Verb, Complement and Case in Mandarin

Abstract

The question of word order has been a major topic in the study of Mandarin, as in many other languages. Two major theoretical studies have appeared in the last several years, proposing different accounts of word order in the Mandarin verb phrase. These works, Huang (1982) and Travis (1984), complement the more descriptively oriented, and more comprehensive, Li and Thompson (1981). This paper will examine Mandarin word order in light of Huang's and Travis' suggestions. Both will be shown to exhibit certain problems -in particular, in not adequately acounting for the relationships of preverbal and postverbal phrases to each other and to the verb. This paper will propose that the facts can be most clearly related to properties of Mandarin case assignment.