On two functions of place adverbials in Mandarin Chinese
汉语北方方言地点状语的两个作用
James H-Y. Tai 戴浩一

Abstract 摘要
While Chinese preverbal locatives denote the locations of actions and states of affairs, postverbal ones denote the locations of participants of actions. This functional difference is the governing principle for the word order of Chinese place adverbials. Syntactic evidence based on Chinese data shows that these two functions of place adverbials can not be reduced into one single function, and thus argues against Geis’ theory of place adverbials.