Usage of Chinese Noun Phrases

Abstract

This paper analyzes Chinese noun phrases by applying principles and methods that combine form and meaning, description and explanation, and structure and function. The research employs parallel transformation tests to systematically examine the syntactic behavior of various noun phrase structures in Chinese. The findings include:
1. In addition to subordinate phrases with a nominal center (consisting of nouns, pronouns, numerals, and classifiers), coordinate and appositive constructions can also be classified as noun phrases.
2. Phrases with syntactic functions equivalent to noun phrases, where the center is composed of predicative words (predicates and adjectives), belong to nominal phrases.
These findings have significant implications for both pedagogical approaches to Chinese language instruction and computational linguistic applications, particularly in natural language processing of Chinese texts.