Morphosemantic Categories in Chinese: An Interim Report

Abstract

This paper applies the notion of the homonerae - a sub-morphemic semantic unit - to the morphosemantic analysis of Cantonese. A number of major morphosemantic categories and subcategories in Chinese are identified through analysis of monomorphemic lexical items. The morphosemantic approach adopted is related to the 'shengxun' branch of traditional Chinese linguistics.