Transitivity and some problems with the ba construction in Mandarin Chinese
汉语北方方言中把字结构及物性问题探讨
Sandra A. Thompson

Abstract 摘要
Tā bǎ dùzi kū-de dōu téng le He cried so much that his stomach hurt where dùzi ‘stomach’ is the underlying subject of téng ‘hurt’. Both of these types of cases can be shown to be quite regular if the semantic notion of transitivity is taken into account. In this view the direct object is the noun phrase ‘to which something is done’. Thus, júzi ‘orange’ and dùzi ‘stomach’ are both direct objects in this broader sense and may be preposed by means of a bǎ transformation. ...... In this paper, I will show that the notion of transitivity can help to solve two otherwise anomalous problems in the description of bǎ sentences......