SOV as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese

doi:10.1017/9781108329019.024

20 - SOV as the Canonical Word Order in Modern Chinese

from Part Four - Syntax-semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022

Sicong Dong and

Jie Xu

Edited by

I-Hsuan Chen and

Chu-Ren Huang: Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yen-Hwei Lin: Affiliation:
Michigan State University
I-Hsuan Chen: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Yu-Yin Hsu: Affiliation:
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Summary

The debate on modern Chinese being SVO or SOV is facing a dilemma: the word order is SVO in an unmarked declarative sentence in Chinese, while Chinese exhibits many features shared by SOV languages. To tackle this difficult situation, researchers should focus on language types, but not the relative orders of subject, verb, and object. Based on the usage of modern Chinese, we have checked ten universals generalized in Greenberg (1963) which are relevant to this topic. It is shown that 90% of the universals support Chinese being a SOV language, and only one universal is on the SVO side. Modern Chinese is therefore argued to be located very close to the SOV end of a continuum.

Keywords

Chinese SOV SVO word order typology

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics , pp. 428 - 443

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108329019.024 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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