A note on the non-existence of infixes in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This note examines the so-called infixes in Mandarin Chinese and argues that they can be analyzed as non-infixes. To be specific, the -de/bu 得/不 in potential V-de/bu-R constructions is analyzed as an affix, which merges with VR after syntax via Morphological Merger. The -bu in V-bu-R is taken as an allomorph of a potential affix -bude 不得. The drop of -de in V-bude-R is motivated prosodically. The -li 里 in A-li-AB (i.e. hu-li-hutu 糊里糊涂 ‘sort of silly’) is analyzed as a prefix to a root adjective AB, with A being further copied from AB and attached to immediately before -li to satisfy the prosodic requirements of a sizige ‘four character pattern’. The -bu 不 in A-bu-BB (i.e. suan-bu-liuliu 酸不溜溜 ‘sort of sour’) and A-bu-BC (i.e. suan-bu-liuqiu 酸不溜秋 ‘sort of sour’) is analyzed as a segment of pejorative suffixes bu-BB and bu-BC, which are added to the monosyllabic adjective A. In this line, the -bu in V-bu-R and the -bu in A-bu-BB and A-bu-BC are distinct, even though they are homophonous and represented orthographically with the same Chinese character 不.

Keywords:

• infix
• prefix
• suffix
• -de
• -bu(de)
• -li
• morphological merger

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Managing Editor Jonathan Webster and an anonymous reviewer of WORD for their constructive revision suggestions on an early draft of this note. Meanwhile, we would like to thank Wei Chin, Noel Mann and the students of my Morphology class on fall 2018 for relevant discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The so-called infixes -li ‘in’ and -bu ‘not’ are not glossed in this note, as it is difficult to define their exact meaning in different patterns. Similarly, infixes -de ‘get’ and -bu ‘not’ in V-de/bu-R are not glossed. The bu-containing string -BB/BC in A-bu-BB/BC is argued to be a suffix of A and is not glossed either. Nonetheless, to mark its existence, -bu is sometimes separated from the rest of the affix bu-BB/BC with a hyphen. Other abbreviations used here are: AM: adjective marker de, CL: classifier, DM: Distributed Morphology, MM: morphological merger, RVC: resultative verb compound, VR(C): verb resultative (compound), Voice: external argument introducer

2 There are some exceptions to the monosyllabic property of the R, as qingchu 清（楚）‘clear’ in kan-de/bu-qing(chu) 看-得/不-清（楚）‘(un)able to see clearly’, ganjing 干净 ‘clean’ in xi-de/bu-ganjing 洗-得/不-干净 ‘(un)able to wash clean’, mingbai 明白 ‘clear’ in shuo-de/bu-mingbai 说-得/不-明白 ‘(un)able to speak clearly’, xiaqu 下去 ‘down’ in kan-de/bu-xiaqu 看–得/不–下去 ‘(un)able to see’. It is noted in the literature that the second syllables of these disyllabic R’s are often neutralized (cf. Chao 1968; Thompson 1973: 364; Feng 2019: 115–117).

3 Thompson (1973) and Li and Thompson (1981) name VRC as RVC, that is resultative verb compound.

4 For easy exposition, the terminal nodes at the syntactic level in (10) is shown with phonological realizations, not with abstract syntactic features which are to be realized after syntax, as normally proposed in DM (Halle & Marantz 1993: 112, etc.). This simplification does not matter here, as we just concentrate on the post-syntactic Morphological Merger in V-de/bu-R. 

5 We thank an anonymous reviewer for a reminder on discussing this issue.

6 Following the usual practice, we will take de in A-li-AB de and A-bu-BB/BC de as optional (cf. Liu 2013, etc.). Being a suffix marker of adjectives, de is optional (Zhu 1961; Liu 2013) unless in special patterns, i.e. in the form of AA de (e.g. honghong-de 红红的 ‘reddish’) (Zhu 1961: §2.1; Zhang 2018).

7 One note is that the -li in pi-li-pala 噼里啪啦 ‘pitapat’ is different from the -li in A-li-AB discussed in this note and cannot take the prefixal analysis. As an onomatopoetic word, pilipala is monosyllabic and cannot be analyzed further, as the ill-formedness of *pala.

8 Infix -bu is shown to be available in some dialects, i.e. Pingding Mandarin (Yu 2007).

9 http://bcc.blcu.edu.cn/zh/search/2/不溜溜的

10 We thank Jonathan Webster for pointing out the two cases of A-buliuqiu and A-buliudiu. One note is that according to my own judgement, A-buliudiu (i.e. hui-buliudiu ‘grey-ish’) is seldom used in Mandarin Chinese and it may be used in some dialects.

11 http://bcc.blcu.edu.cn/zh/search/2/不拉几的

Additional information

Funding

This research is partially supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [grant number 17BYY157] and the 2019 annual fund for basic research at Beijing Institute of Technology.