The placement of co-verb gěi in spoken Mandarin varieties
A study on regional influences
Many spoken Mandarin varieties allow for the oscillation of the co-verb gěi ‘give’ between the pre- and
post-verbal positions. Much attention has been directed to semantic and syntactic factors that constrain its placement. However, language
external factors remain under-researched. This study examines sociolinguistic including regional influences on the variable placement of the
co-verb gěi in spoken Mandarin. Data is collected at both production and perception levels to investigate the regional and
social distributions of the gěi-phrase. At the production level, the data suggests that substrate influences from a
speaker’s home vernacular play a crucial role. Results at the perception level remain inconclusive, and more research is required to unpack
the complex role of sociolinguistic factors in such variation.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Syntactic properties of gěi
- 1.2Sociolinguistic hypotheses
- 2.Data and methods
- 2.1Informant
- 2.2Procedure
- 3.Results
- 3.1Elicitation task
- 3.2Acceptability judgment task
- 4.Discussion
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
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