Reviewed by: Dramatized Discourse: The Mandarin Chinese ba-Construction Picus Sizhi Ding (bio) Zhuo Jing-Schmidt . Dramatized Discourse: The Mandarin Chinese ba-Construction. Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. xxii, 337 pp. Hardcover $176.00, ISBN 9-02-721565-0. Based on her doctoral dissertation, Jing-Schmidt has contributed the first monograph on the ba-construction to the linguistics literature in English. The book has filled a chasm in the discourse aspect of the Mandarin ba-construction, and presents a great step forward to understanding this unusual construction. Readers interested in the ba-construction or Mandarin grammar in general will enjoy the findings about one of the most studied constructions of Mandarin from this book. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-11) presents a general introduction to the orientation of the book. Emphasizing communication as the goal of language, this study has adopted a data-driven approach, using ba sentences found in textual discourse rather than decontextualized introspective sentences. To avoid the deceptive practice of viewing a syntactic structure in isolation from discourse (p. 9), examples of the ba-construction are rendered in chunk in order to have a clear discourse context. The chunk is given in Chinese characters, accompanied with free translation into English. The focus part is underscored in the bilingual chunk, and the ba-construction is then repeated with a three-lined presentation, including Chinese characters, pinyin (without tone markers), and morpheme-to-morpheme glosses. Chapter 2 (pp. 13-15) provides a sketch of the sources of data. The database for synchronic study includes three pieces of Lao She's works from the 1940s and 1950s: the first sixteen chapters of a novel, corpus S (which is the primary source of data); two modern plays, corpus W and corpus C; and a nonliterary work, corpus M, from the first eight chapters of a university textbook. The database for diachronic study consists largely of corpus Y from the Yuan dynasty, corpus J from the Ming dynasty, and corpus H from the Qing dynasty. Much of the chapter gives justification for using written literary works as data for linguistic analysis. Chapter 3 (pp. 17-66) describes the syntactic structure of the ba-construction in terms of compositional properties. Two entirely different syntactic relationships are noted (section 3.1): (i) ba-Obj-VP and (ii) ba-Subj-VP. The former has six variants, and the latter has two. These are: ba-Obj-V-Complement, ba-Obj-V-Aspect_ marker, ba-Obj-Adverb-V, ba-Obj-V-Or(-V2) [Or=recipient Object], ba-Obj-V-Op [Op=partitive Object], and ba-Obj-V-Ot [Ot=transformation Object]; Ø-ba-Subj-VP [Ø=null sentential subject] and T-ba-Subj-VP [T=sentential topic]. The chapter then discusses concurrence of the ba-construction with mood (indicative, imperative, interrogative, and subjunctive in section 3.2) and modality (3.3), the use of the construction in three kinds of sentences: negative (3.4), passive [End Page 228] (3.5), and causative (3.6). Other issues covered are using the ba-construction as subordinate (3.7) and word order of Mandarin (3.8). Chapter 4 (pp. 67-112) presents a critical review of some previous studies on the ba-construction. Examining L. Wang's examples (1947) in his treatment of ba sentences as the disposal construction, Jing-Schmidt criticizes Wang's generalizations for being short of explanatory power and his examples for lacking communicative reality. In discussion of Li and Thompson's analysis within the disposal framework, Jing-Schmidt shows that grammaticality of ba sentences can be achieved with additional modification on the VP, which, however, contributes no disposal effect (cf. example [4] below). Jing-Schmidt points out that Chao (1968) failed to define the notion of "pretransitive verbal construction" properly in his study of the ba-construction and overlooked the attitudinal aspect of the construction. Detailed review of the concept of transitivity is undertaken as regards "cardinal transitivity," "prototypical transitivity," and "prototypical action and major biactant construction." The causativity approach to the ba-construction is briefly addressed. Jing-Schmidt considers the common problem shared in these studies to be the treatment of the ba-construction at the propositional level with the singular focus...