Binom

Where you would expect to hear AN na N you may instead find, especially in written Japanese, AN no N. The latter, somewhat stiffer, version appears to enjoy particular favor when the AN is a binom of Chinese origin modifying another Chinese binom and the two words are either optionally combinable into a compound noun (by dropping the copula nó/ná together with its juncture and applying the proper accentuation) or look as if they might easily so combine.

It a meaning is expressed in a particular language like English with the help of a binom, newspaper, and in another particular language like German by a mononom Zeitung, the heteronomic morphology is usually more voluminous (9 phonograms against 7).

The prototypical Sino-Japanese word is a binom, that is, a word written with two kanji, each kanji representing a Sino-Japanese morph. It is not difficult to find examples of rendaku affecting Sino-Japanese binoms, and a few are listed in (23).