The Autonomy of Sentences with Substantive Predicates in ChineseZHANG Ai-pu

Sentences with substantive predicates (SSP), or nominal sentences as Otto Jespersen once called, are common in Chinese. Monographs and textbooks dealing with Chinese grammar have regarded SSP as an important grammatical item. But why can substantives act as predicate? Why cannot two substantives or nominal expressions in principle cannot appear freely in the same SSP. In other words, why is the word order relatively stable and cannot be altered? This paper is an attempt to expound and prove those issues, i.e. the autonomy of SSP.