Chinese adjective-noun combinations

In this paper, Chinese adjective-noun combinations ([A N]) are shown to be words instead of phrases. Construction Morphology (Booij G, Construction Morphology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) can describe the various properties of Chinese [A N], but has difficulty accounting for the alternation and competition between [A N] and [A de N]. To solve this problem, I propose an approach that combines Construction Morphology with Realization Optimality Theory (Xu Z, Inflectional morphology in Optimality Theory. Stony Brook University dissertation, Stony Brook, 2007, Lang Ling Compass 5(7):466–484, 2011, The role of morphology in Optimality Theory. In: Hippisley A, Stump GT (eds) The Cambridge handbook of morphology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 550–587, 2016; Aronoff M, Xu Z, Morphology 20(2):381–411, 2010; Xu Z, Aronoff M, J Ling 47(3):673–707, 2011a, A Realization Optimality-Theoretic approach to full and partial identity of forms. In: Maiden M, Smith JC, Goldbach M, Hinzelin MO (eds) Morphological autonomy: perspectives from Romance inflectional morphology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 257–286, 2011b).