WOLFGANG KLEIN,PING LI and HENRIETTE HENDRIKS ASPECT AND ASSERTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE ABSTRACT.Chine has a number of particles such as le,guo,zai and zhe that add a particular aspectual value to the verb to which they are attached.There have been many characterisations of this value in the literature.In this paper,we review veral existing influential accounts of the particles,including tho in Li and Thompson(1981),Smith (1991),and Mangione and Li(1993).We argue that all the characterisations are intuit-ively plausible,but none of them is preci.We propo that the particles rve to mark which part of the ntence’s descriptive content is asrted,and that their aspectual value is a conquence of this function.We provide a simple and preci definition of the meanings of le,guo,zai and zhe in terms of the relationship between topic time and time of situation, and show the conquences of their interaction with different verb expressions within this new framework of interpretation.
1.I NTRODUCTION
Aspect,or aspect marking,has received a great deal of interest in Chine linguistics in the last thirty years.1This interest might be due to the fact that markers of aspect are the only kind of morphology-like devices in the language.In Chine,there is no inflectional morphology to express ten,number,gender,or ca.Hence,aspect is a special grammaticalid category in Chine.
Most analys of Chine aspect in the literature focus on four aspect markers:le,guo,zhe,and zai.In a ntence,thefirst three markers fol-low the verb,while the last one precedes the verb.Despite the immen interest and the numerous studies devoted to Chine aspect,the preci function of each of the markers is still under considerable debate.There is agreement that they do not relate the situation described by the ntence to the time of utterance but express various perspectives on the situation; hence,they express various aspect rather than ten relations,and are often called aspect particles or markers(Li and Thompson1981).There is also agreement that zhe and zai somehow characteri the situation as ‘imperfective’,‘progressive’or‘durative’whereas le and guo express a 1A conrvative estimate is that over two hundred articles have been published on the linguistic analys of aspect markers in Chine.
724WOLFGANG KLEIN ET AL.马边大风顶
‘perfective’(or perhaps‘perfect’)aspect.Detailed linguistic analys of the particles vary considerably from author to author.In this introduc-tion,wefirst prent a standard version of the funct
ions of aspect particles on the basis of standard analys such as tho espoud by Chao(1968) and Li and Thompson(1981).We then point out some problems with such analys and our plan to proceed with a new analysis.
1.1.The Perfective Aspect Markers
The particle le is generally considered a perfective marker:according to traditional analysis,it prents a situation in its entirety,as an event bounded at the beginning and the end,and without reference to its in-ternal structure.2Le has often been characterid as marking completion (e Chao1968).However,some rearchers emphasi its perfectivity and argue that le does not by itlf indicate a completed event or action (e.g.,Li and Thompson1981):the meaning of completion often comes from the meaning of the verb with which le occurs.For example,when the verb encodes a situation with a clear temporal boundary,le indicates that the situation comes to its natural endpoint,that is,it is completed,as illustrated in(1).But when the verb encodes a situation with no natural boundary,le signals the termination rather than completion of a situation, as in(2)(e Li1990;Shih1990;Smith1991).
(1)Qi-chi
car zhuang-dao
hit-break
-le fangzi.审慎
-LE hou
The car knocked down the hou.
(2)Xiao yazi you-le
duckling swim-LE yong. stroke
The duckling swam.
The example in(1)contains a so-called‘resultative verb construction’(RVC;e ction4.3)that encodes a telic,resultative ,the 2There is also a ntence-final le who relation to the verb-final le is a matter of dispute in the literature.A clear demarcation of,or even the existence of,the two kinds of le has been difficult to prove in the literature(e Thompson1968;Rohnow1976, 1978;
Li1990),especially when we are concerned with examples like Zhansan pang-le,in which le is both at the end of the ntence and at the end of the verb.Our discussion of the perfective le is relevant primarily to the verb-final le(including le that is both verb-final and ntence-final).Similarly,we ignore some of the complications associated with zai becau of its function as a locative preposition(e Li1993).
ASPECT AND ASSERTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE725 break-down of the hou),where the perfective le indicates that the end res-ult has been ,the event is completed).In contrast,(2)contains an atelic activity verb you-yong‘swim’that encodes no natural endpoint, and le indicates that the event took place and terminated at some indefinite point.Finally,in traditional ,Chao1968;Rohnow1976),le can also indicate the inception or inchoativity of a situation,for example, as in Zhangsan pang le(Zhangsan=fat LE)‘Zhangsan became fat’.
Another perfective particle,guo,has been generally characterid as an‘experiential marker’:it indicates that an event has been experienced at some indefinite time,usually in the past,3and that the resultant state no longer obtains at the time of speech.As a perfective marker,it is con-cerned with the external,rather than the internal structure of the sitation. According to some authors,guo is more of a‘perfect’than a‘perfective’marker,given that it involves two distinct times,reference time and
speech time,and its indefiniteness characteristic(Smith,1991).Examples(3a–b) illustrate the differences between le and guo.
(3)a.Lisi
Lisi da-po
hit-break
-le
-LE
yi-ge
one-CL4
跆拳道教练beizi.
cup
Lisi broke a cup.
b.Lisi
Lisi da-po
学生会职责hit-break
顾恺
-guo
-GUO
yi-ge
one-CL
beizi.
cup
Lisi once broke a cup.
In(3a),the ntence refers to a situation in which the broken pieces of the cup may be still laying on t
he ground;le indicates a completed action of breaking.In contrast,in(3b),the ntence is appropriate only when referring to an experience that Lisi had–that she has once broken a cup (at some indefinite time in the past),and that the resulting state of breaking no longer holds true at the time of utterance.This last characteristic of guo –the resulting state no long obtains–distinguishes guo not only from le, but also from the English perfect;the English perfect conveys a‘current relevance’meaning whereas guo does not(Mary has broken a cup is a more appropriate translation for(3a)than for(3b)).This characteristic 3Becau guo is frequently associated with the past,it has sometimes been considered as having a ten function(cf.Chao1968).However,it does not by itlf indicate pastness: an explicit reference time in the future can be provided and guo can be ud to indicate that the event will be experienced at some indefinite time in the future.
4CL stands for classifiers.
726WOLFGANG KLEIN ET AL.
of guo is what Chao(1968)and Smith(1991)called the“discontinuity”meaning of guo.
Finally,Li and Thompson(1981,p.192)stated that le and guo differ in “definiteness”:le not only indicates boundedness but also marks a“specific or definite event”,whereas for guo it suffices that so
me event of the type described by the ntence has occurred sometime.This point has also been made elwhere,for example,in Mangione and Li’s(1993)compositional analysis of le and guo(e ction2.2.2):“...le marks a specific event time,which is ordered before and cloly to its ntences reference time, while guo can be taken as providing an existential quantification over times which are earlier than the guo ntence’s reference time”(1993,p.68). Thus,this difference,in whichever preci form it is couched,reflects a common intuition about the function of the two particles.
1.2.The Imperfective Aspect Markers
The particle zai has had a long historical development,appearingfirst as a verb,then as a locative preposition,and only recently as an imperfective aspect marker(e Li1988,1993,for discussion).5As a preposition,zai can occur both preverbally and postverbally,while as an aspect marker it can occur only preverbally(Zhu1981;Li1990,1993).Its main function as an aspect marker is to indicate that an action or event is in progress,hence the title of progressive marker.The particle zhe indicates that a situation is viewed as enduring or ,durative),often as a backgrounding information,for example,in V+zhe+V ,xiao-zhe shuo smile-ZHE speak‘speaking with a smile’).
According to traditional analys,the two imperfective markers differ in the verb types to which they c
an be applied:zai cannot be ud with stat-ive verbs that indicate fully homogeneous states,whereas zhe can be ud with verbs that indicate at least some homogeneous states but normally not ‘dynamic’events.For example,if a verb can have either a dynamic or a static reading,then the former is brought out by the u of zai,as in(4a), whereas the latter is usually brought out by the u of zhe,as in(4b).6
5Historically,progressive aspect has an intimate relationship with locative expressions in many languages(Comrie1976,p.99;Bybee et al.1994).One can stillfind historical traces in expressions like English asleep,which comes from at sleep(cf.Vlach1981). The Chine zai is a locative verb in origin,and it is therefore not surprising that it could develop into a progressive aspect marker.
6In the Beijing dialect,zhe can be ud on both the static and the dynamic meaning of such verbs,especially when the particle ne is added to the ntence(e6.5;Ma1987).
ASPECT AND ASSERTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE727属狗人今日运势
(4)a.Lisi
Lisi zai
ZAI
chuan
put-on
yi-jian
one-CL
大定
qunzi.
skirt
Lisi is putting on a skirt.
b.Lisi
Lisi chuan-zhe
wear-ZHE
yi-jian
one-CL
qunzi.
skirt
Lisi wears a shirt.
Along this line,Smith(1991)propod that zai has a dynamic meaning, while zhe has a static meaning(e ction2.2.1).It would appear,how-ever,that dynamicity or stativity comes from the verb to which the particles apply,rather than from the particles themlves,in ntences(4a–b)as well as in other cas.Such interactions between particles and inherent mean-ings of verbs also em to be true with other particles,for example,the interpretation of le with different types of verbs(e ctions1.1and6.2.1; e also Li and Shirai2000for a general discussion of such interactions in Chine,English,Japane,and child language).
So far,the most careful and comprehensive exposition of the various us of Chine aspect particles is found in Li and Thompson(198l,pp. 185–237):
A.The verbal aspect suffix le express perfectivity,that is,it indicates that an event is being viewed in its entirety or as a whole.An event is viewed in its entirety if it is bounded temporally,spatially,or conceptually.
最青春小说B.The aspect suffix guo means that an event has been experienced with respect to some reference time.When the reference time is left unspecified,then guo signals that the event has been experienced at least once at some indefinite time which is usually in the indefinite past.
C.In Mandarin there are two aspect markers that signal the durative nature of an event: the word zai and the suffix zhe.The usage of the durative markers in a ntence depends on the meaning of the verb.
In a more recent systematic treatment,Smith(1991)gives the following characterisations(again,the characterisations only cover the basic func-tions,depending on context and on the particular verb to which the particle applies):
A .Le spans the initial andfinal points of the situation(p.344)and perfective le prents clod non-stative situations(p.347).
B .The cond perfective in Mandarin is indicated by the verbal suffix guo;the viewpoint prents a clod situation and also conveys that thefinal state of that situation no longer obtains(p.348).
C .Mandarin has two imperfective viewpoints:zai and zhe.Zai is a typical progressive; zhe has a static meaning(p.356).
