A Corpus-based Study of the Word Order Variation in Chinese Relative Clauses

• Main Authors: Yi-Ting Ho, 何宜庭
• Other Authors: Shu-ing Shyu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/j68422

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 107 === As a head-final language in nominal phrase, Chinese has a prenominal modifying relative clause (RC) and a demonstrative-numeral-classifier (DNC) unit. On the basis of RC, two types of nominal constructions are distinguished: Outer Modifier Nominal (OMN) and Internal Modifier Nominal (IMN): the former with the order RC+DNC+NP and the latter with the order DNC+RC+NP. Previous corpus-based studies (Ming & Chen, 2010; Chen, Ming & Jiang, 2015) have shown that some factors influence the occurrence of these two constructions. However, they discuss each factor separately without taking into consideration their mutual relations, which may deserves further investigation in this study. This study aims to investigate the occurrence and distribution of OMN and IMN in the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (ASBC) and the underlying factors that influence the distribution of two nominal constructions, including the grammatical role of relativized NP within RC and the grammatical function of complex NP in main clause and the animacy of head NP. There are three main findings presented in this study. First, it is found that subject relative clause favors IMN and object relative clause prefers OMN. Second, object complex NP dominates in these two constructions. This phenomenon can be explained by the principle of end-focus (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik,1972). Last, animacy of head NP does not present a strong effect on the distribution. Inanimate head NPs prevail animate ones in either constructions. This may be attributed to great number of objects in main clause in the data collected. Therefore, the result of this study shows that the role of relativized NP is the most significant factor on the distribution of OMN and IMN in ASBC and there exists relation between the grammatical function of complex NP in main clause and animacy of head NP.