A Diachronic Investigation On The "ba……gei VP" Construction In Chinese

Applying the methods of description, explanatory and statistics, this paperexamines some major problems of the sentence "ba......gei VP" in Chinese, whichinclude the diachronic development of this sentence, and its syntactic & semantic features. It also manages to explain how this sentence generate from the diachronic point of view.This paper includes a preface, four main parts and a conclusion part. In preface, the author narrates the general features of the sentence, and makes a brief review of the former study. In part 1 ,through the investigation of the novels from the QingDynasty till today, the author finds that the sentence "ba......gei VP" was firstlyused in late Qing Dynasty, and it is mainly used in spoken Chinese .especially in north China. As a subtype of ba construction, it is not frequently used sentence. In part 2 , the author describes the syntactic & semantic features of this construction. The research includes the construction types of VP, the semantic features of its object, the basic meaning of this construction and its additional meaning. In part 3, the author tries to find how this construction generates. Two hypothesis are firstly discussed and then the author examines the cause from the diachronic and grammaticalization point of view. Linguistic performance is considered as the motivation of the generation. In part 4, two correlative problems are discussed. Oneis the sentence "ba......lai VP" in Chinese, which has the similar function with"ba......gei VP", and the other is the disposal preposition "gei". Although therelationship between the two constructions hasn't been found, the author thinks that the usage of these two structures in lockstep shows that this kind of linguistic function is needed in all ages. In this paper, some research of the disposal preposition "gei" is quoted for the further study of grammaticalization.