泰文的合成複合詞與短語中是否具有對分

IS THERE A DICHOTOMY BETWEEN SYNTHETIC COMPOUNDS AND PHRASES IN THAI?

本研究探討泰文中的綜合複合詞與短語之間的結構歧義，由於兩者之間在語言中顯示非常相同。該研究在泰國泰語語料庫中（Thai National Corpus）抽取產出性名詞與動詞（及謂語）為樣本。抽取來的詞語將分為兩組。A組為具有七層關係且具有最強搭配的名動詞語（及謂語），各展示不同語義關係。而B組中的詞語是與A組具有相同結構的名動詞語（及謂語），而此組詞語的特點為僅具有五個詞彙廣度的干預、協作、修辭以及變動。為了分類詞彙和句法單位，該研究以詞彙完整性假設進行建立內部結合。此外詞彙引用機率及本地人的感受也將考慮為分析條件之中。研究顯示A組詞語出現機率多於B組。本地人傾向把A組詞語了解為一個單位詞語而B組詞語如何將歸納為怎麼樣的單位仍在探討中。總之泰語中的合成複合詞是否將歸類為詞彙或句法仍具有模糊的境界。

This study discusses a structural ambiguity between synthetic compounds and other syntactic phrases in Thai, as they potentially appear identical. Productive Ns and Vs were extracted from the Thai National Corpus. The data were divided into two groups. Group A consists of seven N-V(P) strings with the strongest collocations, each of which exhibits a semantically different relation. Group B is a similar set of N-V(P)s to Group A, but they feature interventions, coordinations, and modifications or alterations within a 5-word span. To test the state of being a lexical or syntactic unit, the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis served as a template to build internal cohesion. The corpus frequency and native speakers’ judgment were also taken into account. The comparison shows that Group A has a much higher frequency of occurrence than Group B. There are tendencies that native speakers consider tightly cohesive and frequently occurring strings in Group A as single-whole units, while the status of members of Group B is arguable depending on their Type/Token Ratio and cultural familiarity. As for Thai synthetic compounds, the division between the lexicon and syntax is yet a fuzzy boundary.