Word Order in Mandarin Chinese and Grammatical Relations

Proceedings of PACLIC 19, the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Word Order in Mandarin Chinese and Grammatical Relations Antoine Tremblay Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta 4-32 Assiniboia Hall, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E7 antoinet@ualberta.ca Abstract It has been argued by LaPolla (1993, 1995) and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) -- among others -- that word order in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth MC) is (almost) exclusively determined by informational/communicative considerations. Though it cannot be denied that word order does encode informative/communicative considerations such as identifiability, foregrounding, and focalization, it is argued here that word order also encodes grammatical relations and that word order in MC can be nicely accounted for if stated in terms of subject, direct and indirect object. To put it briefly, in both communicatively unmarked and marked basic/ordinary sentences, the subject must occur in immediate pre-verbal position (except for unidentifiable subjects in basic sentences), and the indirect object necessarily appears in immediate post-verbal position. If subjects and (morphologically unmarked) indirect objects occupy any other position, the sentence is ungrammatical. As for the direct object, it must appear in immediate post-verbal position in unmarked ordinary monotransitive sentences and immediately after the indirect object in unmarked ordinary ditransitive sentences. Note that the thematic role of the subject, direct object, or indirect object does not affect word order in any way. 1. Introduction It has been argued by LaPolla (1993, 1995) and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) that word order in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth MC) cannot be used to define grammatical relations given that word order is (almost exclusively) determined by informational/communicative considerations. In this respect, LaPolla (1995: 297) writes “aside from a semantic rule that the actor of a verb, if expressed, must precede that verb, it is pragmatic relations (information structure) that are the main determinants of word order in Chinese”. Li & Thompson (1989: 19) also argue that MC is a topic prominent language. That is, “the order in which basic words and phrases occur is governed to a large extent by considerations of meaning rather than of grammatical functions”. Nonetheless, the data presented in this paper demonstrates that word order in communicatively marked and unmarked basic/ordinary MC sentences IS SENSITIVE TO SYNTACTIC RELATIONS. Though word order may encode information/communicative considerations, it is argued here that word order in MC also encodes grammatical relations. To demonstrate this, I will begin with a discussion of word order and grammatical relations in what Mel’čuk (1988) defines as the ‘basic’ sentence in MC. 2. The Notion of Basic Sentence Building on Keenan (1976), Mel’čuk (1988) and Beck (2000) consider that basic sentences consist of a semantically intransitive verb in the least marked, lexicographic form (i.e., indicative mood, present tense, etc.) and an NP. The basic sentence is also communicatively unmarked (i.e., a sentence that does not encode any specialized or particular information/communicative structure). The only NP in such basic sentences is taken to be the grammatical subject. From such sentences one can abstract (at least some of) the …

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