A possession-based analysis of the ba-construction in Mandarin Chinese

The role of the co-verb ba in Mandarin Chinese has been one of the most frequently researched areas of investigation, previous analyses referring to notions such as disposal, definiteness, and high transitivity to describe its present grammatical status. However, historical accounts appear to give insufficient attention to the development of resultivity or telicity in the ba-complement. In order to explain these constraints, the present study offers an analysis of the ba-construction an instance of the grammaticalisation of causativity from lexical sources of dynamic possession (Heine, 1997). The possession-based analysis also explains the frequent substitution by gei in some dialects, and justifies the continued adherence to an SVO syntactic explanation.