Lingua Sinica

Table 1 Relationship between original SVO sentences and derived verb-final sentences

From: Age-related differences in the acceptability of non-canonical word orders in Mandarin Chinese

Animacy contrast	Word order
Animacy contrast	SVO (original)	‘SOV’	‘OSV’
+	小王喝了牛奶	小王牛奶喝了	牛奶小王喝了
–	小赵骗了小张	小赵小张骗了	小张小赵骗了

‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ indicate how the object in an original SVO sentence is positioned in the derived verb-final sentence. Original objects are marked in bold typeface

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