bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:08 amWhat ‘prosodial rules’ are those? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but they sound interesting!
Mandarin has an "end weight" restriction which applies to simple VPs. A monosyllabic action verb does not normally end a sentence as a bare VP, unless it is done as some kind of rhetorical turn partly evoking poetry, or as part of parallelism. In such a case, you either need to use a "prosodial variant" or "elastic variant" of it (typically a synonymic verb-verb disyllabic compound, or a verb-object compound with a generic object like 念書 niàn-shū "study-book" for 'study'), or you need to provide it with extra prosodial weight using an adverbial, or a resultative/potential/directional complement, or the negators 不 bù and 沒 méi, or an aspect particle. This is how 寫字 xiě-zì "write-character" becomes simply 寫 xiě "write" in all the examples I provided in my previous post.
Mandarin also has certain prosodial restrictions over the length of words that can combine directly one after the other in a phrase:
1. In noun + noun compound nouns, the first (modifier) noun is not normally monosyllabic when followed by a (modified) disyllabic noun
2. In verb + object VPs, a disyllabic verb is not normally followed by a monosyllabic noun
3. In modifier adjectival verb + noun NPs, a monosyllabic verb does not normally directly modify a trisyllabic noun
To get around restrictions 1 and 2, many monosyllabic nouns similarly have a "prosodial" (or "
elastic") variant, which when used changes the construction to disyllabic noun + disyllabic noun, and disyllabic verb + disyllabic noun. This does mean that all or nearly all of Mandarin's normally monosyllabic nouns have lexical disyllabic prosodial variants. For example, to express 'book knowledge', you shouldn't say *書知識 shū-zhīshi, book-knowledge, with monosyllabic shū 'book', because that violates restriction 1. You need a prosodial variant of shū 'book', such as 書本 shūběn. So, 書本知識 shūběn zhīshi "book knowledge".
Alternatively, another option in case #1 is to use a monosyllabic form or abbreviation of the modified noun, so that you have monosyllabic noun + monosyllabic noun. Given enough context or a previous mention of 書本知識 shūběn zhīshi, perhaps you could get away with 書知 shūzhī or 書識 shūshí (Taiwan shūshì), although it might sometimes strike people as a bit literary/rhetorical/joking/artificial, although it can also be picked up as conveniently concise. Similarly, in case #2, you can sometimes abbreviate the disyllabic verb into a monosyllabic form. And in case #2, you can also use a demonstrative or quantifier before the monosyllabic noun, to give it extra length.
Seeing a disyllabic verb + a monosyllabic noun is in fact very common, but it is understood as an NP, not a VP. 說明 shuōmíng 'to explain' + 書 shū 'book' forms 說明書 shuōmíng-shū 'instruction manual', not *to explain (the/a) book(s). For the latter, you'd need to use an elastic variant of 'book': 說明書本 shuōmíng shūběn.
For restriction #3, all you need is to add the linker 的 de (which marks relative clauses and possessor NPs) between the monosyllabic adjectival verb and the trisyllabic noun.
Finally, it is normal to drop the number 一 yī 'one' in the construction "verb + 'one' + classifier + noun", so that 完個遊戲 wán ge yóuxì ("play CL game") stands for 'play a game' with the classifier (個 ge "CL") bearing the singular meaning of the dropped 一 yī 'one' (the full construction would be 完一個遊戲 wán
yíge yóuxì). However, this can't be done if the verb must be disyllabic, except under some further conditions
namely, both A) the disyllabic verb being internally a verb + resultative/directional complement, and B) the whole clause being the first in a sequence express a condition or time or concessive contrast...
Yip and Rimmington's grammar (2nd ed.) covers this in chapter 26, pp. 429-452. The publications mentioned in that LanguageLog link in the 3rd paragraph can also be useful. As I often say though, this is best experienced while trying to learn the language, when you see native speakers correcting your Mandarin by adding longer word variants. Natives who, when asked why, respond saying your Mandarin just doesn't have good rhythm...