Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Writing System/Neuro-cognitive Processing of Chinese
- Part Two Morpho-lexical Issues in Chinese
- Part Three Phonetic-phonological Issues in Chinese
- Part Four Syntax-semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Issues
- 19 SVO as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese
- 20 SOV as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese
- 21 Semantic and Pragmatic Conditions on Word Order Variation in Chinese
- 22 The Case for Case in Chinese
- 23 The Case without Case in Chinese
- 24 The Syntax of Classifiers in Mandarin Chinese
- 25 The Chinese Classifier System as a Lexical-semantic System
- 26 Syntax of Sentence-final Particles in Chinese
- 27 Sentence-final Particles
- 28 Topicalization Defined by Syntax
- 29 An Interactive Perspective on Topic Constructions in Mandarin
- 30 Grammatical Acceptability in Mandarin Chinese
- Index
- References
22 - The Case for Case in Chinese
from Part Four - Syntax-semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Writing System/Neuro-cognitive Processing of Chinese
- Part Two Morpho-lexical Issues in Chinese
- Part Three Phonetic-phonological Issues in Chinese
- Part Four Syntax-semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Issues
- 19 SVO as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese
- 20 SOV as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese
- 21 Semantic and Pragmatic Conditions on Word Order Variation in Chinese
- 22 The Case for Case in Chinese
- 23 The Case without Case in Chinese
- 24 The Syntax of Classifiers in Mandarin Chinese
- 25 The Chinese Classifier System as a Lexical-semantic System
- 26 Syntax of Sentence-final Particles in Chinese
- 27 Sentence-final Particles
- 28 Topicalization Defined by Syntax
- 29 An Interactive Perspective on Topic Constructions in Mandarin
- 30 Grammatical Acceptability in Mandarin Chinese
- Index
- References
Summary
Case theory is a theoretical tool in the generative grammar to capture generalizations regarding categorial distribution, particularly the nominal category in relation to others. The notion of case can describe the close relation between grammatical categories, such as a verb/preposition and its object, or the subject of a sentence and the tense or agreement of the sentence. This chapter reviews the advantages of adopting the notion of abstract case in Chinese, a language without overt morphological case marking. Data and issues discussed include how the challenges Chinese poses to the word order correlations proposed as universals or tendencies in typological studies cease to be problems if the notion of abstract case interacts with word order universals, what the postverbal structure constraint is in Chinese, and how Case plays a role in the analysis, whether there are true pre-nominal PPs in Chinese, and whether tensed and non-tensed clauses can be distinguished in Chinese, as well as the role of case in capturing the behavior of clauses.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics , pp. 467 - 485Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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