Abstract
It turns out that all the work we have done so far enables us to tackle one of the most popular issues in Mandarin grammar, the ba-construction. This chapter is divided into two parts: a descriptive part, in which an inventory of all the relevant features of the ba-construction is presented and all the research issues are laid out, and an analytic part, in which we propose an analysis.
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Notes
For the historical development of the ba-construction, see L.Wang (1980), Bennett (1981), C.S.Chen (1983) and Sun (1996), to just mention four works on this subject.
In preparing this overview, I had a wealth of literature on ba at my disposal. Apart from the works referred to elsewhere in this chapter, I have made use of the Cheung (1973), Ding (1961), Gu (1961), D.R. Guo (1981) and Ho (1966).
Please note that the formula “ba-NP” refers to the NP following the morph ba and not to the combination of ba-plus-NP.
Generic NPs may also appear as ba-NP; (i) is an example from Li and Thompson (1981): (i) ta youshihou ba yan dang tang chi he sometimes BA salt take.for sugar eat ‘he sometimes takes salt for sugar’
As far as crosslinguistic evidence is concerned, inalienable possession facts in Korean may also be interpreted in a way such that the possessor and the possessee form one constituent, with the latter predicating of the former. Korean has an intricate Case-system, and in the following sentences (taken from Y.J.Kim 1989), both the possessor and the possessee have Accusative case. (ia) Inho-ka Yumi-lul elkwul-ul kuli-ess-ta Inho-NOM Yumi-ACC face-ACC draw-PST-DEC ‘Inho drew Yumi’s face’ (ib) Yumi-ka Inho-lul son-ul cap-ass-ta Yumi-NOM Inho-ACC hand-Acc hold-PST-DEC ‘Yumi held Inho by the hand’ Y.J.Kim (1989) argues that the agreement in Case results from the fact that the possessor and the possessee are coindexed through a predication relation (and she offers a number arguments why the possessee is the predicate). One of the things she points out is that it is not uncommon in languages with rich Case-systems that subject and predicate agree in Case; Latin and Ancient Greek are well-known cases in point. For more discussion of the Korean facts and arguments against Y.J.Kim (1989), see Maling and S.W.Kim (1992).
For discussion on these matters, see Kural (1996) and Den Dikken (1997), as well as: Johns (1992), Alsina (1992), Ritter and Rosen (1993), Fujita (1996) and Voskuil (1996).
In Sybesma (1994) I report on an attempt to apply the analysis of Mandarin ba to comparable elements meaning ‘take’ in the West-African Kwa language Fon. The attempt was only partly successful, in the sense that not all aspects of the ba-analysis could be transposed straightforwardly. However, some conclusions can be upheld for Fon as well (notably that the NP following TAKE is always the theme and that sentences embedded under TAKE can be argued to have no external agent argument). Differences between ba and the elements meaning ‘take’ in Fon also led to some interesting conclusions. For discussion on “take” in English, see Den Dikken and Sybesma (1998).
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Sybesma, R. (1999). The Ba-Construction. In: The Mandarin VP. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9163-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9163-8_6
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