Contextualized Existential Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

This paper proposes that in addition to the typical “out-of-the-blue” existential construction, a kind of contextualized construction exists Mandarin Chinese. form does not exhibit predicate restriction observed constructions cross-linguistically. It is argued this type involves topic-comment structure and functions as subtype Existential Coda Construction discussed by Zhang (2007, 2008). The current analysis also explains apparent lack definiteness for specific Chinese constructions.