The argument structure of the bă construction in Mandarin Chinese: Decontextualized and contextualized perspectives

ABSTRACT The properties of the bă construction and the function of the word bă in Mandarin Chinese have long been controversial issues. This paper elaborates the argument structure of the Mandarin bă construction from decontextualized and contextualized perspectives. In decontextualized analysis, the paper argues that the previous treatments of the word bă in the bă construction as an absolutive/accusative/ergative/oblique case marker are not fully satisfactory as they face different problems. It is argued that the bă construction can be treated as an ergative–absolutive construction, where the word bă is not a case marker, but rather a functional word serving as a relator, which helps to distinguish two structural positions, the pre-bă position and the post-bă position, respectively marking an ergative A (Agent) argument and an absolutive P (Patient) argument. The two grammatical roles A and P may subsume various semantic roles, and hence a semantic-role hierarchy for A and P or for ergative and absolutive case in the bă construction can be established. In contextualized analysis, it is found that there exist some constraints on the use of the bă construction in discourse, which appear to be the common features that the bă construction shares with ergative–absolutive constructions in ergative languages.