比較「片」與「塊」

Comparing the Chinese Lexeme Pian and Kuai

「片」與「塊」為兩個多義字。在句中扮演多重角色。可當語綴詞〔如「金片」「金塊」﹞及量詞〔如「一片／塊餅乾」﹞。兩者語意似乎相似，可否互相取代，是有所爭議的。此論文探討報紙上的語料，發現「片」多指扁平之物；「塊」多指厚重之物。前者比後者較常在隱喻中出現。

Pian' and 'kuai' are two polysemous lexemes in Chinese and play similar syntactic roles in sentences. For instance, they can be both suffixes (e.g., 'jin pian' 'sliced gold' or 'jin kuai' 'gold bar') and classifiers (e.g., 'yi pian/kuai bingan' 'a piece of cookie'). They seem to have similar semantic functions (both are translated into 'piece' in English. However, it is controversial whether they are interchangeable in certain context. In1this study, I explored written discourse--newspapers, and found that 'pian' tended to refer to flat and broad entities; while 'kuai' thick and lumpy entities. The former was used metaphorically much more often than the latter.