Chapter published in:
New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax: Studies in honor of Yen-Hui Audrey Li
Edited by Andrew Simpson
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 272] 2022
► pp. 539–554

V-gei vs. double object construction

The mental representation of the Mandarin V-gei construction

| University of Southern California
| University of Hong Kong
The present study investigates whether V-gei constructions [V-gei NP NP] have the same underlying syntactic structure as Double Object Constructions (DOC) [V NP NP], using a structural priming paradigm. Native speakers of Mandarin were primed to produce a V-gei, DOC, or a Gei-object Construction (GOC) [V NP gei NP]. They then were given the opportunity to produce either a V-gei, DOC, or a GOC at will. We found that Mandarin speakers produced significantly more DOC and V-gei sentences following DOC primes than GOC primes. V-gei primes, however, did not increase the production DOC or V-gei sentences. We discuss the implications of these results.
Keywords: V-gei , double object, syntactic priming, syntactic representation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous syntactic priming studies
  • 3.Experiment
    • Participants
    • Materials & procedure
    • Scoring
    • Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Appendix
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 April 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.272.19liu
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