Аннотация:This paper aims to show when and where oecured the syntactic change which led from the word order "Verb + Object + negation + Resultative postverb" (here "V O Nég v", ex : shuō tā bú guò, prevailing in Tang times, to the present Pekingese word order "Verb + negation + Resultative postverb + Object" (here "V Neg v О, ex : shuō bú guò tā). While both orders are met in 'baihua' literature of Ming times, we argue - through an investigation of Tang, Song, and Yuan texts - that the present Pekingese word order was the only attested one in the Northern dialect as soon as the Yuan period ; the ancient word order "V 0 Neg v", however, is still very common in many Southern dialects, which accounts for the coexistence of "V 0 Neg v" and "V Neg v 0" in Ming texts. This word order change is linked to the one that occuring later in corresponding affirmative constructions. The significance of both changes lies in the fact that Modern Pekingese is thus provided with two distinct structures unambiguous as for resultative and potential meaning, while the previous constructions were basically resultative acquiring only in some limited contexts a potential meaning.
