Analyzing The Ba Construction In Mandarin Chinese With The Relation Projection

The ba construction has been widely studied by different researchers from different perspectives.A lot of contributions have been made to the study of the ba construction by them.They have created massive literatures related to the study of the ba construction which has given the future researchers inspiration and has paved the way for the future studies.However,most of the existing researches are inadequate in the analysis of the syntactic status of ba and of the characteristics and derivation of the ba construction.Based on the previous studies,this thesis aims to study the grammatical status of ba in the ba construction and the universal derivation of different kinds of the ba construction.The author posits a relation projection(RelaP)on the basis of Pylkk?nen's(2008)applicatives.Rela P is divided into three types,high relation projection(H-RelaP),middle relation projection(M-Rela P)and low relation projection(L-RelaP).The head of the L-Rela P is adjoined to V in the tree diagram.The head of the M-Rela P is merged right above the vP.And the head of the H-Rela P is merged right above baP.Each head of the three types has an R-feature which can introduce an argument that has a certain semantic relation to the components it c-commands.Besides,each head represents different meanings.The head of H-Rela P has the meanings of DISPOSAL and CAUSE.The head of M-Rela P has the meanings of LOCATION,TRANSFER,EXISTENCE and LOSE.The head of L-Rela P has the meaning of POSSESSION.This paper argues that ba is a relation marker and tries to prove that the ba construction contains a relation projection posited by the author.Ba as a relation marker,together with Rela P,can mark the semantic relation between different components of the ba construction.Some ba sentences contain more than one type of Rela P.Based on the layers of Rela P each ba sentence contains,the author tries to divide the ba construction into three types.Type one contains only one layer of Rela P(H-Rela P),type two contains two layers of Rela P(H-Rela P and M-Rela P)and type three contains three layers of Rela P(H-Rela P,M-RelaP and L-RelaP).The three types of the ba construction are named Single Layer Rela P ba construction,Double Layer Rela P ba construction and Triple Layer Rela P ba construction respectively.Through detailed analysis of the three types of the ba construction,this thesis finds that all the three types can be analyzed with Rela P.Also,RelaP is more appropriate than Pylkk?nen's(2008)applicatives in terms of the analysis of the ba construction.Rela P can not only help to interpret some phenomena in the ba construction,but also rule out some ungrammatical ba sentences.Besides,Rela P can analyze both the ba construction and some other constructions like the double object construction.There are still lots of arguments over whether Chinese is high applicative or low applicative.The author finds that RelaP can remedy the shortcomings of applicatives in analyzing some Chinese constructions,which has enriched the existing theories.