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9 - The Disposal Construction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2023

Yuzhi Shi
Yuzhi Shi
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Summary

This chapter demonstrates that because of the fusion of the verb and the resultative via reanalysis, the syntactic position for a patient noun between them was eliminated so that the originally intervening patient noun needed to be rearranged somewhere in the sentence on the basis of the following principle: the patient noun was introduced in preverbal position by the disposal marker if it was definite, and was introduced by the first verb of the verb-copying construction if it was indefinite. This issue is related to the motivations for the emergence of the verb-copying construction and the unmarked SOV structure, all of which were entirely innovative in Modern Chinese.

Keywords

disposal constructionpatient noundefinitenessresultative constructionlanguage contact
Type
Chapter
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The Evolution of Chinese Grammar , pp. 203 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • The Disposal Construction
  • Yuzhi Shi, National University of Singapore
  • Book: The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108921831.009
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  • The Disposal Construction
  • Yuzhi Shi, National University of Singapore
  • Book: The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108921831.009
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Disposal Construction
  • Yuzhi Shi, National University of Singapore
  • Book: The Evolution of Chinese Grammar
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108921831.009
Available formats
×