THE NATURE OF CHINESE ADPOSITIONS AND THEIR CONSTITUENT ORDER

Abstract

This paper investigates Chinese adpositions with respect to the typological adposition parameter. It is claimed that Chinese co-verbs are prepositions, and Chinese short form locative words are postpositions. This claim is actually confirming a predicative role for Chinese Type 1 co-verbs. With the presence of both prepositions and postpositions in Chinese, a third type of adposition, i.e. circumposition, is also said to exist. It is proposed that the last type be typologized on the adposition parameter as prepositional, where the preposition and the NP+ postposition are immediate constituents of the adpositional phrase.