Despite extensive research on ba sentences in Chinese, the issue of when ba sentences are used in discourse has received little attention. This study examines the word order variation involving ba sentences by comparing three word orders: the canonical postverbal form, the ba form, and the topicalized preposed form. I show that the choice of the ba form depends on multiple factors, including information status, weight and topicality. The ba form is more likely to be used under two conditions: (a) when the ba NP carries old information but is not highly topical, (b) when the ba NP carries new information and is heavy. Further, my findings raise doubts on the ba NP’s role as a topic in discourse.
2023. Alternation in the Mandarin disposal constructions: quantifying their evolutionary dynamics across twelve centuries. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory
2022. A Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of the Pattern ‘bǎ+NP+VP’ in Mandarin Chinese. In Chinese Lexical Semantics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13249], ► pp. 68 ff.
Tsung, Linda & Yang Frank Gong
2021. A Corpus-Based Study on the Pragmatic Use of the ba Construction in Early Childhood Mandarin Chinese. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Fang, Yu & Haitao Liu
2018. What factors are associated with dependency distances to ensure easy comprehension? A case study of ba sentences in Mandarin Chinese. Language Sciences 67 ► pp. 33 ff.
Fang, Yu & Haitao Liu
2021. Predicting syntactic choice in Mandarin Chinese: a corpus-based analysis ofbasentences and SVO sentences. Cognitive Linguistics 32:2 ► pp. 219 ff.
Yao, Yao
2018. NP weight effects in word order variation in Mandarin Chinese. Lingua Sinica 4:1
2017.
Chinese
Ba
. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ► pp. 1 ff.
Lin, Jingxia & Yao Yao
2016. Encoding emotion in Chinese: a database of Chinese emotion words with information of emotion type, intensity, and valence. Lingua Sinica 2:1
Liu, Haiyong
2014. Word Order Change in Mandarin Chinese from the Perspective of Syntactic Typology and Universals - A Case Study of the Ba + Gei Structure. Journal of Universal Language 15:2 ► pp. 77 ff.
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