Ba in the Chinese Ba-Construction: A Cardiff Grammar Approach

This study explores the semantic and the syntactic status of ba in the Chinese ba-construction from a systemic functional perspective. At the level of meaning, ba functions as the Process element in the transitivity structure of the overall construction, and delivers an influential meaning. This mea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWord (Worcester) Vol. 69; no. 3; pp. 211 - 252
Main Author He, Wei
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Routledge 03.07.2023
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Cardiff Grammar
Chinese ba-construction
Chinese languages
Clauses
Embedded constructions
semantic status of ba
Semantics
syntactic status of ba
Syntactic structures
Syntax
systemic functional linguistics
Valence
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Summary:This study explores the semantic and the syntactic status of ba in the Chinese ba-construction from a systemic functional perspective. At the level of meaning, ba functions as the Process element in the transitivity structure of the overall construction, and delivers an influential meaning. This means that the ba-construction involves a dominant and a dependent process. The dominant process is a configuration of a Participant Role (PR, hereafter), the influential Process element and another PR, and the influential Process element is expressed in the word ba. At the level of form, ba is the Predicator element in the syntactic structure of the overall construction. It indicates that the ba-construction involves a ranking and an embedded clause at the primary and the secondary level, respectively. The ranking clause is composed of the Subject, Predicator and Complement elements, and the Predicator element is expounded by the word ba.
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SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0043-7956
2373-5112
DOI:10.1080/00437956.2023.2237267