Complementary Effect between Mighty Hierarchical Expansion and Conceptual Integration

Abstract

There are two ‘mighty hierarchies’ in Chinese syntax. One is meaningful individual characters which are equivalent to morphemes. The other is character-groups composed of meaningful individual characters which belong to bonding phrases. The two mighty hierarchies lead to syntacticization of Chinese character-groups, which expands to compound words. On the other hand, of the same importance is that the bonding phrases have the tendency to lexicalize potentially once they are integrated through blending. Those with high solidification thereupon become the compound words. The two processes (syntacticization and lexicalization) have complementary effect. The two processes will be demonstrated respectively in this paper. Meanwhile the motivation and hierarchy of word integration will be analyzed by using concrete examples.