Bare VP Form

It is generally agreed that the verb phrase in the ba sentence must be structurally complex, which means monosyllabic verb cannot occur with the ba construction.

Examples are given in (19):

(19) a. *我們把李四罵

*women ba lisi ma we BA Lisi scold

‘We scolded Lisi.’

b. 我們把李四罵了 women ba lisi ma le we BA Lisi scold-LE

‘We scolded Lisi.’

c. 我們把李四罵一頓

women ba lisi ma yi-dun we BA Lisi scold one-CL ‘We gave Lisi a scolding.’

The predicate of the ba construction is of a property of bounded event, the predicate must have an end point –the resultative state, such as an aspect marker, or a resultative, or a quantifier, or a directional verb. Based on Liu (1997), she listed nine patterns for the ba construction (The example (12) in chapter 2 is repeated in (20) below):

(20) a. V + resultative verb complement b. V + de (resultative)

c. V + retained object d. V + perfective marker -le e. V + PP (dative or locative) f. V + quantified phrase

g. V + yi + V (the tentative construction) h. V + durative marker -zhe

i. Adv + V

On the other side, referring to Li and Thompson’s (1981:487), “the reason why ba sentence always have verbs with those elements preceding or following them is that such elements serve to elaborate the nature of disposal.” That is, the more elements that are added to elaborate the nature of disposal, the more likely are the sentences to appear in the ba form.

In our data, it is not too difficult for us to discover that children continue to produce sentences with unbounded VP until the age around 4-year-old, although the percentage of this non-adult-like usage is not too high. Examples are given in (21) to (23):

(21) 然後再把它弄 (JC: 3;8)

ranhou zai ba ta nong

then again BA it deal with ‘Then, you deal with it.’

(22) 我要把它丟 (JC: 3;6)

wo yao ba ta diu I will BA it thro

‘I will throw it.’

(23) 那你把這綁囉 (CC: 2;11)

na ni ba zhe bang luo then you BA this braid SEP

‘Then, you use this to braid.’

As mentioned above, the predicate following [ba NP] must have an end point –the resultative state. From (21) to (23) we can see that children do not follow the constraints of the ba sentence in adult’s language to some extent. We can reason this phenomenon from two possibilities.

First, this phenomenon can be attributed to children’s lack of knowledge of aspectual properties and inability to the use of aspect markers. Therefore, although

children know that the verb phrase in the ba sentence must be structurally complex and can not be a bare form, yet they lack the ability to add the aspect markers, le or zhe, to the verb phrase. However, it has been widely known that children start to use aspect markers at a quite early age. For example, Erbaugh (1992) found that Chinese children acquire the aspect marker le earlier than other markers, zai, zhe, and guo. Based on our investigation, children started using the perfective aspect marker le very early. The aspect marker le appears at the age of 2;0, 2;5, 1;9 in the spontaneous speech data of our subjects, HY, CC, and AN respectively. Since the spontaneous speech data of the other subject, JC, are collected at 2;9, the first le is found at this age; however, we believe the perfective aspect marker le should appear much earlier in JC’s utterances. This indicates that children’s knowledge of aspectual properties is no later than the appearance of ba construction. Furthermore, even though children are unfamiliar with the usage of aspect markers, they can still use some extra elements preceding or following the VP to

achieve the nature of disposal of ba construction. However, this does not happen, and children, sometimes, still choose to use a monosyllabic V following [ba NP]. Hence, under the observation of the aspect marker le and the reasons proposed above, we can deduce that the lack of aspect markers following the VP of ba construction is

independent of the capacity to analyze the aspectual properties of VP, since le is quite productive in the early stage in children’s language acquisition.

Second, we can ascribe this phenomenon to children’s acquaintance of ba construction. If at the early stage in language acquisition children do not treat the ba sentence in the same way as the ba construction in adult language, in this time the disposal property of ba construction might not be a necessary characteristic of the children’s ba sentence. Erbaugh (1992) studied the acquisition of the aspect marker le in children language and found that children, as well as adults, often use le to call attention to a noteworthy change of state. The aspect marker le indicates perfectivity. Li and

Bowerman (1998: 313) stated “……as an event bounded at the beginning and the end, and without reference to its internal structure”. It is said that le presents a situation in its entirety or as a whole. As mentioned above, in our spontaneous speech data the usage of the aspect marker le is quite prolific at the early age. Supposing that children have acquired the usage of the aspect marker le, it is reasonable to image they can use the aspect marker le properly in the ba sentence to perform the disposal property of ba construction. However, it is totally not the case. Sometimes, children make use of neither the aspect marker le nor any other elements in the ba sentence which is

unacceptable in adult’s ba construction. This leads to the possibility that children do not regard the ba sentence as the same as the ba construction in adult language. Neither do children associate the ba sentence with a disposal reading, nor do they think the

changing of state of the post-ba NP is needed. Accordingly, children do not require the aspect marker le to denote the entirety of the event in the ba sentence. They also do not need a resultative verb compound which is always composed of a verb and a resultative complement in the predicate of ba sentence to fulfill the affected and disposal meaning of the ba construction. What children want to express is a simple event. The ba sentence in this stage is like a serial verb construction in which the juxtaposition of two verb phrases is to convey one message. Examples are shown in (24a-c).

(24) a. 我煮飯吃

wo zhu fan chi I cook rice eat ‘I cook to eat.’

b. 他買菸抽

ta mai yan chou he buy cigarette smoke

‘He buys cigarette to smoke.’

c. 他拿一本書讀

ta na yi ben shu du he take a CL book read ‘He takes a book to read.’

Just like the serial verb construction, the constituent [ba NP] and the following V describe events that are understood to be related in some way. As we noted earlier, the ba sentences at the beginning of children’s language do not always go along with the semantic property of “disposal, affected.” In some way, we can infer that ba just possesses the verbal property with the meaning of “take, dealing with.” The ba and post-ba NP denote the first event which is done for the purpose of achieving the second event. And the second event is denoted by the verb following the post-ba NP. Or we can see this as consecutive events. That is, one event occurs after the other. Accordingly, we can interpret sentences (21) as ‘Then, you hold it and deal with it’, (22) as ‘I will take it to throw’, and (23) as ‘Then you use it to braid.’

4.4 Other evidence

There is other evidence discovered in the spontaneous speech data of our subject.

See sentence (6b) repeated in (25) below:

(25) Investigator: 這塊綠色的跟它放在一起就會逼逼

zhe kuai lusede gen ta fang zai yiqi jiu hui bibi this CL green with it put to together then will‘sound’

‘Put this green one beside it, and then it will make the ‘beebee’

sound.’

Child: 這樣把它就沒有了 (HY: 3;0) zheyang ba ta jiu meiyou le

this BA it then without LE

‘Put it in this way, and it will not (make that sound).’

We can find that there are only ba and the post-ba NP found in the child’s utterance, but a following VP which must be present in the ba construction is missed. Although in many utterances of children a pseudo-verb phrase is usually used to substitute a real verb (take (26) as example), this pseudo-verb phrase usually co-occurs with an actual action executed by the child in the real world.

(26) 我這樣他了

wo zheyang ta le I this it LE

‘I do this to it.’

Not surprisingly, this pseudo-verb phrase 這樣 zheyang may, of course, stay in the site of an original real verb, like (26). However, in sentence (25), 這樣 zheyang ‘this’ seems to occupy a position of an adverb, not a verb. Take a manner adverb for illustration. In a ba sentence, a manner adverb can occur before or after ba, examples are shown in (27) (adapted from Huang & Li & Li’s (59 a-b)):

(27) a. 我小心的把杯子拿給他

wo xiaoxin-de ba beizi na-gei-ta.

I carefully BA cup take-to-him

‘I gave the cup to him carefully.’

b. 我把杯子小心的拿給他

wo ba beizi xiaoxin-de na-gei-ta.

I BA cup carefully take-to-him

‘I gave the cup to him carefully.’

We can, hence, presume that the phrase 這樣 zheyang ‘this’ is an adverb to modify a verb phrase, that is the [ba ta]. If we make a slightly modification that we substitute an adverb for zheyang 這樣 and change ba to a lexical verb na 拿 ‘take’ in this sentence , we can get a well-formed sentence.

(28) 很快的拿他就沒有了

hen-kuai-di na ta jiu meiyou le very fast take it then without LE

‘Take it fast, and it will not (make that sound).’

Another piece of evidence is based on the verbhood tests to ba. It is widely accepted that ba cannot serve as a simple answer to a question, for example:

(29) A: 你把什麼吃完了

ni ba sheme chi wan le ? you BA what eat finish LE ‘What did you and finish?’

a. B: 飯 fan rice ‘Rice.’

b. B: 把飯吃完了

ba fan chi wan le BA rice eat finish LE “Finish the rice.’

c. *B: 把飯

*ba fan BA rice

‘finish the rice.’

However, in the spontaneous speech data of our subject HY, we found that ba can serve as a simple answer to a question. See (30) below:

(30) INV: 把它撞壞?

ba ta zhuang huai ? BA it crash broken ‘What do you want to crash?

CHI: 把這個啊 (HY: 3;7)

ba zhege a BA this PAR ‘I want to crash this.’

Thought the two evidence proposed above are not grouped in our three conditions in the previous section, these do shed light on our hypothesis that ba is firstly acquired as a lexical verb in the very early acquisition of ba.

4.5 A comparison between our research and Hsieh’s (2009)

Since Hsieh (2009) has studied a child’s development of ba construction by using the longitudinal data collected as the child was about one year old, in our research we aim to use a more quantified study to examine the ba status in the early stage of child’s development of ba construction. In our research, our finding is approximately consistent with Hsieh’s research that ba is analyzed as a pure lexical verb at the very beginning of the development of ba construction. However, we can still discover some differences between Hsieh’s research and ours.

First, according to Hsieh’s (2009) research, she stated that before 2;0 the child only produced ba sentences without a post-ba NP, and a complete ba sentence occurred at 2;5. Yet in our research we find that children can produce well-formed ba sentence earlier than 2;5, example is shown in (31).

(31) 把這個收起來 (AN: 1;11)

ba zhege shou-qilai BA this clean-up

‘Clean this up.’

Second, Hsieh claims that from 3;5 the VP used in a ba construction is always bounded. However, in our data we can easily find that although the error ratio of

unbounded VP does decline as children getting mature, this error can still be found after the age of 3;5. In the following we list the percentage of the unbounded VP of the children in our study during 3;9 to 4;1.

(32) HY: 2.38%

JC: 1.82%

AN: 4.55%

CC: 1.16%

Third, Hsieh argued that the child has finally acquired the semantics and syntax of

the ba construction when he reached 5;2. It is because that there is a sign that the child stopped producing non-adult ba sentences with respect to affectees. The child produced many ba spelling using the passive-like marker 給 gei ((33) is adapted from Hsieh’s (66)).

(33) 你把它給移開了喔? (5;8)

ni ba ta gei yi-kai le o you BA it GEI move-aside ASP SEP

‘Do you move it aside?’

However, from the data in our research we can find this kind of sentence appears much earlier than the age Hsieh argued in the children’s language. Examples are shown in (34).

(34) a. 然後再把手給戳進去 (HY: 4;0)

ranhou zai ba shou gei chuo-jin-qu then again BA hand GEI poke-into

‘And then poke the hand into it.’

b. 然後她就把它給再打開 (AN: 3;11)

ranhou ta jiu ba ta gei zai da-kai then she then BA it GEI again open ‘Then she opens it again.’

This phenomenon indicates that using this kind of sentence as a sign to argue that child at this age has fully acquired the ba construction is too assertive. That is because at this age children still make many non-adult-like ba sentences and can not produce the well-formed ba sentence all the time.

Lastly, as mentioned in previous section, we consider the phenomenon that only canonical ba sentence appears before a certain age to be an important clue to discuss the

status of ba in the early stage of child’s language. This phenomenon is not observed in Hsieh’s (2009) research. Furthermore, from this point of view we can have a different perspective to diagnose the development of ba sentence in child’s language.

In summary, in comparison with Hsieh’s (2009) research, we provide more complete and richer data of children. In this way, we can have a more detailed

observation and discussion to the ba status of child’s language. In the early part of our study, it has been mentioned that unlike Hsieh’s (2009) research, the developmental stages of ba construction is not our present concern. This study limits the discussion to the ba status of the very beginning of child’s language. Under our analysis above, it is found that children do regard ba as a verb at the early stage of the development of ba construction. However, in contrast with Hsieh’s research, we find that it is not that easy to, decisively and lucidly, mark off the different development stage of ba construction, since the non-adult-like ba sentence and well-formed sentence are usually mixed together. That is to say, at a certain age children might start using more complex ba construction, but, at the same time, the children might still also produce ungrammatical ba sentence. To put it another way, there is a transition-period in the acquisition of ba construction, and children acquire the complete ba construction progressively and abandon the non-adult-like ba sentence step by step. In our study, what we can be sure is that children use ba as a pure lexical verb at the beginning stage of the development of ba construction.

Chapter 5 CONCLUSION The ba construction is perhaps the most widely discussed study of Mandarin

grammar. It has received many attempts at analysis and comes up frequently as a syntactic test in discussions of other phenomena. Nonetheless, there is little attempt to discuss the ba phenomenon in the acquisition of child’s language.

In this article, we do not try to give any new proposal to against the original one, but, however, we aim to test the hypothesis that at the early acquisition stage of ba, ba is firstly acquired as a verb not a grammaticalized category. Besides, sorting the

development of ba construction is beyond the scope of this research. Therefore the present goal is, rather, to discuss the verbal status of ba in the acquisition of young children’s language, which has received only limited attention in the past. Since it is believed that children’s grammatical errors can represent their deficiency in the knowledge of adults’ language, the errors of ba construction that children make can, therefore, provided us clues of children’s knowledge and acquaintance of the ba status.

Based on four children’s spontaneous speech data, we try to provide evidence to argue that ba is firstly acquired as a lexical verb in the acquisition of children’s language, not as a grammaticalized category in adults’ language. The three evidences are presented as following respectively: (i) omission of VP in the ba construction; (ii) only canonical ba sentence appears; (iii) the bare verb form ceases to appear at a certain age. In addition, some phenomenon, for example, taking ba as a simple answer to a question, are also found in children’s spontaneous speech data can also give us implication to assume ba as a verb in the early age of children. Under carefully observation, the three set of conditions grant us to give a hypothesis that ba is firstly acquired as a more verb-like category in the acquisition of child language.

In this research, we use a corpus-based approach rather than a longitudinal one to

exam the hypothesis that ba is firstly acquired as a verb in the acquisition of children language. We believed that the data from only one child is not sufficient, for the reason that the phenomenon found in this child might be peculiar to an individual, that is, the idiosyncrasy of this child. Moreover, under statistical information of the spontaneous speech data, it is much easier to survey the ba status in children language with increase of age. On the other side, it is believed that ba is original a verb and is grammaticalized to a grammatical category, and in some aspect ba still retains its verbal property such as canonical ba construction. Therefore, the finding of this research also reflect children’s tendency to acquire content words rather than grammatical category.

Although this thesis just give a preliminary investigation in the study of the

phenomenon of the ba construction in child’s language, the findings and implications of the study points to new possibilities for future research of the acquisition of ba

construction.

References

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Bennett, Paul A. 1981. The evolution of passive and disposal sentences. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 9: 61-89.

Chao, Yuen-Ren. 1968. A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of

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