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The Investigation of Mandarin Aspect: with Special Reference to the Ba-Construction

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The Investigation of Mandarin Aspect: with Special Reference to the Ba-Construction The Investigation of Mandarin Aspect: With Special Reference to the Ba-Construction Ying-Ju Chang PhD University of York Language and Linguistic Science December 2019 Abstract This thesis is an investigation of the aspect system in Taiwanese Mandarin (TM). It examines the four aspect particles le, guo, zai, zhe and two constructions, the reduplicative verb construction and the resultative verb construction. It also explores the aspect of the ba-construction used in TM. Different from previous research, this study adopts the three-dimension model of aspect established by Declerck, Reed, & Cappelle (2006) as the basic framework. To better apply the model to analysing the aspect in TM, I draw from Depraetere's (1995) conceptual definition of (non)boundedness, the semantic feature that the actualisation aspect pivots on, to conduct the analysis at the actualisational level. I also use Klein's (1994) framework, treating the perfect as a category of aspect, rather than of tense. Additionally, Smith's (1997) approach of temporal boundary to define the viewpoint aspect is also used in this study. Chapter 1 lays the conceptual foundation of the thesis, introducing the general background, the sociolinguistic background of Taiwan, the aims and approach of this research and key terminologies. Chapter 2 reviews Smith’s and Klein’s frameworks of aspect as well as the syntactic account of the ba-construction proposed by Sybesma (1999) and C.-T. J. Huang, Li, & Li (2009). In the end, I propose a syntactic structure for the ba-construction. Chapter 3 is the full analysis of the aspect in TM on the basis of the three-dimension model. In this approach, TM is analysed as a language having the dichotomous perfective/imperfective opposition. It also distinguishes between the continuous and the progressive aspects. Chapter 4 then analyses the aspect of the ba-construction according to the aspect system developed in Chapter 3. ii Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. vi Author’s Declaration .............................................................................................. viii Conference presentations ..................................................................................... viii Chapter 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.1 General background ..................................................................................... 1 1.2 Sociolinguistic background of Taiwan ........................................................... 3 1.3 Aims and scope ............................................................................................ 4 1.4 The ba-construction in TM ............................................................................ 9 1.5 The approach .............................................................................................. 15 1.6 Conceptual preliminaries ............................................................................ 17 1.6.1 Tense ...................................................................................................... 18 1.6.2 Aspect ..................................................................................................... 21 1.6.2.1 Viewpoint aspect .............................................................................. 23 1.6.2.2 Ontological aspect ........................................................................... 30 1.6.2.3 Actualisation aspect ......................................................................... 33 1.7 Thesis outline .............................................................................................. 36 Chapter 2 Previous approaches to Mandarin aspect and the ba-construction . 38 2.1 Aspect in Mandarin ..................................................................................... 38 2.1.1 Smith’s theory .......................................................................................... 39 2.1.2 Klein’s theory ........................................................................................... 48 2.2 The syntax of the ba-construction ............................................................... 54 2.3 Summary ..................................................................................................... 71 iii Chapter 3 The three-dimensional approach to TM ............................................... 74 3.1 Viewpoint aspect ......................................................................................... 76 3.1.1 Perfective viewpoint ................................................................................ 77 3.1.1.1 Bounding perfectivity: perfect markers and the reduplicative construction ...................................................................................... 87 3.1.1.2 Telic perfectivity: RVCs .................................................................. 114 3.1.2 Imperfectivity ......................................................................................... 117 3.1.2.1 Continuous aspect ......................................................................... 120 3.1.2.2 Progressive aspect......................................................................... 137 3.2 Ontological aspect .................................................................................... 144 3.2.1 The situation conceptualisation in TM ................................................... 144 3.2.2 Two diagnostics of (a)telicity? ............................................................... 153 3.3 Actualisation aspect .................................................................................. 162 3.3.1 Actualisation aspect at VP level ............................................................ 165 3.3.2 (Non)boundedness of ‘V+ specific NP’ .................................................. 167 3.3.3 Actualisation aspect and temporal interpretation in TM ........................ 173 3.3.4 The salience of the actualisation aspect in TM ..................................... 187 3.4 Summary ................................................................................................... 193 Chapter 4 Aspectual analysis of the ba-construction in TM ............................. 195 4.1 The definiteness/specificity of the ba-construction ................................... 195 4.2 The ba-construction’s verbal complement constraint ............................... 202 4.3 Temporal delimitedness of the predicate .................................................. 211 4.4 The temporal interpretation of the ba-construction ................................... 221 4.5 Summary ................................................................................................... 229 Chapter 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 231 5.1 Synopsis ................................................................................................... 231 iv 5.2 Further Research ...................................................................................... 233 Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ 235 References ............................................................................................................. 237 v Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge a number of people for their contribution to the writing of the thesis. I would first like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisors Professor Peter Sells and Professor Dunstan Brown. Both are responsible, helpful, patient and understanding mentors. The doors to their offices were always open whenever I ran into difficulties or had questions relating to my research or to the writing. They always allowed this study to be my own work, but meanwhile steered me in the right direction whenever I needed guidance. Furthermore, I would like to give special and warm thanks to Prof. Sells for his kindness and support throughout the journey, especially during my illness and my father’s surgery. This thesis has also benefited from the intellectual input and suggestions from Dr Maria Arche, Dr Norman Yeo and Prof. Ying Cheng. I am thankful to Dr Arche and Dr Yeo for their carefully reading my thesis and offering very concrete and useful feedback. I am also grateful to Prof. Cheng for her encouragement and valuable opinions for a chapter of this thesis. I am indebted to my friends for their companionship, their understanding and their help. I would like to thank Chen-Ju Chen, Chien-Yang Huang, Hsiu-Hung Chen, Tai- Jung Lu and You-Chen Jhang for their contribution to the judgements and discussion of the Mandarin data. Thanks also go to Ken Sutcliffe and Larry Philips for their discussion with me about the English data. I thank Michelle Sutcliffe, Ken Sutcliffe, Karla Beltrán Valenzuela, Shana Schlottfeldt Santos, Rebecca Ward, Wei-Min Wu and Zhishuang Chen for making my York and Durham years more enjoyable and memorable. I offer my sincere gratitude to Ken and Michelle for their kind offer of help when they heard that I needed a surgery, and for Karla’s constant prayers for me and her encouragement throughout. Finally, the
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