Deconstructing the Chinese Language

I’ve found there are a number of different levels at which I need to study the Chinese language. A sentence, for example, can be broken down into the following hierarchy:

1. Sentence
2. Lexical chunks
3. Words
4. Characters
5. Character Components

The diagram below breaks down the simple sentence, “I like to eat lunch,” in this manner (click to view full size image):

Lexical chunks are word patterns that commonly show up in the language. Ken Carroll of Chinesepod is a strong advocate of the lexical approach to learning languages. In the simple example above, “I like to eat…,” is a lexical chunk. It shows up frequently in the language, paired with a variety of different objects. E.G.

• I like to eat lunch
• I like to eat vegetables
• I like to eat fruit
• ...

Words can be formed from a single character or multiple characters. 午饭 - lunch, for example is formed from the two characters, 午–noon and 饭 - meal.

Characters are more basic elements than words. To successfully learn and remember characters, it generally is necessary to break them down into their components. In some cases I assign components their true etymological meaning, while in other cases I assign them a meaning that I find to be more conducive to building mnemonics. In the example above, “hand” is the actual meaning of 扌. But, “chair” is a made-up name I have assigned to the又component, simply because it looks like a director’s chair to me.