Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 22 - The Case for Case in Chinese

  • from Part Four - Syntax-semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Issues
  • Edited by Chu-Ren Huang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yen-Hwei Lin, Michigan State University, I-Hsuan Chen, University of California, Berkeley, Yu-Yin Hsu, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
    Published online:
    04 August 2022
    Print publication:
    18 August 2022, pp 467-485

  • 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.