| This article treats the diversity of object marking or ‘disposal' constructions in Sinitic languages. These constructions are used to highlight an affected referential object, typically corresponding to accusatively case-marked nouns in inflectional languages. The discussion begins with a brief description of early Spanish grammars of Chinese languages, based on a Greco-Latin model and progresses from the problems of Eurocentrism to those of Sinocentrism, based on the new model of the prestige language, standard Mandarin. The main analysis concentrates on the historical sources and range of syntactic configurations for disposal constructions in seven main Sinitic languages, particularly with respect to an emerging typology. Paradoxically, Standard Mandarin turns out not to be an ideal choice as typologically representative of Sinitic. |
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