Journal of Universal Language

Sejong University Language Research Institue

J. Univers. Lang. 2014; 15(2):77-114

pISSN: 1598-6381

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22425/jul.2014.15.2.77

Article

Word Order Change in Mandarin Chinese from the Perspective of Syntactic Typology and Universals - A Case Study of the Ba + Gei Structure

Haiyong Liu¹^,^†

¹Wayne State University, USA

^†Corresponding Author : Haiyong Liu, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA. Phone: 313-577-9937; Email: an1884@wayne.edu

Copyright ⓒ 2016, Sejong University Language Research Institue. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jun 18, 2014; Revised: Jul 22, 2014; Accepted: Aug 01, 2014

Published Online: Jan 01, 2017

Abstract

In this paper, I first compare features in Mandarin that are related to head directionality with those listed in Greenberg (1966) and Dryer (1992) and examine the hypothesis by Tai (1973) and Li

& Thompson (1974) that Mandarin is drifting from an SVO to an SOV language. Then, I study the under-studied ba + gei structure in Mandarin, which reflects the possibility of an emerging split case-marking system, i.e., Nominative-Accusative marking in the usually perfective ba + gei structure and zero-marking elsewhere. Data from Korean, Japanese, and Russian further supports the possible reanalysis in the creation of a case-marking system in the ba + gei structure, which is more of a feature of an SOV language.

Keywords: ba-structure; Chinese; word order; split case-marking; reanalysis

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