A Generative Study On The Non-Canonical Ba Constructions In Modern Chinese

The ba construction is a unique sentence pattern in Chinese.The canonical ba construction expresses the process in which the Agent subject disposes of the Patient object and exerts influence on it.Its syntactic structure is “subject + ba + object + verb + complement”.However,in modern Chinese,a great number of non-canonical ba constructions do not accord with these properties,including passive-causation ba construction,subject-affected ba construction,bare-verb ba construction and retained object ba construction.Most of the previous research has focused on the canonical ba construction and the research on the non-canonical ba constructions is scattered and not systematic.Based on the MP and phase theory,this thesis analyzes the non-canonical ba constructions from the perspectives of their license conditions,syntactic status of ba and derivational mechanism and the research conclusions are as follows:The license conditions of the non-canonical ba constructions are not exactly the same as the canonical one.In the light of thematic roles,the subject is the Agent and the object is the Patient in the canonical ba construction.The subject of the passive-causation ba construction is assigned the Causer or Experiencer role,and the post-ba NP the Agent role;the subject of the subject-affected ba construction receives the composite roles of Agent and Theme;the post-ba NP of the retained object ba construction can license various theta-roles such as Source,Instrument,and Location.In the light of definiteness,both the subject and the post-ba NP in the non-canonical ba constructions satisfy the[+definiteness] feature.In the light of the matrix verb,all the non-canonical ba constructions carry the [+boundedness] feature.In the light of post-verbal components,except for the bare-verb ba construction,the others need to co-occur with the post-verbal components.In the light of GM,the bare-verb and the retained object ba constructions contain the disposal,causative and affectedness meaning,while the passive-causation ba construction loses the disposal meaning,and the subject-affected ba construction only carries the affectedness meaning.The syntactic status of ba has undergone an evolutionary process.In ancient Chinese,ba was mostly used as a lexical verb,and after grammaticalization,it gradually lost some verbal properties.Scholars analyzed it as a preposition,a case/theta-role assigner,a light verb,the head of a CAUSP and a functional category.However,applied to the non-canonical ba constructions,these analyses are problematic.This thesis argues that the post-ba NP is the sub-topic in the non-canonical ba constructions and the subject is the main topic,so ba is used as a topic marker.Under the framework of MP,the non-canonical ba constructions can be derived based on phases.As a topic marker,the morpheme ba occupies the head position of a Top P and is adjoined on top of the CP.The post-ba NP raises to the [Spec,CP] position under the drive of the[-Topic] feature,and through the Agree operation,the [-Topic] features of ba and the post-ba NP are valued and they become inactive.Driven by the EPP feature,the subject internally merges to the [Spec,Top P] position,and its [-Topic] feature is valued within the CP.Other components in the construction are generated by adjoining different phrases,such as Num P,Neg P,Appl P,etc.When all the uninterpretable features are valued or checked,the derivation converges.Based on MP and phase theory,this thesis can provide a uniform account for the derivation of the non-canonical ba constructions.This can not only avoid the problems existing in previous research to a certain extent,but also offer some reference for the future research on the ba construction.