Abstract
Although Chinese is widely regarded as lacking the movement operation known as scrambling as it exists in languages like Japanese and Korean, this view does not take account of Northwestern dialects, which are known to be highly Altaicized. In this paper, a set of diagnostic tests is applied to object fronting in Xining Mandarin (Qinghai province), and the movement is argued to possess the properties of Japanese style scrambling—and not merely topicalization, which derives OSV order elsewhere among Chinese dialects. An analysis of scrambling in the dialect is proposed, and its anomalous presence in the Xining dialect is explained as a consequence of language contact with non-Sinitic languages in the region.
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