LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS 10.1:29-58, 2009 2009-0-010-001-000288-1 The Mandarin Disposal Constructions: Usage and Development ∗ Zhuo Jing-Schmidt 1,2 and Hongyin Tao 3 University of Oregon 1 University of Cologne 2 University of California, Los Angeles 3 The Mandarin Chinese disposal constructions involving ba and jiang have been considered synonyms that differ only in terms of register. This paper reexamines the status of ba versus jiang in the light of spoken and written corpus data and new insights that have arisen from recent hypotheses concerning the meaning of the ba-construction. We postulate a dynamic system of disposal in which ba and jiang share the basic meaning of disposal while contrasting in terms of subjectivity and emotionality. By treating meaning and broad discourse contexts (genres) as prototypically organized categories, which demonstrate conceptual and discourse principles, we are able to explain the precise distributional patterns of the two items across a variety of genres in two spoken and written language corpora. We conclude that dynamic language use gives rise to language change along the diachrony- synchrony continuum and beyond the simple speech and writing dichotomy. This study also shows that the symbiotic development of subjectification and objectification in the disposal system raises interesting questions for theories of grammaticalization. Key words: disposal, ba-construction, jiang construction, subjectivity, objectivity 1. Controversy surrounding ba and jiang The Mandarin ba-construction is arguably the most famous grammatical construction in linguistics. Equally famous is the fact that it is one of the most poorly understood linguistic phenomena. 1 Because it is such a well-known construction, a brief description ∗ We are grateful to Robert Kirsner, Sandra A. Thompson, and the audience at the UCLA Inter- national Symposium on Discourse and Corpus Approaches to Chinese Linguistics, June 1, 2007, where this paper was first presented, for insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper; to Stefan Th. Gries for statistical advice, and to Lisa Mikesell for valuable editorial assistance. We are of course solely responsible for any remaining errors. While working on this project, Hongyin Tao was supported by a grant from the UCLA Academic Senate. 1 We are reminded of this paradox of famousness by Scott DeLancey who points to the ritualized morning sessions uniquely devoted to the ba-construction at every meeting of the International