The status of marker gei in Mandarin Chinese
汉语中的语法标记辞“给”
Dan Xu 徐丹

Abstract 摘要
In contemporary Mandarin Chinese, the morpheme gei which is a full verb meaning "give" may be used either as an agent marker or as an object marker. This phenomenon is rare in relation to other languages. However, we will see that the verbs meaning "give" turn often into an agent marker in other Chinese dialects and even in other languages. Special semantic reasons will be given to explain why gei is also an object marker in spoken Chinese in Beijing. The constraints on gei’s use show us that gei is rather a mock marker vs. the real markers ba (the object marker) and bei (the agent marker) in Mandarin Chinese. Our study shows that in the gei+V+le construction, gei is a marker of neutral voice sentences; the occurrence of gei is only permitted when the verb is non-oriented. This is due to the neutralization of the agent/patient distinction in Mandarin Chinese.

在现代汉语里，动辞“给”字，既可作“把”（标记受动者）讲，也可作“被”（标记施动者）用。与其它语言相比，这一现象是罕见的。我们将看到，作为“给予”意义的动辞在其它方言乃至其它语言中，常能转化为标记施动者的语法辞。本文解释了为什么北京话中的“给”可以作“把/被”讲，通过对比“给”与“把/被”，我们认为“给”实际上是一个“傀儡”标记辞。本文提出，在“给+V+了”句式中，“给”表明这时的句子不强调施受关系，即当动辞施受方向不明时，才能用“给”。这一现象是由于汉语中施受关系中立化造成的。

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