Word Sketches of Separable Words Liheci in Chinese

Abstract

Separable words (liheci) are a special type of Chinese verbs with unique syntactical features in a sense that some elements come in between the two morphemes of a verb for a sentence to be grammatically acceptable. Not all separable words are extendable to the same degree. To understand the behaviour of words, it is generally advised to check word sketches, because they are based on large text corpora. This article examines how Chinese separable words are treated in Sketch Engine and discusses on the approprietness of the available Chinese corpora for word sketches. It further stresses the importance of including information on inserted elements in word sketches and gives suggestions on how to include them.