普通話真的是 SVO 語言嗎?

My question was translated from English through Google Translate, so there might be some translation error. My original question: "Is Mandarin really a SVO language?"

I"m currently learning Mandarin but the word order seems to be different from typical SVO languages like English. For example,

  1. "書本拿給我" (give me the books) - SVO should be "拿書本給我"

  2. "家裡出去" (leaving from the house) - How about "出去從家裡"

  3. "他在家裡睡覺" (He sleeps at home) - Why is it not "他睡覺在家裡"

A lot of these sentences in Mandarin put the verb at the end after the object, instead of putting it before the object.

我正在學習普通話。普通話中的語序似乎與其它典型的主謂賓語言不同,例如英語。例如,

  1. 書本拿給我」 (give me the books) - 按主謂賓應該是「拿書本給我」

  2. 家裡出去」 (leaving from the house) - 如果說「出去從家裡」呢

  3. 「他在家裡睡覺」 (He sleeps at home) - 為什麼不是「他睡覺在家裡」

普通話中很多這樣的句子都是將謂語放在賓語之後,而不是放在賓語之前。


Basically you are mixing up the ba/bei structure and the unmarked order of Standard Chinese language. That is a common problem, even for a beginner syntactician who has little or limited knowledge of Standard Chinese; so that is not your fault, and just take it easy. But your problem is that you cannot differentiate object and PP (prepositional phrase); that will be a horrible problem.

I would like to provide a somehow up-to-date summary of that issue - although basically my syntactic knowledge is limited to PP system. For Chinese version, please refer to the second half of that answer, which is a full translation of my writing.

Following is a general, introductory session about the word order of Chinese; for those who are only interested in syntactic theories, that part should be enough.

The most common, unmarked order of Chinese language, including both Standard Chinese and Archaic Chinese, is SVO; that is a historical issue I would like to address to before we move to the analysis of Standard Chinese. Once there was an argument about the SVO or SOV order of Archaic Chinese (See Li and Thompson, 1974), while both the authors hold the opinion that Archaic Chinese should be in SOV order (since quite a lot of Sino-Tibetan languages are now in SOV order). Little evidence, however, is discovered for that argument; most of the literary records of Archaic Chinese, especially the pre-Qin documents, demonstrate the features of SVO language rather than SOV. Surely Archaic Chinese has some structures that follow SOV order (if you can read Chinese, or have a reliable native-speaker as your interpreter, you can refer to that article written by me: 從倒裝句說開去 - 聽雨庭院工作室謝喵圖書館 - 知乎專欄; if not, just give me a message and I will try my best), but all the examples are not fully "unmarked". For example, an unmarked sentence favours nouns as its subject and direct object, and no additional particle should be present in the sentence, but those sentences with SOV either include a particular particle that triggers the SOV structure, or contain a pronoun as its direct object. For a typical unmarked sentence, such as 「孟子(S)見(V)梁惠王(O)」 (Literal translation following the original word order: Mencius met (or visited) King Hui of Liang), you see both the subject and the object are nouns (proper names), and the order is definitely SVO. The feature of SVO has been inherited by Middle Chinese, and then Standard Chinese today.

As for Standard Chinese, an unmarked sentence, like 「我今天吃了個蘋果」 (Literal translation following the original word order: I today ate an apple), is also definitely SVO; even for those sentences containing a pronoun as its object, like 「我揍了他」 (Literal translation following the original word order: I punched him),the word order is still SVO. Without the presence of any word like 「把」 (ba) and 「被」 (bei), without the movement of topic, the word order is always SVO; you can never find a sentence presenting an SOV order. That is one of the common view that is shared by syntacticians in Europe (Continental and UK); maybe those horrible Americans have some other ideas that I don"t know.

So that argument answers the question in the title: yes, Standard Chinese is an SVO language.

So how can we interpret the cases given by the questioner in that way? Before I go further in the field of Chinese, I would like to stray a bit and talk about another language: German.

German main clauses demonstrate a variety of word orders, including SVO, VSO, OVS, SAOV, and even OASV if you pay enough attention to the language (A stands for auxiliary verb, like "did" and "have" in English). But most commonly it is known as V2-SOV order; that is, in a main clause, the verb will always be at the second position, while the verb will be at the end of the a subordinate clause. I mention the structure of German, mainly to point out that it is possible for a language to have a numerous number of word orders besides its unmarked order; the world is not made up of English, which only allows a limited number of word orders.

Let"s move back to Chinese then. Example 1 in the question is a quite complicated one involving both double-object construction and the presence of ba; so it will take me longer time and more examples to illustrate the variations in Standard Chinese. Firstly I would like to discuss the double-object construction, which means the main verb is ditrasitive, has three theta-roles and requires three nouns (or nominal constructions) in a grammatical sentence; the three nouns will be subject (S), direct object (DO) and indirect object (IO) respectively. For a typical ditrasitive verb, like 「給」 (give), the unmarked word order will be:

(1) 他給了我一本書。 (Literal translation following the original word order: He gave me a book) - in the form of S-V-IO-DO.

In that case, the word order of Standard Chinese is exactly same as that of English, which is a typical SVO language: he gave me a book. The construction of ditransitive verb is usually referred as VP-shell; for those who are interested in how Chomsky and his fellows solve the problem of theta-role assignment of ditransitive structure, just type this word in Google and you will get piles of literature.

Then we talk about the application of ba in the construction of transitive (NOT ditransitive) verb. The nature of ba is rather complicated and even controversial; here I would like to follow the light verb assumption, in which the nature of ba is a bit similar (but NOT EQUAL) to auxiliary verb in German; a light verb is a verb (of course), but its function is more like a particle which leads to the shift of structure within the sentence, e.g. focus, stress, and so on. For a typical transitive verb, like 「吃」 (eat), both unmarked and ba-construction sentence express the same meaning:

(2) a. 我吃了一個蘋果。 (Literal translation following the original word order: I ate an apple) - in the form of SVO.

b. 我把一個蘋果吃了。(Literal translation following the original word order: I ba an apple ate) - in the form of S-ba-OV.

c. *我一個蘋果吃了。(Literal translation following the original word order: *I an apple ate) - an asterisk indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical to native speakers; in the form of SOV.

Both (2a) and (2b) are grammatical and acceptable by a native speaker; (2c), a pure SOV order, sounds horrible unless some particular intonation is accompanied. We can see that the SOV order is possible only when ba is present.

Then we put the two together and go to the example 1 in the question, which is a combination of double-object construction and ba-construction. For a ba-construction of (1), we can list a set for comparison:

(3) a. 他給了我一本書。 (a replica of (1); Literal translation following the original word order: He gave me a book) - in the form of S-V-IO-DO.

b. 他把一本書給了我。(Literal translation following the original word order: He ba a book gave me) - in the form of S-ba-DO-V-IO.

c. #他給了一本書我。(Literal translation following the original word order: He gave a book me) - in the form of S-V-DO-IO; I mark it by the pound mark here because in some Chinese dialects, e.g. Cantonese, that structure is prefectly allowed, and I also see some Hong Kong friends using it in their variation of Standard Chinese; I would like to ignore it here because it is about Standard Chinese, but the sentence is not that "standard".

d. *他把我給了一本書。(Literal translation following the original word order: He ba me gave a book) - in the form of S-ba-IO-V-DO.

For other possible structures, most of them are ungrammatical and unacceptable to native speakers; that includes all the structures in which V is at the very end of a sentence, including but not limited to S-IO-DO-V and S-ba-DO-IO-V. There should be at least one component after the main verb of the sentence for it to be grammatical; for Standard Chinese, it can never be the case in double-object construction that a sentence is a pure SOV - that is rather convincing to show that the structure of DO-V in both transitive and ditransitive sentences is a triggered movement, rather than based-generated.

For a typical SOV language, unless the presence of extraposed structure (which is too complicated for non-syntacticians), all objects should be in front of the main verb. At the same time, it is grammatical for an SOV language, like Japanese and German, to exchange the position between IO and DO - that is called "scrambling". Scrambling, as a widely-present feature among OV languages, is impossible in Standard Chinese; that can be another piece of suggestion, although the logic is not fully convincing. Sad story.

As for the remaining two examples, "從家裡出去" (from home go out) and "在家裡睡覺" (at home sleep), other respondents have answered that they belong to the problem of adverbial propositional phrase (PP) rather than object. In Archiac Chinese, the position of PP related to main verb is rather flexible (or in Chomskyan terminology, a "free parameter"), but in Standard Chinese, a PP attaching to VP is more frequently a pre-verbial one. Definitely that is interesting - and more difficu< so if you think the following content may be beyond your reach (which, actually, is the case for some of my classmates in a linguistic programme), just skip it and go to the end.

Contemporary syntactic theories, especially the Chomskyan one, assume that a sentence is in a tree strucuture, while the large tree contains a series of small trees, which equals to phrases. Foe every phrase, there is a head (the most important word), a complement which is to provide the essential part of the rest of the phrase, and a specifier which is more or less like a modifier. For a VP including a transitive verb, the verb itself is the head, the object is its complement, while the adverbial (e.g. PP) is its specifier.

In Standard Chinese, most of the time, the specifier is in front of the head, and that structure is less flexible. For instance, an NP (nominal phrase) is in the form of AP-N, that is why we say "美麗的|姑娘" (beautiful girl) rather than "姑娘|美麗的" (girl beautiful); that is the same in the construction of VP, so we put the PP in front of VP, and say "從家裡出去" rather than "出去從家裡", or "在晚上|看電視" (in the evening watch TV) rather than "看電視|在晚上" (watch TV in the evening).

Since we are talking about specifier but not complement when we discuss the PP-V construction in Chinese, that structure can never be used to argue for the SOV structure. The example "在晚上|看電視" (in the evening watch TV, in the form of PP-V-O), on the contrary, obviously presents that Standard Chinese is a VO language.

I will not further extend my argument into an analysis of Greenberg"s Linguistic Universals, in which he suggests that a VO language is always head-complement (while Chinese is not); that will be beyond the reach of 99% members of zhihu.com, and may even earn me a page in Linguistic Inquiry. I hope that it is clear enough for you to know why Standard Chinese is an SVO language rather than an SOV one: basically what you regard as OV structure is not fully qualified. Next time try some more delicate examples and you are always welcome to ask questions here.

Enjoy learning Chinese!

————中文版————

總的來說,你把「把」/「被」結構和現代漢語(普通話)的無語法標記的語序(常規語序)搞混了。這個問題很常見,即使對於一個不了解或不太了解現代漢語的句法學初心者也是如此;這不是你的問題,所以放輕鬆啦。但是,你的問題在於你沒區分開賓語和介詞短語作狀語;這問題可就大了。

儘管我的句法學知識只有Principle and Parameter那麼多,但我還是在這裡想寫一個至今為止有關於漢語語序問題的總結。這裡就是中文部分了,歡迎閱讀。

以下是一個有關漢語語序的籠統的介紹;如果有人只關心句法學理論問題的話,看完這裡就足夠了,後面全是案例分析。漢語里最常見的、沒有任何語法標記的語序,包括現代漢語和古漢語(特別是先秦時期),都是SVO順序的;在我們分析現代漢語的結構之前,先來談談這個歷史問題。曾經學界有爭論古漢語到底是SVO還是SOV語序的,參見Li and Thompson, 1974,這二位認為古漢語應該是SOV語序的(因為漢藏語系有其他語言一直保留著SOV語序)。不過就這個論點而言其實沒什麼論據;許多古漢語的文獻記錄,特別是先秦文獻,都顯示古漢語有SVO的特徵,而並非是SOV的。當然,古漢語的確有SOV語序的現象(參見我過去的專欄:從倒裝句說開去 - 聽雨庭院工作室謝喵圖書館 - 知乎專欄),但是所有這些案例都不算是「常規語序」。比如說,無標記的句子通常要求它的主語和直接賓語都是名詞,同時句子里不能有任何小品詞出現;但是表現出SOV語序的句子,要不就是有能夠引出SOV語序的小品詞,要不就是以代詞作為它的直接賓語。在一句典型的無標記句子里,比如「孟子見梁惠王」,你能發現它的主語和賓語都是名詞(專有名詞),而它的語序顯然是SVO。其後,中古漢語也繼承了SVO的語序,然後是古白話,然後就是今天的現代漢語(新白話)。

就現代漢語而言,一個無標記的句子,比如「我今天吃了個蘋果」,也顯然是SVO的;即使句子中以代詞作為直接賓語,比如「我揍了他」,也還是SVO語序的。如果句子里沒有「把」和「被」等詞的出現,也沒有話題的移動(參見文言文的判斷句式是不是體現了黏著語的特點?),你根本找不到一個表現為SOV語序的句子。這個看法是歐洲大陸及英國句法學家們共享的一個觀點;也許那些糟糕的美國句法學家有其他想法,不過我不是很清楚。

這部分從理論上回答了標題里提出的問題:是的,普通話真的是SVO語言

那麼我們要怎麼解釋題主在題目里所給出的案例呢?在我繼續深入討論漢語之前,我先跑一下題,討論一下另外一種語言:德語。

如果你認真注意的話,德語的主句可以出現一系列各種各樣的語序,包括SVO、VSO、OVS、SAOV,甚至OASV(A指的是助動詞,就像英語里的「did」和「have」)。不過對於大多數句法學家來說,德語是一種V2-SOV語言;在主句里,變形的動詞(包括助動詞)一直都在句子的第二位,而在從句里動詞將出現在句尾。我提到德語的結構,主要是為了說明,一種語言除了它的默認語序之外,可以有各種各樣的語序;世界可不是由英語那種只允許幾種語序存在的語言構成的。

那我們繼續說漢語吧。問題中的例一是個很複雜的情況,它同時包括了雙賓語結構和「把」的出現;所以我可能需要更長時間和更多栗子來解釋現代漢語的不同語序變體。首先是雙賓語結構,也就是說主動詞是個雙及物動詞,有三個題元角色,在一個合乎語法的句子里需要三個名詞(或名詞性成分);這三個名詞分別是主語(S)、直接賓語(DO)和間接賓語(IO)。對於一個典型的雙及物動詞來說——就說「給」吧——無標記的語序是這樣的:

(1) 他給了我一本書。——語序為S-V-IO-DO。

在這個例子里,現代漢語的語序和英語的語序「he gave me a book」是一模一樣的,而英語正是一種典型的SVO語言。雙賓語結構通常被稱為VP-shell,如果有人想知道喬姆斯基他們流派是如何解決雙賓語結構的題元角色分配的,直接把這個名詞打到谷歌里,就能找到一堆文獻。

然後我們來說說「把」這個字在及物動詞(而不是雙及物動詞)結構里的應用。「把」的性質非常複雜,甚至可以說爭論不斷;在這裡,我採取「輕動詞」的假設,這樣「把」的性質就有點像(但絕不等同於)德語里的助動詞;輕動詞是一種動詞(廢話),但它的功能更像是句子里的小品詞,在句子內部轉換結構,比如添加主題、重點等等。對於一個典型的及物動詞,比如「吃」來說,無標記句子和「把」字句都表達了同一個意思:

(2) a. 我吃了一個蘋果。——語序為SVO。

b. 我把一個蘋果吃了。——語序為S-ba-OV.

c. *我一個蘋果吃了。——星號指這個句子對母語者來說不合乎語法;語序為SOV。

(2a)和(2b)都合乎語法,能被母語者接受;(2c)是個純粹的SOV語序,除非在句子上有特別的重音或者語調,否則聽起來非常糟心。我們可以發現,在這裡,只有在「把」出現的時候,SOV語序才能夠成立。

然後,我們把這兩部分合起來,來分析問題中的例一,也就是雙賓語結構和「把」字句的合體。對於(1)的把字句結構,我們可以舉一系列栗子來進行比較:

(3) a. 他給了我一本書。——重複(1),語序為S-V-IO-DO。

b. 他把一本書給了我。——語序為S-ba-DO-V-IO。

c. #他給了一本書我。——語序為S-V-DO-IO;我用井號(半確認)來標記,是因為在一些漢語方言變體里(比如粵語里),這個結構「佢俾一本書我」完全沒問題,我也發現一些香港的朋友在說普通話的時候會這麼講;但是我在這裡想忽略這個問題,因為我們在討論現代漢語,而這個句子並沒有那麼「標準」。

d. *他把我給了一本書。——語序為S-ba-IO-V-DO。

至於其他可能的結構排列,大多數都是不合乎語法、母語者無法接受的;這其中包括了所有動詞在句子最末的結構,包括但不限於S-IO-DO-V和S-ba-DO-IO-V。主動詞後需要至少有一個成分才能合乎漢語語法;對於現代漢語來說,雙賓語結構里永遠不可能出現純粹的SOV句子——這有力地說明了一點:在單賓語和雙賓語「把」字句里,DO-V的語序是個被某些因素引發的移動,而並不是原初形成的。(而IO-V是不可能形成的,見(3d)。)

對於典型的SOV語言來說,除非出現了extraposed結構(這個問題對於非句法學家來說太複雜了),否則所有的賓語,不管是直接還是間接賓語,都要出現在主動詞之前。同時,對於日語和德語這樣的SOV語言來說,IO和DO之間位置的交換是毫無問題的——這個現象叫做「亂序」。亂序是一種在OV語言里普遍出現的現象,但是在現代漢語里卻不存在;這也可以作為漢語不是OV語言的暗示之一,雖然從邏輯上而言並不是那麼理據服。真是個悲傷的故事呢。

至於剩下的兩個例子——「從家裡出去」和「在家裡睡覺」——其他答主已經回答了,它們屬於副詞性介詞短語的問題,而不是賓語的問題。在古漢語里,以主動詞為參照系,介詞短語的位置是相當隨意的(或者用喬派術語的話說,這是個自由參量),但是在現代漢語里,附著在動詞短語的介詞短語更多的會出現在動詞前。這一現象相當有意思——而且解釋起來相當困難;所以如果你覺得接下來的內容可能超出了你的理解範圍(事實上,它甚至超出了我碩士班一些同學的理解範圍),那就直接跳過這段看結尾好了。

當前的句法理論,特別是喬派理論,假設一個句子是樹狀結構的,一棵大樹里包括了一系列小樹,每一棵小樹相當於一個短語。對於每個短語來說都有一個head(最重要的詞,決定了短語的性質)、一個complement(為短語剩下的部分提供必要的信息),還有一個specifier(或多或少是一個修飾結構)。對於一個包括了及物動詞的動詞短語來說,動詞本身就是head,及物的賓語是它的complement,而狀語(比如說一個介詞短語)則是它的specifier。

在現代漢語里,大多數時間,specifier都在head前面,而且這個結構並沒有那麼隨意。比如說,一個名詞短語的結構是形容詞短語—名詞,這就是為什麼我們說的是「美麗的姑娘」而不是「姑娘美麗的」;對於動詞短語的結構也完全一樣,所以我們把介詞短語放在動詞之前,說的是「從家裡出去」而不是「出去從家裡」,是「在晚上看電視」而不是「看電視在晚上」。

由於我們在討論PP-V結構的時候說的是specifier而不是complement,所以,這個結構根本就不能用來證明SOV結構的問題。而「在晚上看電視」剛好還表明了現代漢語真的是一種VO語言。

(有關specifier-head-complement的介紹,參見粵語是否和越南語在同一語言系屬?)

這個回答大概到此為止,我不會再繼續討論分析Greenberg的Linguistic Universals假設。Greenberg認為,VO語言總是體現出head-complement順序的(可惜漢語並不是);如果要深入討論的話,知乎上99%的人都會看不懂,而我如果寫得好的話甚至還可以考慮去Linguistic Inquiry發一篇。我希望這個論述已經可以清楚地解釋為什麼漢語是一種SVO語言而不是SOV語言:基本上你認為是OV結構的那些結構都不能成為證據。下一次可以試試看一些更精細微妙的例子,歡迎你隨時到這裡來提問。

祝學漢語愉快!

特別感謝我們系主任,一輩子研究的VO/OV parameter沒想到我今天能用得上。


I think Chinese Mandarin is a SVO language in most cases, though you can see some sentences in SOV order. BTW, I"m not a linguist.

I have to say that your examples are not so appropriate.

1. "Give me the books" could be "給我那些書" in Chinese. That is obviously in SVO order. 給 is a verb. 我 and 那些書 are objects. That sentense can also be translated as "把那些書給我", which is in SOV order. Not all sentenses can be in SOV order in Chinese.

The construction is a grammatical construction in the Chinese language. In a construction, the object of a verb is placed after thefunction word 把 b? (or, in more formal writing, 將 jiāng), and the verb placed after the object, forming a subject–object–verb (SOV) sentence. Linguists commonly analyze as a light verb construction, or as a preposition.

The construction may only be used in certain contexts, generally those in which the verb expresses "disposal" of, or action upon, the object. According to Wang Li, "the disposal form states how a person is handled, manipulated, or dealt with; how something is disposed of; or how an affair is conducted," or, in other words, "what happens to" the object. Therefore, it is generally used with verbs that are high in transitivity, a property that describes the effect a verb has on its object; does not occur grammatically with verbs that express states or emotions, such as "love" and "miss," or with verbs that express activities that have no effect on the direct object, such as "sing" and "see."

The direct object of a construction must meet certain requirements as well. It is usually definite, meaning that it is specific and unique (as in phrases beginning with the equivalent of this,that, these, or those). It may sometimes also be generic, such as "salt" in the sentence "She sometimes eats salt thinking it"s sugar." The object of a construction is nearly always something that both the speaker and hearer know about and are aware of.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C7%8E_construction

2. "家裡出去" (leaving from the house) is not in SOV order. There is no OBJECT in that sentence. "從家裡(from the house)" is the ADVERBIAL, not the object.

3."他在家裡睡覺" (He sleeps at home) is not in SOV order, either. 他 is the Subject. 在家裡 is the adverbial. And 睡覺 is the verb (actually a verb-object phrase).

The way we use adverbial in Chinese is really different from that in English, but I don"t think that means the Chinese Mandarin is a SOV language.


In your second and third example, 從家裡 and 在家裡 are both "adverbial modifiers" (狀語) ,not objects. Even in the English phrases, they are not objects neither.

And why adverbial modifiers are put in front of the verb? No reason, this is a fundamental rule of Mandarin grammar, just like that in English you always put adjectives before nouns while in French you have to inverse the order.

As for your first example, I think it"s a special struture of emphasis.


My personal non-professional opinion: Yes, it is.

"書本拿給我" is with bǎ construction. And bǎ construction (把字句) and bèi construction (被字句) are two exceptions in modern Mandarin that have some sort of SOV order (not that strict). It"s like you say "Me das los libros" in Spanish, rather than "das me los libros". Actually, you can also say 拿給我書本 (SVO) in Mandarin, just like "dame los libros a mi" in Spanish.

Therefore, if Spanish is considered to be SVO language, then Mandarin should be SVO language, too.

The rest two examples shown above have nothing to do with Verb-Object order. The sentence "從家裡出去" does not have object, in which 家 is actually an adverbial. Same thing with "他在家裡睡覺". "在家裡" in front of "睡覺" is the adverbial rather than object, and the object of the sentence is actually "覺" as a noun, whilst 睡 is the verb put before the object (VO).

Therefore, if we solely talk about Verb-Object vs. Object-Verb order, I"ll say Mandarin is an SVO language. However, Mandarin does have different order in putting adverbial from English, which doesn"t make it a non-SVO language.


漢語肯定不是完全SVO

VO我甚至不覺得真正存在 因為可以認為是VO一體的

SO如果不產生歧義 那麼漢語里SVO的位置就是任意的 比如最常見的《 你吃飯》三個字就是任意語序 只是說的時候中間多一些副詞形容詞之類的修飾語


一進來我還以為是quora。。。。。果然外國人的待遇高惹


The phrases(e.g.在家裡,從家裡)indicating the place or manner can be put either before or after the predicates;they should be treated as adverbial modifiers instead of objects.

As to your first example, I believe it"s a case of double object construction.


Modern Chinese language is a SVO language, supplemented by some features of ancient Chinese.

Modern Chinese started from the 1915 Vernacular Movement which borrowed a whole set of grammar from English. Before then there was no grammar or punctuation marks in Chinese language. That"s why most of Chinese grammar is the same as English"s.

Take the sentences in the question as an example:

從家裡 出去 從家裡介詞短語做狀語修飾動詞出去

Leaving from the house 在英文句子中同樣,from the house介詞短語作為狀語用來修飾leave這個動作

For the other example given, maybe you are more familiar with the following one.

I had my hair cut today. 譯為:我今天把頭髮理了。或者,我今天理了頭髮。

Is it the same sentence pattern? There is just some difference of usage.

把書本拿給我 give me the books 說成是拿書給我問題也不是很大,只是一個語言習慣的問題。


Lack of obligatory grammatical rule is a characteristic of Mandarin. That is why Mandarin is easy to learn, but also difficult to learn.


家裡、家裡 are adverb phrases. They are here to modify the verb rather than present the object.

書本拿給我。 把 can be taken as an auxilliary verb, meaning "take ... to (action)". Same thing here is for 被。 If you want to translate it grammatically proper, it would appear as "take the book into being carried to you", which is very weird. As a result, we would normally preceive them as "inversion" (and technically this is the terminology = =).


at home is not an object. It is an Adv. You can eat an apple but you cannot sleep a house!So it"s not the fault of Mandarin. It"s yours.


我是來抖機靈的: @Chris Xia@Hasuran Li@poem@杜帥@那森@岑知星

—媽,我走了!

—飯也不吃了你。(√)

—也不吃飯了你。(√)

—你飯也不吃了。(√)

—飯你也不吃了。(√)

—也不吃飯了你。(√)

—你也不吃飯了。(×還有誰不吃飯?)


這個問題不能一概而論地講,因為:

1.首先關於普通話是什麼類型的語言這一點歷來就有SVO與SOV之爭。

TimothyLight,黃正德(Huang,1982),日本的鳥井克之均認為漢語是SVO。鳥井認為,漢語基本上是SVO結構,而一旦出現SOV,則通常是一種變格。

而戴浩一(Tai,1973)明確提出,漢語是SOV語言。Li,C.N(李納)和S.Thompson( 1974)在他們的論文中指出, 古漢語是SVO語言,而現代漢語則是SOV語言。事實上現代漢語確實在應用「把」字句的頻率有大量的增長,故而SOV結構的句子也大量增長了。

All in all,whether Mandarin is a SVO language or not doesn"t have a final conclusion.

In my opinion,C.NS.T"s view is interesting(they cut Chinese language),though their research method may not be so suitable .But I"m not professional,so that I can only offer some information for you.

2.另外值得注意的是,提出SVO等幾種語言類型的語言學家Joseph H. Greenberg在他的三十多種素材中並未將漢語納入研究範圍。

實際上漢語自身的特點還有很多,甚至SSV這種結構也是很常見的,而這些Greenberg並未研究到。所以以這種標準來衡量漢語的時候,有必要對理論有一定的修正。

----------------------------------------------------

語言類型學與漢語的SVO和SOV之爭


語言的結構只是一種規定罷了,久而久之成為一種習慣。

不管什麼結構,都沒有對錯之分。至於有部分句子賓語放在謂語前,古代文言文也有部分是這樣的。叫做賓語前置句。所以現代漢語也保留了些吧。

不用糾結普通話到底是什麼結構。自然語言不像機器語言語法有那麼嚴謹,說到底還是一個習慣問題,能表達意思就行。


推薦閱讀:

普通話韻母「eng」和「ong」在部分漢字中有什麼區別?
怎麼把普通話說得自然呢?

TAG:普通話 | 語言類型學 |