Pinyin question (fàngzài dìshang or fàng zài dìshang?)

What's officially correct? Are "fàng" and "zài" to be written together?

Technically written separately. But honestly if it is for your own personal study, what ever will help you remember things better.

According to the ABC dictionary, if a verb and its complement are both monosyllabic they should be written as one word. For example, gǎohuài 搞壞 "to break/ruin sth". Here I think the 在 is functioning as a complement to 放, so I'd say it should be written as one word. Also, I'm not sure that the 在 takes a tone in complement position... can anyone confirm this? Anyway, my guess would be to write it as “fàngzài" or "fàngzai".

It's not a compliment according to my understanding. It is a place word.

fàngzai is correct

muyongshi:

I think you'd find it hard to show that 在 is a "place word". 在地上 forms a locative complement here, and is so called because it "completes" the meaning of 放. You can see a similar construction with 寫給他一封信 xiěgei tā yì fēng xìn.

As for matters of pinyin orthodoxy I don't think it makes much difference, and I've seen different books use different ways of writing it.

Thanks for clearing that up guys, I wondered why it was written together in my textbook - now I know.

I may be butting in like a total n00b without a deep understanding of pinyin rules, but I've always understood it that words should be written together. Or phrases. 放在 is neither.

搞壞 can stand alone, 放在 can't. 在 on its own is not a complement, and if it forms a complement with other words, then the complement must be separated.

In fact, reading through the rules, I found this:

7. Function Words (xūcí) are separated from other words:

....

7.2 Prepositions:

zài qiánmiàn (in the front),

shēng yú 1940 nian (was born in 1940)

So I'm with muyongshi on this one.

On the other hand, some online dictionaries list 放在 as a word, "to place something at".

None of my paper dictionaries do, though.

I agree with Muyongshi and Renzhe that they should be separate.

Oh and whether or not they should be placed together (which they shouldn't btw ) zài should not be said 轻声 in this. 口语 will not emphasize the fourth tone on it as much but it is not a true 轻声.

First of all, I don't think this is something you should worry about too much, as pinyin is just a transliteration and not the language itself its rules are not followed too strictly (Beijing street signs for example don't use an apostrophe before syllables starting with a vowel).

As to your question, I personally would feel more comfortable writing them separately, but then again I also would feel more comfortable not saying 放在了地上 - which apparently native speakers feel very comfortable saying. So I guess jiangping has a point here.

What a pain.