Though Mandarin Chinese is a prepositional language, postpositions, named as localizers, occur in the language.
Adpositions in Mandarin Chinese
Easy Examples, only prepositions
hard examples, coverb + localizer
Both coverbs and localizers are categories in Chinese grammar that bear some relationship to adpositions. As exemplified below, xuéshù (i.e. 'academia') is surrounded by a coverb zài and a localizer shàng. Though coverbs frequently cooccur with localizers, the combinations are somewhat productive, so we treat them as separate targets for SNACS annotation.
他
tā
he.3SG
学术
xuéshù
academia
有所作为
yǒusuǒzuòwéi
successful
。
'He successed in academia.' zh001
- Coverbs
Coverbs usually precede the main predicate of the clause and introduce an NP argument to it. In this project, We annotate all coverbs that occur pre-verbally and coverbs that function as the main predicate are not annotated for supersenses.
- Localizers
Localizers are words that follow a noun phrase to refine its semantic relation. We annotate all localizers that occur as postpositions syntactically.
BA and DE
Discuss new construals
New construals
examples