A Study on Information Structure of the Construction ‘Numeral Phrase+mei+VP+le’

This paper analyzed the information structure of the construction 'Numeral Phrase+mei+VP+le'. The analysis led to the conclusion as follows. First of all, in the construction 'Numeral Phrase+mei+VP+le', it was found that the numeral phrase may function as a focus, or the entire predicate, including the numeral phrase, may function as a focus. However, in general, the VP excluding the numeral phrase does not function alone as a focus. If the VP excluding the numeral phrase is to function as a focus, it is common for the aspect marker 'le' not to appear at the end of the sentence.The frequency in use varies depending on the type of numeral phrases. Through corpus search, the type with the highest frequency in use is the case that the numeral phrase expresses the amount of time, while the numeral phrase expressing the amount of action has a relatively low frequency and the numeral phrase expressing the amount of objects has the lowest frequency. The numeral phrase expressing amount of time, action and objects used in the construction 'Numeral Phrase+mei+VP+le' has something in common in that they represent accumulated quantities, but the more discrete and entity-referential they are, the less frequently they appear in the construction, but vice versa, the use of the construction is relatively preferred.