，要得知词基的构词句法等特性；得出对格之后，还需标明其语法范畴和功能，共存限制；就先后顺序而论，词基词缀大多数都遵从先平后仄的音韵规律；对格里成份的顺序也有一定的限制，第二个问题是有关语义方面，对立词和对格都具有全称和不对称的语意特性，但近似义前者才有，反之顶点义和反复义后者才有。此外，也从对格的语法行为断定它是词而非词组，并讨论了对格的孳生力。

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