A "girlfriend" word

As I've opined elsewhere, 的, de, is one of a bare handful of morphemes that can't easily fit into my paradigm of Chinese grammar as having only two parts of speech: nouns and verbs. As illustrated in your example, its purpose is strictly to eliminate ambiguity and help parse sentences. It is a particle with a virtually null definition, meaning only, "there is a relationship between what is described by the preceeding group of morphemes and what is described by the following group of morphemes, and the groups are separated at this particular point."

One might also say ni de gou for "your dog" (sorry I don't have the Chinese character set on this computer and in any case my written vocabulary is tiny). In writing the de might not be strictly necessary because the characters would specify which of the many morphemes pronounced ni and gou are intended, to avoid confusion with a compound word ni gou built up from homophones that would be indistinguishable in speech. (I'm making up this example so perhaps there is no ambiguity in this particular case but in general it can be a major problem.)

We're not quite so far along in the USA but still the ambiguity exists. I would say that the primary meaning of "partner" is still an artistic, business, sports, etc., relationship. But the other meaning, "domestic partner," is gaining ground. When someone refers to another person as his/her partner, we have to spend a split second deciding from context which meaning is intended.

Coincidentally just yesterday I made that mistake when a friend recounted an acceptance speech he heard a colleague make at an award ceremony. At the ceremony he had enough context to understand that the fellow was talking about his domestic partner. But out of context, unacquainted with the business of the organization dispensing the awards, I assumed it meant "business partner" and I asked a lot of questions that puzzled my friend until he realized the source of my confusion.

Many years ago the U.S. Census Bureau used the tongue twister "Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters" to establish a new census category for unmarried domestic partners. (Of course gays were still in the bueaucratic closet back then.) Since the citizenry was struggling to come up with a word for that relationship, a newspaper columnist suggested that we simply turn that into the acronym posslq, pronounced POSS-'l-cue. It never caught on but it could have easily been extended to mean "person of either sex..."

 

Americans and Brits speak two different dialects of English. Of the ten literal meanings of the word "mate" in Dictionary.com, the standard of American usage, the following six are applicable to human beings:

• Spouse
• Counterpart
• Associate, fellow worker, comrade, partner
• Friend, buddy
• Any of various nautical officers
• Aide, helper

I suspect that in a British or Australian dictionary the "friend" meaning would be much higher on the list, perhaps #1.

 

Sure, but by sheer luck you are members of the dominant segment of the population that is respected by religions and governments worldwide, even the Confederacy, the Nazis, the Communists and the Taliban: heterosexuals. You were allowed to participate in the ceremony that gave you the right to call each other "spouse." Something like one out of twelve people are not members of that group. They have to use some less perfect word. How would you like it if he called you his roommate, as gay people did back in my day?