In a bǎ construction, the object of a verb is placed after the function word 把; bǎ (or, in more formal writing, 将; 將; jiāng), and the verb placed after the object, forming a subject–object–verb (SOV) sentence.
[1] Linguists commonly analyze bǎ as a light verb construction,[2] or as a preposition.
[1] Charles Li and Sandra Thompson (1981) offer the following examples of the bǎ construction:[3] The bǎ construction may only be used in certain contexts, generally those in which the verb expresses "settlement" of, or action upon, the object.
It is usually definite, meaning that it is specific and unique (as in phrases beginning with the equivalent of this, that, these, or those).
For example, sentences with bǎ construction that have syntactic violations (such as bǎ being followed by a verb rather than a noun) and semantic violations (such as bǎ being followed by a verb that doesn't express "disposal") have been used to study the interaction of syntactic and semantic processing in the brain using the neuroimaging technique of ERP,[5] and to evaluate construction grammar's model of meaning-building.