The project is a corpus-based study of split words in Chinese, which has the following aims and objectives:

to examine the types of interposing elements and their syntactic functions;
to identify the typical contexts of combined and separated uses of split words;
to examine the interaction of split words with syntactic features such as clause types;
to explore the discourse functions of split words;
to explore the pragmatic meanings of split words;
to measure the 'splitability' of the most commonly used split words;
to examine genre variation in terms of the use of split words;
to achieve a better understanding of the typology of morpho-phonological types;
to explore the extent to which the phenomenon of split words in Chinese is a product of the writing system, by considering whether the same phenomenon occurs in other isolating languages, be it in Southeast Asia or other areas.