Separable Words With the Noun Component – Generic Object in Modern Chinese

The purpose of this article is to analyze the syntagmatic interaction of verb-noun separable words liheci with inserts that modify the noun component, which is a generic object. The corpus material demonstrates a wide range of attributive inserts in preposition to the noun component of separable word, and the article consecutively discusses the interaction with each insert before the noun. It is shown that some inserts break the semantic unity of the two-syllable complex and noun component form direct attributive relations with the prepositive element. As a result, such noun is no longer semantically empty. The cases of incorporating actants and adjuncts into the separable predicate are also described.