This study investigates the pragmatic features of inverted quantitative causative construction in Modern Chinese, which takes the form ‘XP (Non-agent cause) + V-le + NP (Agent) + QP (Quantifier).’ Departing from syntactic-focused approaches, this analysis posits that this construction is fundamentally an epistemic causative structure, formed through the speaker’s post hoc causal reanalysis. The speaker reconstructs a reflexive event by attributing its quantitatively marked result (QP) to an external cause (XP). Corpus analysis reveals that the result QP is prototypically interpreted as a subjective large quantity, serving as the focal point for the speaker’s evaluative and affective stance, which is predominantly negative. Furthermore, the construction functions as a discourse-organizing tool, integrating into narrative structures to provide quantitative grounding, enhance emotional appeal, and manage topical flow. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that this construction is not a mere syntactic inversion but a dedicated linguistic device for externalizing, objectifying, and intensifying the speaker’s subjective evaluation of personal experience.
Kim et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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