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On the so-called SOV word order in Mandarin Chinese: A Quantified Text Study and its Implications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2026
Abstract
Two theses concerning word order in Mandarin Chinese have been investigated through a quantified study of written and spoken contemporary Mandarin. It is found, first, that Mandarin is synchronically a typical VO language, in terms of text distribution of VO and OV orders. OV appears at the level of 10% or lower in text, and this is true for both definite and indefinite objects. Further, the functional distribution of OV in both texts suggests that it is an emphatic/contrastive discourse device, having little to do with the contrast between definite and indefinite object. Finally, neither the evidence from our text distribution data nor a comparison with a recent study of the acquisition of Mandarin by native children suggests the existence of a diachronic drift toward SOV order.
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- Copyright © 1985 by Linguistic Society of America
Footnotes
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We are indebted to Sandra Thompson, Charles Li, Timothy Light, Mary Erbaugh, Scott DeLancey, and William Frawley for comments, criticisms, suggestions, and encouragement, all of which helped immensely in improving the quality of this paper. We hereby absolve them of all responsibility for the final product. This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, through the Southern Ute Language Program, Ignacio, CO, titled ‘Ute traditional texts and word order change’, as well as by the Office of Naval Research, through a grant to the University of Oregon, titled ‘Mechanisms of cognitive performance’ (jointly to T. Givón, S. Keele, and M. I. Posner).
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