Proceedings of the Fifth SIGHAN Workshop on Chinese Language Processing, pages 79–86,
Sydney, July 2006. c©2006 Association for Computational Linguistics
Realization of the Chinese BA-construction in an English-Chinese 
Machine Translation System 
 
Xiaohong Wu 
Centre Tesnière, Faculté des Lettres 
Université de Franche-Comté 
Besançon, France 
wuxaiohong@voila.fr 
Sylviane Cardey 
Centre Tesnière, Faculté des Lettres 
Université de Franche-Comté 
Besançon, France 
Sylviane.cardey@univ-fcomte.fr 
 
Peter Greenfield 
Centre Tesnière, Faculté des Lettres 
Université de Franche-Comté 
Besançon, France 
Peter.greenfield@univ-fcomte.fr 
 
Abstract 
The BA-construction refers to a special 
grammatical structure in Mandarin 
Chinese. It is an extremely important 
syntactic structure in Chinese, which is 
frequently used in daily life. The study of 
the BA-construction has attracted the 
attention of almost all linguists who are 
interested in this language. Yet it is a 
quite complex and difficult linguistic 
phenomenon and it is hard to analyze it 
satisfactorily to cope with the syntactic 
structure(s) of another language which 
does not possess this kind of construction 
(e.g. in machine translation). This paper 
discusses a few methods on how some of 
the English imperative sentences are 
realized by the Chinese BA-construction 
which is mandatory in transferring 
certain source language (SL) information 
into target language (TL) in an 
experimental machine translation (MT) 
system.  We also introduce the basic 
syntactic structures of the BA-
construction and explain how we 
formalize and control these structures to 
satisfy our need. Some features related to 
the BA-construction, such as 
obligatoriness versus the optionality, the 
semantics as well as the properties of the 
elements preceding and following the BA 
are also discussed. Finally we suggest 
that by constraining the variations of the 
formalized patterns of the BA-
construction, a better MT could be 
reached. 
1 Introduction 
BA-construction (‘ ’ ) is a special 
syntactic structure in the Chinese language. It is 
so frequently used in everyday conversations that 
its usage can not be simply ignored. In fact, the 
BA-construction has been greatly drawing the 
attention of almost all linguists who are 
interested in the Chinese language. The reason 
for this concentrates not only on the fact that it is 
a quite special Chinese linguistic phenomenon 
but also that until now no consensus has been 
reached among linguists on whether its 
grammatical category belongs to that of a verb or 
that of a preposition. Historically speaking, much 
evidence shows that it was used more as a verb 
than as a preposition. However, recent research 
tends to classify the BA-construction to the 
category of the prepositional phrase (PP), which 
characterizes the pre-posed object (usually a 
noun phrase – NP) of a transitive verb (Zhou and 
PU, 1985). In the following sections we will first 
introduce very briefly the different points of 
view held by these linguists and then we will 
demonstrate our choice for the study of the BA-
construction in our experimental English-
Chinese machine translation system, which is 
based on the controlled language technique. We 
will particularly stress the problems we face 
when transferring certain English imperative 
sentences into Chinese sentences containing the 
BA-construction which is mandatory in some 
cases, while this is optional in other cases, or can 
be used as one of the other alternatives (between 
79
a normal syntactic structure (V + NP + X1 ) and 
the BA-construction (BA + NP + V + X). 
2 The BA-Construction: a verb phrase 
or a prepositional phrase? 
    It is important to note that we do not pretend 
to give an overview of all kinds of points of view 
on the study of the BA-construction here, nor do 
we claim to justify all the different conceptions 
held in the literature in this short paper. Instead, 
we just try to verify how our practice with this 
construction can be better formulated for our 
specific purpose: to be well adapted to serve for 
an English-Chinese MT system.  
     Whether the word BA ( ) in the BA-
construction is a verb or a preposition is an open 
question in Chinese linguistics. Due to the 
difficulty of having sufficient and strong 
evidence to distinguish the BA-construction 
between a verb and a preposition, some linguists 
also call the BA and some other words which 
possess the same property, such as BEI ( ) etc., 
a “coverb” ( , literally: a sub-
verb) which share the properties of both a verb 
and a preposition. As a result of no consensus 
among linguists, the analysis of this construction 
is divided into two separate schools: that of a 
verb phrase (VP) and that of prepositional phrase 
(PP) or one that is more inclined to one of the 
schools than the other. The first school of 
linguists states that the BA-construction should 
be considered as a VP whose surface structure 
resembles a lot the serial-verb constructions (
) (Subj + V + (NP1+2 ) + V2 + (NP2) …), 
(see example 1 b). Like a serial verb 
construction, the first V can be represented by 
the word BA and form a BA-construction. In 
their opinion, the BA shows the characteristics of 
the other parallel verbs which are used in the 
serial-verb construction (refers to any surface 
string with more than one verb in a sentence). 
Furthermore, some features of the BA indicate 
that the elements following the BA make up a 
constituent in which the BA looks more like a 
verbal head taking a complement (Bender, 2002), 
(Hashimoto, 1971), (Ma, 1985), and (Her, 1990), 
for example: 
1 a)  
                                                          
1 X: a non-null variable, usually an adverb or a PP 
2 +: refers to the possibility of more than one NP. 
(literal translation: Zhang San BA (V1) Li Si 
hit (V2) LE3  (ASP) a punch, Wang Wu kick 
(V3) LE (ASP) two foot) 
     Zhang San gave Li Si a punch and Wang 
Wu two kicks. 
b)  
(literal translation: I open (V1) door come 
(V2) in take (V3) book) 
I opened the door and went in to take a book.    
One of their supporting points is that unlike a 
prepositional phrase, the BA-construction can 
not be moved to the beginning of the sentence, 
for example: 
c) *4 , 
Compare this with the following example 
(with a prepositional phrase): 
2 a)  
     (literal translation: He in Beijing buy LE 
(ASP) a BEN (CLS5 ) book;) 
     He bought a book in Beijing. 
   b)  
     (literal translation: In Beijing, he buy 
LE(ASP) a BEN(CL) book) 
     In Beijing, he bought a book. 
Furthermore, like the other verbs, the BA can 
be negated by MEIYOU ( ), for example (1 
a): 
 
(literal translation: Zhang San, MEIYOU6 , 
BA Li Si hit a punch, Wang Wu kick two foot) 
Zhang San did not give Li Si a punch and 
Wang WU two kicks. 
  In addition, like other monosyllable verbs, 
the BA as a verb can be used as the attributive of 
a noun by adding a structural word “DE ( ”
(STR7 ) between it and the noun, for example, “
” (read, DE, book; the book to read); “
”, (listen, DE, song; a song to listen to); “
” (BA, DE checks; the checks to do/the pass 
to guard) 
                                                          
3 LE : Aspectual particle indicating a past action 
4 *: ungrammatical 
5 CLS: classifier 
6 MEIYOU (a0a2a1 ): negation = no, not or do not 
7 STR: structural word usually connects a constituent 
to a NP 
80
 A basic structural analysis of the first school 
is illustrated in Figure 1 “BA as a Verb” from the 
example cited from (LIN, 2004): 
3)  
(literal translation: Zhang San BA Li Si hit 
LE) 
Zhang San hit Li Si. 
  
 
 
Figure 1 BA as a Verb 
The second school of linguists claims that the 
BA-construction is actually a prepositional 
phrase with its head word followed by a NP 
complement which is moved in front of the 
transitive main verb in the sentence (See 
example 4 a) below). Furthermore, though the 
BA possesses the categorical features of a verb, 
it is hard to qualify the BA to function alone as 
the main verb or predicate in a sentence. In 
addition, in Mandarin Chinese the aspect 
attachments can be used as one of the conditions 
to test the verbhood of a word. The fact is that in 
most cases, if an aspect attachment, such as LE (
), GUO ( ) (expressing past actions) and 
ZHE ( ) (expressing continuous actions), is 
attached to the BA, the whole sentence will look 
strange and become ungrammatical (see below in 
b) and c)).  
4 a) (literal 
translation: He, BA, just now, DE (STR), talks, 
again, speak, LE, one BIAN (CLS)) 
   He repeated what he had said just now. 
Compare the following with aspect 
attachments: 
   b) * (LE) 
   c) * 
(GUO) 
   d) *
          (ZHE) 
Compare with other verb: 
5 a) (LE) 
     (literal translation: he, look, LE, this book) 
  He has read the book. 
b) (GUO) 
  (literal translation: he, look, GUO, this book) 
   He read the book. 
c) 
   He is looking at the book.  
Their point of view concerning this 
construction is also supported by some 
grammatical criteria to test the verbhood of a 
word. For instance, most monosyllable verbs can 
be duplicated as independent “AA” or “A A” 
structures in Chinese, for example “  (see, 
look)” as “ ” or “ ”  “  (read)” as “
” or “ ”; “  (eat)”as “ ” or “
”; and “  (go or walk)” as “ ” or “
”; but never “ ” as “* ” or “* ” 
(some transitive verbs can be used this way 
without objects, but the duplicated “ ” or “
” as a verb must have its object following it, 
e.g. “  (make checks; to guard a pass, 
etc.)” or “ ”). Furthermore the verb 
following the BA-construction is a transitive 
verb which in fact subcategorizes for (or still 
governs) the pre-posed logical object (the 
complement of the preposition BA) and the main 
verb is usually accompanied by other auxiliary 
constituents following or immediately preceding 
it. In other words, the verb can not stand alone 
after its object is moved in front of it (see in 6 a), 
7 a) and 7 c)) in italics and in blue and the 
ungrammatical sentences 6 c) and 7 d)). Besides, 
Chinese is a thematic language, and the theme is 
often placed in front of the other constituents in 
the sentences accordingly. In many cases, we can 
see that the BA-construction does have an effect 
of emphasis on the semantic content that this 
structure carries (see the comparisons between 6 
a) and 6 b), and between 7 a) and 7 b)). We take 
again the example (4), “He repeated what he had 
said just now.”, and show it in (6) (HU, 1991).  
Compare: 
6 a)8  
                                                          
8 The underlined part refers to the BA-construction; 
the italic refers to the auxiliary constituents; and the 
word in bold font refers to the verb. 
… VP 
NP                    V’ 
V                               VP 
NP                       V 
Zhang San 
ba 
Li Si da 
hit 
81
(Subj + BA-structure + V + auxiliary 
constituent) 
   b) (Subj + V + Obj) 
   c) *  
7 a) (Subj + BA-structure 
V + LE + auxiliary constituent) 
(literal translation: I BA letter read one BIAN 
(CLS))    I read the letter once. 
   b) (Subj + V + Obj) 
      I read the letter. 
   c) (Subj + BA-
structure + auxiliary constituent + V + LE) 
(literal translation: I BA letter carefully read 
LE)   I have carefully read the letter. 
      d)  *  
As shown in example (6 a, c) and (7 a, c, d), if 
we leave out the auxiliary constituents “ ” in 
(6 a), and “ ”, “ ” and “ ”in (7 a, c), 
both sentences (6 c and 7 d) become 
ungrammatical. Therefore, the syntactic structure 
of the second school can be analyzed as shown in 
Figure 2 “BA as a Preposition”: 
 
     
Figure 2 BA as a Preposition 
 
Schematically, a BA-construction always has 
the following linear configurations: 
     a) NP* + BA + NP + V + X 
     b) NP* + BA + NP + X + V 
where the sentence can have an optional (in 
many cases) NP* as subject, followed by BA and 
its NP complement, then followed  by a 
transitive V and another constituent X (which 
might precede the verb as shown in (b), and 
usually is an adverb or a prepositional phrase). 
Concerning our own view, we adopt the idea 
that the BA is a preposition with which the 
patient object is shifted to the front of the main 
verb and the BA structure functions as an adjunct 
of the verb like many other adjuncts that are 
often placed between the subject and the 
predicate verb (HU, 1991). The reason for this 
choice is that considering the BA-construction as 
a PP is easier for the syntactic analysis and 
formulation than taking it as a VP in a serial verb 
construction.  
Against this background, we will demonstrate 
in the following section how we formalize the 
BA-construction to cope with its English 
counterpart imperative sentences in our work and 
how these English sentences are finally 
constructed into grammatical target Chinese 
sentences containing the BA-structure. 
3 Formalization of the BA-construction 
The MT system we work with is oriented to 
the automatic translation of medical protocols 
selected from two sub-domains: echinococcosis 
(clinical practice) and molecular cloning 
(laboratory practice), where the predominant 
sentence type is the imperative sentence. Due to 
the fact that the BA-construction is mandatory in 
transferring some of the information conveyed in 
these SL sentences, we have formalized some 
English sentences into Chinese counterpart 
sentences containing the BA-construction. To do 
this, we compare carefully each of the sentence 
pairs in both languages from a parallel bilingual 
corpus which we have constructed for our 
research. In this way, we obtained enough 
evidence to support the formalization of this 
special Chinese construction for our MT system. 
Though the BA-construction is a very productive 
structure from which we can derive many 
varieties in Mandarin Chinese, our observation 
of the corpus reveals that the variations are 
limited but nevertheless indispensable for 
formulation. 
As we have mentioned in the above paragraph, 
we have constructed a parallel bilingual corpus 
for an experimental MT system for the purpose 
of automatic translation of medical protocols 
which are from two different sources: one is on 
echinococcosis, a kind of transmissible disease 
shared by humans and animals, and the other is 
on molecular cloning. Like many other scientific 
documents, the medical texts we collected show 
a high degree of homogeneity in respect of the 
text structure and lexical usage, but often we find 
very long and structurally complicated sentences 
which are difficult to analyze or to be formally 
S 
NP                    VP 
PP                              V’ 
V 
Zhang San 
ba 
Li Si 
Da        LE 
hit 
P        NP 
82
represented.  To narrow down the linguistic 
difficulty, we adopt the controlled language 
technique as a supporting method (CARDEY, et 
al. 2004), (WU, 2005). In other words, we first 
make the raw text materials simpler and easier 
for the computer to process, for example, to 
standardize the general structure of the text, the 
terminology, and to constrain the lexical usages 
and the sentence structures, which allows us to 
avoid many complex linguistic phenomena and 
which helps us to design practical controlled 
writing rules. Controlled language has been 
proved to be very feasible in machine translation 
by many systems, e.g. KANT (NYBERG & 
TERUKO, 1996). With the simpler and clearer 
input source sentences, the machine can 
generally produce better output target sentences.  
We finally work with our already well- 
controlled final texts for linguistic analysis which 
is based on unification-based grammar. 
According to our observation, the English 
sentences which have to be transferred into 
Chinese sentences containing the BA-
constructions are of two types, of which one is 
obligatory and the other is optional (with the BA-
construction or no). The typical feature of these 
kinds of sentences is that the main verb in the 
sentence often indicates a kind of change or 
movement; therefore, in both the source and 
target sentence the goal or location of this change 
or movement is represented by a prepositional 
phrase, for example: 
8) Insert a catheter in the cyst. 
          
9) Store the tube on the ice. 
          
The syntactic structure of this kind of sentence 
in the SL can be represented as: 
       S  VP 
       VP  V NP PP 
and we get two basic formulae by applying 
predicate-argument generation for example 8 and 
9: 
      Insert (_, Compl1, in_Compl2) 
      Store (_, Compl1, on_Compl2) 
“_” refers to the position of the verb which may 
vary accordingly.  
From the aligned TL sentence, we can 
formulate the TL sentence as: 
     S  VP 
     VP  PP1 V PP2  
in which the first PP is the BA-structure and the 
second PP corresponds to the PP in the SL. 
Therefore we get two corresponding formulae for 
example 8 and 9 in the TL respectively: 
     (BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ ) 
     (BA_Compl1, _,  _Compl2_ ) 
In fact, for example 8 the Chinese translation 
can leave out the second preposition “ ... ( )”, 
for the reason that it is more convenient if we 
lexicalize a Chinese equivalent for the English 
preposition “in” in the Chinese translation at the 
cost that it is a bit redundant in the TL sometimes, 
but completely grammatical and acceptable. Our 
principle here is that every word should have its 
status in the sentence. So whenever it is possible 
and, in particular acceptable in the TL, we assign 
a correspondence to the SL preposition (or other 
words like adverbs or NP as adjunct) in the TL. 
By doing so, the machine can have a better 
performance in most cases. It is particularly 
beneficial for bi-directional MT. The 
correspondence of a SL preposition is mostly 
composed of two Chinese characters in the 
structure of “X … Y”, of which “…” is the 
position of the complement of the preposition in 
question. The second element “Y” is usually 
considered as a noun indicating the direction or 
location in Chinese. However, in our case, we 
consider it as a disjoint part of the first 
preposition “X”. In other words, the “X…Y” 
structure is considered as one language unit in 
our practice. The lexicalization of a prepositional 
phrase in the TL is also one of our criteria to test 
if a sentence has to be constructed with the BA-
structure or not. Most importantly this practice 
can reduce the workload of writing too many 
grammatical rules for the system, for example 
when a preposition has to be translated into 
Chinese and when it needs not to, etc. 
Like most of the English imperative sentences, 
the Chinese counterpart sentences start with 
verbs. However, in some cases, the BA-
construction is also employed. Generally 
speaking, many of the sentences can be used in 
both ways: to start with a verb or start with the 
BA-construction. They do not make big 
differences in general. However, semantically 
the sentences starting with a verb tend to be more 
narrative while the BA-construction is more firm 
and authoritative in expressing the ideas, for 
example: 
10) Store the tube on the ice. 
83
  a. (BA + N + V + PP)9  
11) Aspirate the contrast medium from the 
cyst. 
  a.  
  b.  
The protocols we work with are instructions of 
certain step-by-step procedures of either clinical 
practice or laboratory practice, just like product 
use instructions, recipes and user’s manuals. The 
semantic contents of these sentences should be 
firmly expressed as kinds of orders. Though both 
pairs of the Chinese sentences (10 and 11) are 
transferring the same idea, the BA-construction 
is more expressive and natural in this case 
(example 10 a) and 11 a).  
In our corpus, we have observed that some of 
the English imperative sentences can be 
transferred into two kinds of BA-construction, 
that of obligatory and that of optional. 
Obligatoriness: 
In our work, some sentences must be 
constructed into Chinese BA-structure, otherwise, 
the whole sentence sounds either ungrammatical 
(see in c below) or unnatural or especially 
unacceptable (see in b below). The 
grammaticality of the sentence can be tested by 
moving the translated SL PP to the front of the 
sentence in the TL (see in c)), for example: 
12 a) Inject contrast medium into the cyst. 
         10  
    b)   
 (unacceptable) 
    c)  *  
As is shown in (c), if the whole sentence 
becomes ungrammatical after moving the PP in 
front of the sentence, we classify the sentence as 
obligatory to be transferred into to a TL sentence 
containing the BA-structure. We then constrain 
the syntactic structure to the first one as the legal 
structure while excluding the other two, thus the 
formulations are: 
     insert (_, Compl1, into_Compl2) 
      (BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ ) 
The other two are excluded: 
      (_, Compl1, _Compl2_ )     
(unacceptable) 
                                                          
9 Note: the BA is underlined; the verb is in bold font; 
and the object (logical) is in italic. 
10 Red: refer the translated SL PP in TL. 
     *  ( _Compl2_ , _, Compl1)  
Notice that though the first excluded 
formulation in the TL shares the same structure 
as that of the SL, they are unacceptable in the TL. 
The same situation applies to the following two 
examples: 
13 a) Leave the contrast medium in the cyst as 
a substitute of protoscolicide agent.        
,  
 
     b) * ,  
(ungrammatical) 
     c) *  
(strange and ungrammatical) 
The final formulation is based on (a): 
     Leave (_, Compl1, in_Compl2, X) 
      (X, BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ ) 
The other two are excluded: 
     *  (X, _, Compl1, _Compl2_ ) 
     *  (X, _Compl2_ , _, Compl1,) 
14 a) Leave the inserted catheter in the cyst for 
1-3 days. 
     1 3  
Alternative: 
     1 3  
     b) 1 3  
(unacceptable) 
     c) *1 3  
(ungrammatical) 
Note: for (b) a better alternative should be: 
     1 3 (an 
acceptable sentence)    
The final legal formulations are: 
     Leave (_, Compl1, in_Compl2, T) 
     (BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ , T) 
The alternatives (in a) and b)) will be excluded 
as long as the first one (a) is a perfectly 
acceptable sentence. Unlike the “X” in example 
(13 and 14), here the “T” refers to adjuncts 
which refers to TIME and which usually 
occupies a different position in the sentence in 
our case.  
Therefore our criterion to test the 
obligatoriness is to see what kind of grammatical 
performance a sentence will exhibit when it is 
used in the form shown in the above (b’s and c’s, 
especially in (c’s)). If the sentence looks 
84
unacceptable or is in particular ungrammatical, 
then it must be constructed into the TL sentence 
containing the BA-structure. This phenomenon is 
in fact closely related with the semantic contents 
of the verb and as well as the preposition (a goal 
or a location) in question (we will not discuss 
this aspect in this paper). 
Optionality 
Some sentences that we have observed can be 
used optionally. That is to say, we can transfer 
the SL sentences without employing the BA-
construction, or with the BA-construction in the 
TL. In doing so, no significant loss of the 
sentence meaning will occur (except that in some 
cases there still exist the semantic differences 
where a BA-construction exhibits firmness and 
authority), for example:     
15 a) Dissolve the nucleic acids in 50 µl of TE 
that contains 20 µg/ml DNase-free RNase A.  
      b) 20 µg/ml DNase RNase A
50 µl TE  
Final formulations: 
   Dissolve (_, Compl1, in_Compl2) 
    (BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ ) 
Or: 
      ( _Compl2_ , _, Compl1) 
16 a) Store the tube on the ice for three  
minutes. 
        
(linear sequence of the literal translation: BA 
tube, on ice, store, three minute)  
     b)  
Alternative: 
          
Final formulations: 
     Store (_, Compl1, on_Compl2, T) 
      (BA_Compl1, _, _Compl2_ , T) 
Or: 
     ( _Compl2_ , _, Compl1, T) 
16 a) Vortex the solution gently for a few  
seconds. 
        
(linear sequence: BA solution, gently, vortex, 
a few seconds) 
      b)  
Final formulations : 
     Vortex (_, Compl1, Y, T) 
      (BA_Compl1, Y, _, T) 
Or: 
      (Y, _, Compl1, T) 
Here “Y” refers to adverbs.   
However, if the transitive verb (e.g. “vortex”) 
is used intransitively as is often the case in our 
corpus, the BA-construction has to be changed to 
the normal sentence structure (V + (X) + PP), for 
example:  
17) Vortex gently for a few seconds.  
     
Formulation for this becomes: 
     Vortex (_, Y, T) 
      (Y, _, T) 
The reason why we allow the alternative 
formulations in the second case is that these 
sentences are actually subcategorized for by the 
verbs and will not be confused with other similar 
syntactic structures (e.g. V + NP + PP) which do 
not employ the BA-construction in the TL while 
transferring the intended information. We 
demonstrate this with an example: 
18 a) Puncture the cyst with the needle. 
          
While the machine is searching the 
information concerning this sentence, two major 
supported sources of information (lexicon and 
grammar rules) will help it find the correct 
structure for transferring the sentence into the 
correct TL correspondence. Therefore, the 
machine will not mismatch the syntactic 
structure for this sentence by wrongly employing 
the BA-construction, for example the following 
translation will be excluded by both the 
information stored in the lexicon and grammar as 
a legal instruction: 
b) *
This is an understandable but very unnatural 
sentence and can be regarded as ungrammatical 
in the target language. Though it possesses the 
same structure as that of the other BA-
construction, the problem of this 
ungrammaticality is caused by the semantic 
content conveyed by both the verb and the 
preposition. Usually a BA-construction expresses 
the resultative or directional effect of the verb. 
However, what the PP “with the needle” 
expresses is the manner of the verb, that is, how 
the action is done. Semantically, it is not within 
the semantic scope of the BA-construction 
(though we can find few contradictory examples) 
85
and thus can not be translated into to the target 
language by incorrectly employing the BA-
construction.  
In our system prepositional phrases like, “with 
the needle” is subcategorized by the verb 
“puncture” and the syntactic rules for this verb. 
To demonstrate this, we simplify the lexical and 
syntactic information as shown in the formula 
below: 
     Puncture (_, Compl1, with_Compl2) 
     ( _Compl2, _, Compl1) 
The above information tells us that the verb 
“puncture” of the source language, like the other 
verbs mentioned in the previous paragraphs, can 
have two complements, of which one has a 
preposition as the head of the second linear 
complement. The correspondence in the target 
language for this verb is “ ” which take two 
complements too. One corresponds to the first 
complement of the SL and is placed after the 
verb “ ”, and the other complement 
corresponds to the second complement but is 
placed in front of the verb with a preposition as 
its head “ ”. The simplified syntactic structures 
for both sentences are: 
SL: V_311 (_, A, P_B) 
TL: V_3 (P_B, _, A) 
4 Conclusion 
In this paper we have discussed a special 
Chinese syntactic structure: the BA-construction 
which is quite controversial in the literature but 
nevertheless less problematic in our work. After 
comparing with other syntactic structures, we 
finally adopt the idea that the BA-construction 
shows more characteristics of a PP which is still 
governed by the verb which follows it, in 
particular in our work. We thus treat this 
structure as a PP rather than a VP. This is 
supported by the relatively simpler sentence 
structures found in our corpus. While 
constructing our grammar and formulating the 
BA-structure, we lay focus on the syntactic 
performance and semantic contents that the BA-
construction exhibits. Based on the verb types 
and the semantic content of the preposition 
following the verb, we finally formulate two 
kinds of sentence types concerning the BA-
construction in the target language which can 
well satisfy our purpose. Of course, like many 
                                                          
11 V_3: refers to the syntactic pattern of the verb. 
other language-specific syntactic structures, our 
analysis and practice can not satisfy all situations. 
However, as we work on a relatively narrow 
domain where the sentence types by themselves 
do not vary greatly. We can find a better solution 
by controlling the syntactic types to tackle the 
problems concerning the BA-construction and 
the alike. 

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