Ling202A_Final Paper Jinxiao Song Semelfactive verbs in Mandarin Chinese

This short paper is intended to practice what I learned in LING202A, which is largely Role and Reference Grammar, and is used to represent complex syntactice and semantic relations in world languages. I hereby put it in to analyzing Chinese (Modern Mandarin Chinese). I choose to look into Chinese verb situation types. As I go deeper into Chinese verbs, more questions come out and I found myself not skillful enough to talk about the entire verb system. I finally focused on discussing Mandarin semelfactives because these kind of punctual verbs are relatively obvious to identify and they are a lot more interesting to analyze. In this paper, I will discuss three main questions: 1) Background research on Chinese semelfactives. 2) Several syntactic markers that often co-occur with semelfactive verbs in Mandarin Chinese. 3) A discussion of these syntactic markers based on CCL corpus (Center for Chinese Linguistics).

1. Background —— Situation types in English and Mandarin Chinese Characterized in terms of four features: [±static], [±dynamic], [±telic], [±punctual], the four types of verbs can be displayed in the following form: State: [+static] [- dynamic] [- telic] [-punctual] Activity: [- static] [+ dynamic] [- telic] [-punctual] Achievement: [- static] [- dynamic] [+ telic] [+punctual] Semelfactive: [- static] [± dynamic] [- telic] [+punctual] Accomplishment: [- static] [- dynamic] [+ telic] [-punctual]

Chen (1988) did an early study on Mandarin Chinese aspectual classification and introduced a verb classification according to phase, tense, and aspect. [1] Chen summarizes Ma (1981), and Deng (1986) of their classifications on verbs situation types. These early works have a general agreement on three situation types, i.e., Chinese do have stative verbs (死 die), activities (教 teach), accomplishments (学会 learned), and achievements (丢了 lost). Based on early discussions, Chen utilizes the three traditional aspectual features including dynamicity,

[1] Chen, Ping. 1988. Lun Xiandai Hanyu shijian xitong de sanyuan jiegou [On tripartite organization of the temporal system in Modern Chinese]. Zhongguo Yuwen [Studies of the Chinese Language] 1988.6:401-4 pp. 401.

1 duration, and telicity, to classify the Chinese aspectual system. Using the feature ±static, Chen also distinguishes static from dynamic. [+Static]: 属于 belongs to, 姓 have the last name of, 适合 fit. tit. [-- Static]: 相信 believe.believe, 知道 know.know, 坐 sit，站 stand. [+Durative]: 跳舞 dance. dance，唱歌 sing.sang， 看电影 watch.movie，读书 read.book [ - Durative]: 爆炸 explode.explode，跌倒 fell.down，找到 find.out，眨眼 wink.eye. [+Telic]: 写 write, 演奏 play (music), 跑 run. (This one has some ambiguity in this paper. It is actually marked telic by the time adverbial.) [- Telic]: 听音乐 listen.music，读书 read.book，跑步 run, 拿出 take.out

State: [+static] Activity: [- static] [+ durative] [- telic] Accomplishment: [- static] [+ durative] [+ telic] Complex Change [- static] [- durative] [+ telic] Simple change [- static] [- durative] [- telic] [2]

According to Smith (1991) classification, Chen’s simple change, which is [-static], [- durative], [-telic], should be semelfactives. [3] Based on Chen’s classification argument, I looked at a recent article. Jeeyoung. P et. al. (2013) concludes Mandarin verbs into six aspectual classes, as is shown in the following table:

[2] Simple change and complex change differ from each other in terms of the gradual process proceeding to the endpoint. ‘Simple change’ denotes verbs that lack a noticeable process between the staring and ending point, i.e. the staring point overlap with the end point. ‘Complex change’ include verb compounds, and resultative verb complements. Some of the verbs are seen as a nucleus + nucleus construction, such as sòng-huí send-return ‘return’, zǒu-jìn walk-enter ‘walk into’. Chen marks ‘simple change’ as atelic, however, Jeeyoung. P et. al. (2013) argued that this feature is not necessarily needed. Jeeyoung, et. al. provided: a verb that is [+dynamic, -durative, +telic] would be treated as an achievement, such as sǐ ‘die’, zuò ‘(dynamic) sit’, dǎ-pò hit-break ‘break’, and kàn-jiàn look-see ‘see’ as examples of simple change class, but would be treated as achievements. [3] Saeed, John I. (2009). Semantics. (3rd. ed.) MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. pp.125.

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Jeeyoung. P et. al. (2013) introduces another feature to Mandarin verb situation types: [ ± scalar]. In this paper, the authors introduce the scalar feature and describe it in terms of ‘open/closed’ (related to atelic/telic) and ‘multi/two point’ (durative/punctual). Multi-point closed scale verb is similar to durative telic verbs that correspond to accomplishments (e.g., return, come, kill). Two-point closed scale verbs are similar to punctual telic verbs that correspond to achievements (e.g., enter, arrive, reach, die). Non-scalar verbs include states, semelfactives, and activities. Accomplishments and achievements are considered [+scalar]. This feature is used here mainly to refer to the large amount of degree achievement verbs (DA) such as ‘descend’, ‘ascend’, ‘lengthen’. Mandarin is a mono-morphemic language. It has a lot of degree verbs and verb-complement compounds that are similar to English degree achievement verbs. For example, the verb ‘jiàng’ (descend/decrease) do not lexicalize an endpoint; it is similar to activity in terms of expressing atelic event, while similar to accomplishment and achievement because it considered dynamic in a single dimension. [Jeeyoung] With the feature [±scalar], the large amounts of ‘degree achievement’ verbs such as dry, lengthen, darken, cook, can be better explained. For example, this feature can be put into the explanation of multi-morphemic verb compounds such as jiàngluò (descend.fall) ‘descend’. It’s a combination of two open scale verbs, both with the feature of [-static], [-telic], [+durative], [+scalar]. According to this feature, this open scale verb is similar to activity,

3 with the only difference on [+scalar]. This paper talks thoroughly about how open scale verbs interact with activities, achievements and accomplishments. Besides, Jeeyoung. P et. al. (2013) agrees there to be semelfactives, and talks about its difference with activities. They claimed that ‘yīxià 一下’ can be used as a test to show the iterative meaning of semelfactives.

2. Semelfactive verbs in Mandarin Chinese 2.1 Introduction In modern Mandarin, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs are largely disyllabic. Words are largely compounds. Verbs are productive in the form of single syllabic words, and more concrete meanings are mostly expressed through different kinds of compounds. Besides, Mandarin is also an analytic language, in which syntax, rather than morphology is used to indicate the word’s function in a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections, it possess almost no tense, voice and numbers. Aspect and mood are expressed mainly through grammatical particles as opposed to morphological viriation. This phenomenon is also reflected on semelfactive verbs --- a lot of verbs are given a punctual, atelic meaning together with some particles, adverbials and verbal classifiers. In the next section, I will talk about the interaction between Chinese semelfactive verbs and some markers, or co-occurring elements that usually found connected to the verbs’ semelfactive meaning. Semelfactives are punctual events that have no result state. For example, The lights blinked; Marycoughed; Simon tapped on the desk; John glimpsed at Susan. Semelfactivesare punctual predicates that can be combined with a progressive marker to produce an iterative meaning, for instance ‘cough’ with an -ing ending in He was coughing. means the agent repeated the action of cough again and again. (Comrie 1976: 42). Semelfactives are also characterized by their atelic feature: unlike change of state predicates, the event does not bring any consequent state, or at least its consequences are not at issue in the discourse (Moens and Steedman 1988; Smith 1991: 384). The main evidence for a distinct class of semelfactives in Chinese is the multiplicative reading that occurs with the progressive preverbal marker zài or the stativizing suffix zhe. (Xiao and McEnery, 2004). Smith (1991: 384) defines semelfactive verbs as ‘instantaneous atelic events’, and lists Chinese tī 踢 ‘kick’, qiāo mén 打门 ‘knock.door’, and ké sou 咳嗽 ‘cough’. Li (2000) illustrates this class of predicates with verbs such as tiào 跳 ‘jump’ and zhǎ yǎn 眨眼 ‘blink.eye’ . Xiao and McEnery (2004) also argue for a specific class of

4 semelfactive verbs, defined as dynamic verbs which involve no final spatial endpoint, and encode no result, like yáo tóu 摇头 ‘shake.head’ or duōsuo 哆嗦 ‘tremble’. According to Comrie, semelfactives have the feature of [- static], [±dynamic], [- telic], [+punctual]. Combined with Jeeyoung et. al.’s (2013) feature of [- static], [- telic], [+punctual], [-scalar]. Semelfactives in Chinese tend to co-occur with several ‘markers’ or say, some elements that would either exaggerate the punctuality meaning, or bring up a punctuality reading of the verb. In the following section, I will focus on a) time adverbial yīxià ; b) preverbal yī; c) verb- classifier phrase. Here ten semelfactive verbs that are agreed to be semelfactive verbs by most of the articles are taken into consideration in this paper. These ten verbs are: 1 clap/tap pāi 2 cough ké sou 3 clap(hands), applause gǔ zhǎng 4 jump tiào 5 wink zhǎ yǎn 6 shake(head) yáo tóu 7 touch pèng 8 kick (sth. once) tī 9 tremble duōsuo 10 knock qiāo

2.2 Discussion 1) Occur with adverbial yīxià. a) Semelfactive+yīxià vs. Activity + yīxià Semelfactives are different from activities in terms of punctuality, different from achievements on whether the verbs denotes a result state. Since semelfactives are understood as a single action, we can use the adverbial ‘yīxià’, which means ‘do an action once’ to test the iterative meaning of the verb. For example： 1 tā pǎo le yīxià bù he run PRFV once step He ran a little bit. (Activity)

5 2 tā zhǎ le yīxià yǎn he wink PRFV once eye He winked once. (SEMEL)

Logical structure of sentence1: >>

Logical structure of sentence2: >>

In sentence 1, pǎo ‘run’ is an activity verb. When it is modified by yīxià ‘once’, the sentence means that an event of running lasted for a short time, rather than lift the leg and put it down for one time. Comparing to sentence 1, sentence 2 describes an event where an agent blinked his eye only once. The same adverbial is read differently when modifying different kind of verbs. Two different verbs here all modified by ‘yīxià’, but only the word ‘wink’ denotes a semelfactive meaning. Such a difference is brought by the nature of the verb. ‘wink.eye’ zhǎ yǎn is a semelfactive verb lexically, naturally, just as its in English ‘wink’. The same time adverbial ‘once’ will exaggerate the punctual, atelic meaning of a semelfactive verb, but only denotes a short period of time if used to modify an activity, such as ‘run’ pǎo. Therefore, yīxià ‘for one time/once’ serves as a good test for semelfactive verbs. Some other examples of activity +yixia and semelfactive + yixia are:

3. Activity ‘cry’ + yīxià = cry for a while wǒ xiǎng bào zhe nǐ kū yīxià I want to hold IMPV you cry for a while I want to hold you and cry for a while Logical structure: be- for a while’ [do’ [cry’ ( I )] ]

4 ta qingqing pai le yixia wode houbei he slightly clap PRFV once my back He gave a slight clap on my back. Logical structure: slightly’ [>]>

5 yao le yixia tou , youdian tong shake PRFV once head a little hurt Shaked head slightly and it hurts a little bit

6 Logical structure: SEML [ do’ (he, [shake’(he , head)])] b) achievement + yīxià and accomplishment +yīxià However, what if the verb is an achievement? Will the achievement verb + yīxià becomes a semelfactive or just take it as a simple time adverbial? In the following example, its hard to tell whether there is a result state or not. Comparing to the English sentence with a semelfactive: ‘The tree tapped the window. ’ [4]If what we are looking at is the action as opposed to the result, than it’s more likely to be a semelfactive. Carrying this notion, it would be better to characterize the following sentence as a action-focused rather than result-focused, which means, achievement+yīxià can also carry a punctual, atelic, unbounded meaning. 6 shì qīngqīngde dǎ yīxià, háishì zhēn dǎ? Copular slightly hit once, or real hit Do I hit slightly, or strictly? Logical structure of sentence 4 ‘do I hit slightly once?’ has two possible representations, the first one is appreciated.

(1) >]>

(2) ] >

7. accomplishment ‘cut hair’ +yixia = have a cut wo de toufa chang le, xiang qu jian yixia I POSS hair long PRFV want go cut a little bit My hair has got longer; I want to go get a cut. Logical structure: BECOME cut’ [(hair)] ?

In conclusion, ‘Verb+once yixia’ is just adding a time adverbial on to the verb. If the verb lexically, naturally has a semelfactive meaning, it will be read as a semelfactive. If used together with a verb other than semelfactive, the adverbial ‘once’ mostly means a short time, a brief action, an act, or do something for a while, rather than one single action. At the end of this section, I realized one more thing that might make all these analyzation collapse. A perfective marker le is very much preferred in semelfactive+le+yīxià construction. Without ‘le’, the sentence can be interpreted into either a series of action or one

[4] Van Valin. (2005). Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge University Press, 2005. pp. 32.

7 single action, which means the yīxià can mean ‘for a little while’ if ‘le’ is dropped. Further investigation is needed to tell whether its aspect affecting how we look at the verb, or the atelic nature of semelfactive requires a perfective aspect to come along.

2) Preverbal ‘yī’ Verbs that can enter the pattern ‘yī V’ is characterized by punctiliarity and semelfactivity. (Dan Xu, Jingqi Fu, 2013) The numeral yī ‘one’ may be used before a verb or an adjective to mark the sudden completion of an action or a change. It can co-occur with achievement, and semelfactive, and accomplishment. For example:

8 lǐdān jiāng dàtuǐ yī pāi, jīdòng de shuōdào.. Leedan passive thigh one clap, excited say… L clapped her thigh quickly/briefly, says excitedly…

Logical structure: >>

In sentence 8, the verb clap pāi with the preverbal yi ̄ together denotes a brief action of clap which is just one hands-up hands-down motion. Similarly, the semelfactive zhayan ‘wink’ can also work in this form:

9 tā yǎnjing yī zhǎ yī zhǎ de, chǔchǔdòngrén her eyes once wink one wink nominal, attractive Her eyes wink and wink, looks attractive

Logical structure: >>

The preverbal yi is very much similar to a shortened way of saying ‘do an action once’. It an also co-occur with other semelfactive verbs such as tiào ‘jump’, qiāo ‘knock (door)’, dǎ ‘beat’ (drum), and bèng ‘jump’, etc. Here two examples are transcribed. 10 ta yi tiao tiao jin he li he one jump jump into river inside He jumped, into the river Logical structure: >

8 11 laotaitai zai ta toushang yi qiao, shuo old woman at her head one knock says The old woman knocked once on her head, says… Logical structure: SEML knock’ (the old woman)

Similar to the adverbial yixia, preverbal yi also serves as a good test to show semelfactive verb. yi+activity or accomplishment will not denote a punctual meaning, instead, it tends to be understood as ‘as soon as’, ‘at the time when the action starts’. For example: 12 ta yi pao, xiang qilai shouji mei na he one run remember Complement mobile NEG take As soon as he started to run, he remembered that he forgot his mobile phone

3) Verb - classifier phrase Xiao and McEnery (2004) illustrates this category. When verb is followed by a numeral, and a classifier, which derives from the instrument, the verb will be separated into a series of actions. Each action is one ‘ verb-one-classifier’. For example, in sentence 13 below, here ‘knife’ is a kind of verbal classifier that come from the instrument used to perform the action of chop.

13 yě cháo tā tóushàng kǎn le shù dāo also toward 3rd sg. head.on chop PRFV several CL.knife

Also chopped at her head several times (with a knife) Xiao,2004, pp55

Logical structure: >>

Here we are looking at the action of chopping, as opposed to the result of someone get chopped, its better to represent ‘chop one knife’ as a semelfactive rather than causative achievement.Wink, knock, jump, beat, hit can also be put in this construction, take wink zhǎ and beat qiāo as example:

14 zhǎ le jǐ yǎn wink ASP several CLeye Winked several times (of the eye)

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15 qiāo le sān bàngzi beat PRFV three CL.stick Beat once. (with a stick)

Logical structure of sentence 14 : >

Logical structure of sentence 15 : >

Sentences 13~15 all describe iterative meanings. Sentence 13 means the man chopped one time after another. The verb denotes several chops happened in sequence. Sentence 14 means someone wink the eye several times, and sentence 15 means someone beat three times with a stick. All of these denote a repetition of the same instantaneous actions. Comparing to verb+yīxià, ‘verb+classifier’ exaggerates the punctuality meaning of the verb — it narrows the action into each single movement. Instead of focusing on time range, verb-classifier construction focuses on each action unit. An activity can be forced to a have a semelfactive meaning when a verbal classifier is added. For example, look is an activity, while in look + ‘one eye’ yī-yǎn the action is a semelfactive ; Run is an activity, too. When added ‘one step’ yī- bù, the action is also a semelfactive --- run just one step.

3. Other thoughts about semelfactives in Chinese 1) Body-part related. Semelfactive verbs are found mostly related to bodypart. For example, Dǎ ‘hit, beat’ in the sense of ‘hit’ can occur as semel, such as hit the drum, but it cannot be used as semelfactive when it means start a war, think about an idea. 2) Aspect related but not necessary Imperfective aspect can be used to indicate the internal stage of the process. By viewing a number of identical punctual situations as a unit, we can talk about them with imperfective perspective. As sentence 16 shows, the verb denotes a set of repetitive motion in which each time the woman shake her head from left to right briefly. Therefore, we can conclude that the verb yáo ‘shake’ here is a semelfactive.

10 16 Yang Xiangqin de mǔqīn yáo zhe tóu duì jìzhě tànxī

Name GEN mother shake PROG head to journalist sigh Shaking her head, Yang's mother sighed to the journalist.

Logical structure: >

Perfective aspect can also occur naturally with punctual verbs. Because by definition, perfective aspect presents a situation as a single whole, and punctual verbs provide ideal instantiations of such viewpoint. Punctual verbs depict situations as single points without internal structure. Therefore sentence 17 below should be think of causative achievement rather than semelfactive. Because we do see the internal structure of the event – someone got hit and its done. 17 dǎ le nǐ jǐ tiān ? hit PRFV you how many day For how many days did (someone) beat you? Xiao, 2004, pp55

Logical structure of sentence 17 might have two representations, but (2) is preferred here.

(1) for how many days’ {] >>}

(2) for how many days’ {>>}

4. Conclusion In this short paper, I discussed several markers that often co-occur with Chinese semelfactive verbs, or serves as a catalyst to exaggerated the punctuality, atelic feature in a verb. By looking at verbs by putting it in to the yīxià, preverbal yī and verbal classifier phrases, we are able to determine whether a verb is a semelfactive. Besides, by using the logical structure representation in RRG, it’s much easier to tell different states of different verbs when modified by the same marker. Getting an understanding of RRG, situation types, and logical structure helps understanding the internal structure of different verbs. It’s also meaningful to put this into practice in Chinese teaching. I used to explain students ‘yīxià’ as ‘ postverbal adverbial, means a brief action’, but apparently that is not going to cover the difference between zhǎ yīxià ‘one wink’, pǎo yīxià ‘run a while’, and shì yīxià ‘have a try’. With the help of

11 verb situation types, its more clear to tell that the difference come from semelfactive, activity, and accomplishment. I will keep looking at semelfactive verbs since lots of questions are still uncovered. What is the internal relationship between the choice of aspect and verb internal state? How do people express semelfactive in spoken language, is it as analyzed here? Or do people prefer other ways of describing a punctual, atelic event? Let me take this short paper as a start of my future discovery on Chinese verbs and aspects.

Reference: [1] Chen, Ping. 1988. Lun Xiandai Hanyu shijian xitong de sanyuan jiegou [On tripartite organization of the temporal system in Modern Chinese]. Zhongguo Yuwen [Studies of the Chinese Language] 1988.6:401-4 [2] Dan Xu, Jingqi Fu, Chinese Semelfactives and Body Movements. Retrieved on line: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10040-1_12/fulltext.html [3] Lin, Jingxia, Jeeyoung Peck, Chaofen Sun, 2013. Aspetual Classification of Mandarin Chinese Verbs: A Perspective of Scale Structure. Language and Linguistics 14.4:663-7--, 2013. [4] Saeed, John I. (2009). Semantics. (3rd. ed.) MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. [5] Xiao, Richard, and Tony McEnery. 2004. Aspect in Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus- Based Study. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [6] Van Valin. (2005). Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge University Press, 2005. [6] Course materials in LING202A, Fall 14, San Jose State University Corpus: [1] CCL online corpus: provided by the Center for Chinese Linguistics of the University of Peking (http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus/).

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