The ''bǎ'' construction is a

grammatical construction In linguistics, a grammatical construction is any syntax, syntactic string of words ranging from Sentence (linguistics), sentences over phrase structure rules, phrasal structures to certain complex lexemes, such as phrasal verbs. Grammatical constr ...

in the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

. In a ''bǎ'' construction, the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

of a verb is placed after the

function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...

(or, in more formal writing, ), and the verb placed after the object, forming a

subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...

(SOV) sentence.Zheng Ye, Weidong Zhan, Xiaolin Zhou (2007). "The semantic processing of syntactic structure in sentence comprehension: An ERP study." ''Brain Research'' 1142, pp. 135-145.

Linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

commonly analyze ''bǎ'' as a

light verb In linguistics, a light verb is a verb that has little semantic content of its own and forms a predicate with some additional expression, which is usually a noun. Common verbs in English that can function as light verbs are ''do'', ''give'', ''have ...

construction, Hornstein, Norbert, Jairo Nunes, and Kleanthes K. Grohmann (2005). ''Understanding Minimalism''. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 99–100. or as a

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

Formation

Charles Li and Sandra Thompson (1981) offer the following examples of the ''bǎ'' construction:

Usage

The ''bǎ'' construction may only be used in certain contexts, generally those in which the verb expresses "settlement" of, or action upon, the object.Li & Thompson (1981), p. 468Zheng Ye, Yue-jia Luo, Angela D. Friederici, and Xiaolin Zhou (2006). "Semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials." ''Brain Research'' 1071, pp. 186-196. According to Wang Li, "the disposal form states how a person is handled, manipulated, or dealt with; how something is disposed of; or how an affair is conducted," or, in other words, "what happens to" the object. Therefore, it is generally used with verbs that are high in transitivity, a property that describes the effect a verb has on its object; ''bǎ'' does not occur grammatically with verbs that express states or emotions, such as "love" and "miss," or with verbs that express activities that have no effect on the direct object, such as "sing" and "see."Li & Thompson (1981), p. 467. The direct object of a ''bǎ'' construction must meet certain requirements as well. It is usually definite, meaning that it is specific and unique (as in phrases beginning with the equivalent of ''this'', ''that'', ''these'', or ''those''). It may sometimes also be generic, such as "salt" in the sentence "She sometimes eats salt thinking it's sugar."Li & Thompson (1981). p. 465. The object of a ''bǎ'' construction is nearly always something that both the speaker and hearer know about and are aware of.

Research

Because of the numerous constraints on the kinds of words that may be used in ''bǎ'' construction, this construction has often been used in studies on language processing and on grammaticality judgments of native speakers. For example, sentences with ''bǎ'' construction that have

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

violations (such as ''bǎ'' being followed by a verb rather than a noun) and

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

violations (such as ''bǎ'' being followed by a verb that doesn't express "disposal") have been used to study the interaction of syntactic and semantic processing in the brain using the

neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

technique of ERP, and to evaluate

construction grammar Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...

's model of meaning-building.

Notes

References

*Chao Yuen Ren (1968). ''A Grammar of Spoken Chinese''. Berkeley: University of California Press. *Li, Charles, and Sandra A. Thompson (1981). "The bǎ construction," in ''Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar''. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 463–491. . *Sybesma, Rint (1992). ''Causatives and accomplishments. The case of Chinese ba''. Doctoral dissertation, Leiden University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ba construction Chinese grammar Chinese words and phrases Syntax