di4qiu2

I plan to use di4qiu2 as an example this evening.

Di4 is a word right? It means dirt.

And qiu2 is a word too. It means ball.

But if you put them together you don't get "dirt ball." you get "earth." You don't think the earth is a dirt ball do you? It's "blue" for heaven's sake. Dirt balls aren't blue.

It's sadomasochistic actually. I am the masochist and she is the sadist of course.

Anyway, what I was really looking for is a translation of "phrase" as in grammatical phrase, of which there are four: noun, adjective, adverb and verb.

So far what I have is...

Ci2zu3 de5 gong1neng2 shi4 bei4 yong4 lai2 dang1 chang4 ge4zhong3ci2lei4 de5 qi2zhong1 zhi3 yi1.

Phrase of function is passive marker use come use as become part of speech of among them only one.

Or if that doesn't make sense...

A phrase is a group of words that functions as one part of speech.

So far I think we have done pretty well. I am kidding about the sadomasochistic thing. I'll try looking at it from her point of view. I won't admit that a character is a "word" in either language however. Some "words" are two, three or four characters. Is there such a thing as a five character "word" I wonder?