2008年大纽约地区中文教师学会年会

Individual Paper Proposal

A Semantic Analysis of the Prepositional zai-NP Structure

Zhirong Wang (zw30@columbia.edu)

Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, Senior Lecturer

In modern standard Chinese, the prepositional zai-NP (在-NP) structure can appear either before a V-O phrase forming the zai-NP-V-O structure, or after a V-O phrase yielding the V-O-zai-NP structure. In other words, if we want to say the sentence “He put several apples on the table” in Modern standard Chinese, we can have two ways of stating it. One is to put the zai-NP before the V-O (put several apples) and the other is to put it after the V-O.

a) 他放了几个苹果在桌子上

b) 他在桌子上放了几个苹果

Syntactically speaking, the functions of the zai-NP structure ‘在桌子上’ in sentence a) and b) are different. In a), it appears after the V-O phrase ‘放了几个苹果’ functioning as a complement, while in sentence b), the zai-NP structure appears before the V-O phrase functioning as an adjunct. Semantically, it seems that we cannot tell, if there is any, the differences between the two sentences. In most Chinese language classrooms, students would get the impression that the two structures can be used freely. Thus, when students produce sentences like those in c) and d), instructors are forced to explain the difference between the two forms.

c) 我在河里捉了条鱼 d) 她在门口写字

*我捉了条鱼在河里 *她写字在门口

Now what exactly are the differences between the complement zai-NP and the adjunct zai-NP? In this paper, I first introduce some of the existing theories regarding the zai-NP structure, then analyze their semantic differences using examples from contemporary Chinese works. At the end of the paper, I will explain why the O in V-O phrase has to be indefinite and not definite and propose the theory of “communication focus” to differentiate the two constructions involving prepositional zai-NP structure.