Event Structure and the 'Ba' Construction.

Much earlier controversy surrounding the Chinese "ba" construction stems from dissention over whether or not "ba" has any independent semantic content. "Ba" was assumed either to be a purely formal particle whose function was to assign case, or to have semantic content translating into thematic content. However, under the hypothesis that abstract case does not play a role in Chinese, "ba" can not be a case marker. It is also argued that thematic content can not be assumed. Instead, a second kind of thematic information that plays a role in syntactic description, namely event structure, is hypothesized. It is shown that the affected interpretation of the "ba" dependent phrase is the consequence not of a particular thematic role but of the a-role assigned by "ba." Thus the constraints on "ba" are captured and shown to be intrinsically linked. It is concluded that this provides further evidence for a model of syntax in which there is considerable interaction between the syntactic representation and the level of event structure. Contains 19 references. (MSE)