This study provides an integrated and systematic analysis of the unmarked SOV constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Previous studies have generally excluded such constructions from the center of research, considering them to be limited to emphasizing or ...
This study provides an integrated and systematic analysis of the unmarked SOV constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Previous studies have generally excluded such constructions from the center of research, considering them to be limited to emphasizing or contrasting meanings and having low acceptability. However, this paper confirms that the acceptability of these constructions is closely related to the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic characteristics of the constituents, and that information structure has a significant impact on the formation of the construction.
From a semantic perspective, it was found that the types of semantic roles of the two noun phrases in the sentence-initial position, the animacy and abstractness of the noun phrases, as well as the aspectual properties of the verb phrase, play a decisive role in the formation of the construction. Regarding semantic roles, ‘S’ is restricted to the agent role, and ‘O’ appears more easily in the following roles: patient(change of location,state)/theme>result/material>goal>instrument/experienced/patient(change of shape). The animacy of 'S' and ‘O’ directly affects the construction's formation. Since 'S' is the agent, it must have animacy, while ‘O’ can only occur in a sentence when it is an inanimate noun, which is related to the hierarchy of animacy. When ‘O’ refers to an abstract concept, it becomes difficult for the hearer to identify the referent, making the construction harder to form. Conversely, when ‘O’ is a concrete noun, the acceptability of the construction increases. Finally, it was found that verbs with both durativeness and telicity feature are more freely used in these constructions. Verbs representing accomplishment situations are able to appear in the construction without additional syntactic devices. On the other hand, stative verbs, verbs with strong or moderate durativeness, and instantaneous action verbs can only appear in the construction when followed by additional components. Verb phrases exhibiting habitual, progressive, or durative aspects are impossible to appear in the construction.
From a syntactic perspective, the structural complexity of the verb phrase enhances the construction’s acceptability. When a single verb phrase appears in the construction, complements, parallel verb phrases or other post-verbal elements may follow, which increase the informational content of the construction and complement its aspectual properties, thus making the sentence more complete. Multiple constituents can also precede the verb phrase such as serial verb construction, prepositional phrases, or focus-sensitive operators. When a preceding or following constituent appears with the verb, the sentence exhibits significantly greater acceptability compared to a simple verb phrase structure. Furthermore, parallel verb phrases may follow each other, and these can either contrast or have a parallel meaning. The former contrasts two opposite situations, while the latter lists two similar situations. Both methods stabilize the structure of the construction, and by clearly distinguishing the topic and focus, they improve the acceptability of the sentence. In these cases, the ‘O’ of the verb phrases in both positions will carry contrastive stress. The addition of parallel verb phrases to form a complex sentence allows elements that would otherwise be restricted due to their inherent semantic properties to appear in the construction. Additionally, focus-sensitive operators, such as negation, adverbs, and modal auxiliaries, create a focus on the following elements, enhancing the focus function of the predicate and ultimately improving the construction’s acceptability. Among negators, ‘mei’(没) can freely appear in the sentence to express negation of action completion, whereas ‘bu’(不), though more restricted, denotes negation of the action itself and typically appears in the negative form of potential complements. Various adverbs can also appear in the construction. They these serve to enhance or highlight the meaning of the following element, thereby increasing the informational amount of the predicate. However, adverbial elements that describe manner of actions are incompatible with the semantic properties of the construction and thus cannot appear. Modal auxiliaries add the speaker’s intention or attitude to the sentence, thereby enriching the information and improving sentence acceptability. These syntactic means all function to enhance the focus of the predicate, ultimately contributing to greater sentence acceptability. Also they can be used in combination, and the more they are used simultaneously, the higher the acceptability of the sentence.
The study also examined the impact of the informational structure of the initial noun phrases on the formation of the construction. The construction requires high identifiability for the two noun phrases in the initial position, both of which function as topics. Among them, ‘S’, as the first noun phrase, must have higher identifiability than ‘O’. Typically, ‘S’ appears as a definite noun phrase such as pronoun, generic, proper noun, or noun phrase accompanied by a demonstrative. In contrast, ‘O’ may have lower identifiability than ‘S’ and can appear in forms such as bare nouns or noun phrases with modifiers. The length of the two noun phrases also affects the acceptability, with ‘O’ being more restricted than ‘S’ and showing increased acceptability when structurally simpler.
Through the analysis of information structure, it was found that in SOV constructions, ‘S’ and ‘O’ function as topics, while the predicate functions as the focus, creating a predicate-focus structure. This differs from the three focus structures of SVO and the OSV structure, where ‘S’ can also be the focus. A comparison with SVO and OSV constructions shows that SOV is particularly effective for representing unexpected events or providing information about the outcome of an action. Additionally, SOV constructions are generally used to describe completed events and cannot represent ongoing, dynamic or habitual situations, distinguishing them from the other two constructions.
In summary, SOV constructions in Mandarin Chinese have a fixed syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic structure, allowing them to appear in a variety of contexts and exhibiting a consistent tendency in usage. Furthermore, SOV constructions possess a distinct syntactic meaning and function, which sets them apart from SVO and OSV constructions. These characteristics provide evidence that SOV can be established as an independent construction in the language.