Word order in this sentence

[海象]

This site i was reading on translates the sentence here to the highlighted text below. I think i understand the meaning of the words here, but i am not sure why the order is this way. Why is 作为 first and 唯一 the last word before 的? Thanks!

 

我作为村里走出来唯一的大学生,

 

so as the village’s only person who’d ever gone off to college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Publius]

It's not a sentence. The full sentence is:

之所以回来，是因为村儿里小学唯一的教师得了肺痨，病的已经非常严重，我作为村里走出来唯一的大学生，村长愿意一月掏出一千块的巨资来请我去代课。

 

And the translator has made a mistake:

The reason I went home is because the village’s only teacher got tuberculosis, and he was very seriously ill, so as the village’s only person who’d ever gone off to college, the village chief dug up a thousand-dollar investment and asked me to substitute teach.

 

The bold part is what grammarians call a 'dangling modifier'. It modifies the wrong subject 'the village chief'. It's a very common error made by native speakers.

To avoid confusion, one could use a nominative absolute 'me being the village's only person who'd ever gone off to college' or rewrite the sentence and move the modifier to where it belongs: 'the village chief ... asked me, (who was) the village's only person who'd ever gone off to college, to substitute teach'.

 

And I don't quite understand your question.

As you can see from the translation, 作为 is not part of the attributive. It's a coverb or preposition that takes the noun phrase 村里走出来唯一的大学生 as its object. Its position is non-negotiable.

The noun phrase consists of a head noun 大学生 and two attributive phrases 村里走出来(的) and 唯一的.

Why these two modifiers are in this order, I'm not sure I can tell. But why would they be otherwise?

In English, one is an adjective that typically goes before the noun, and the other a relative clause that must go after the noun. But in Chinese, all modifiers must precede the noun they modify. Is there any reason for one particular modifier to be the last? Why do we say 'big bad wolf' instead of 'bad big wolf'? And you seem to have no problem with 村儿里小学唯一的教师? It's just how it is, man. Some types of modifier have greater affinity with nouns and that's it. Time is better spent trying to develop a feel for the language through constant exposure than cramming your head with esoteric rules.

[陳德聰]

唯一村裡走出來的大學生 is fine too, but the order of the modifiers definitely gives me a different focus reading that doesn’t really make clear logical sense.

 

Kind of like how we can say “bad big corporations” if we contrast it with “good big corporations,” I can imagine a sentence that contrasts village with some other level like township/city/province in the other order.

[Lu]

I also find the word order a bit funny. 我作为村里走出来唯一的大学生 makes it seem to me that of the various people who left the village (or were walking out of the village), 我 was the only university student.

[歐博思]

17 hours ago, Publius said:

'me being the village's only person who'd ever gone off to college'

And then there's the whole me vs my being shenanigans 

 

Maybe having 村里 closer to the front of that segment makes it feel more definitely referring to that town, whereas shifting it farther back behind the 唯一 could start to be more comparison-like as 德聰 said?

[Publius]

On 4/9/2018 at 3:31 AM, 歐博思 said:

Maybe having 村里 closer to the front of that segment makes it feel more definitely referring to that town, whereas shifting it farther back behind the 唯一 could start to be more comparison-like as 德聰 said?

Yes, it definitely feels that way.

We know in Chinese the description is from general to specific. All things being equal, the more salient the information, the further to the right its position.

It's very natural to say 我是村里唯一的大学生. When 我 is not physically in 村里, we need some clarification, e.g. 我是村里出的唯一的大学生 or 我是村里走出来的唯一的大学生. The point is the "onlyness" within the scope of the village.

If in a big city you are surrounded by university students and you are the only one who is from a village, then 我是唯一从村里走出来的大学生 makes sense. The scope is implicit and the rural origin becomes the focal point.