Elastic Words in Chinese is a book in the “Chinese Prosodic Grammar” series, talking about the various phenomena related to words with elastic length in Chinese (such as “学汉语/学习汉语/汉语学习/*汉语学” and “煤炭店/煤店/煤炭商店/*煤商店”) from the perspective of dynamic language use. Within the theoretical framework of prosodic grammar and register grammar, this book gives a profound analysis and explanation of these phenomena and for the first time clearly points out the difference between the research paradigms on the dynamic expression level and the static word level. According to this book, the source of the phenomena of elastic words is prosodic, not syntactic or semantic. It also mentions the current situation of teaching Chinese elastic words to foreigners, proposes and proves the idea that “elastic words are an important aspect that cannot be avoided in the cultivation of foreigners’ advanced Chinese proficiency”, and gives some feasible teaching suggestions. 

Qiu Jinping, PhD in linguistics and applied linguistics (BLCU), is a lecturer at Xi’an International Studies University, whose research interests include Chinese prosodic grammar and Chinese language teaching. Dr. Qiu once spent a short time on an academic visit to The Chinese University of Hong Kong and used to be a core member in several research programs sponsored by National Social Science Foundation of China and the Social Science Fund of China’s Ministry of Education. Dr. Qiu has co-authored a number of academic papers.