Aspect, tense and mood : Context dependency and the marker LE in Mandarin Chinese
Ljungqvist, Marita
2003
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Citation for published version (APA): Ljungqvist, M. (2003). Aspect, tense and mood : Context dependency and the marker LE in Mandarin Chinese. Department of East Asian Languages, Lund University.
Total number of authors: 1
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LUND UNIVERSITY
PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00
Download date: 07. Oct. 2021
Aspect, tense and mood: Context dependency and the marker le in Mandarin Chinese
Marita Ljungqvist Arin
Marita Ljungqvist Arin Department of East Asian Languages Lund University Box 713 220 07 LUND, SWEDEN [email protected]
© Marita Ljungqvist Arin, 2003 Printed in Sweden KFS AB, Lund 2003
ISBN 91-628-5623-5
To Tobias, my fellow traveller
Contents
Acknowledgements...... v
Abbreviations...... vi
Introduction...... vii Why do we need another study on le? ...... vii Aim and scope ...... vii Methodology...... viii Outline ...... ix
1. Situation types, tense, aspect and modality ...... 1 1.1. Situation types ...... 1 1.2. Tense...... 3 1.3. Aspect...... 6 1.3.1. The “metaphorical” definition of aspect...... 8 1.3.2. The time-relational definition of aspect...... 9 1.3.3. The perfect and the perfective...... 11 1.3.4. Problems with existing analyses of aspect in Chinese...... 12 1.4. Modality...... 15 1.5. Concluding remarks1...... 16
2. Problems with previous studies of le ...... 19 2.1. Terminological problems...... 21 2.2. Definitions that fail to explain the function of le ...... 25 2.2.1. Verbal le as a perfective marker ...... 25 2.2.2. Verbal le as a marker of completion...... 26 2.2.3. Verbal le as a marker of anteriority ...... 32 2.2.4. Sentence-final le as an inchoative marker ...... 34 2.2.5. Sentence-final le as a perfect marker...... 36 2.3. One or two le?...... 39 2.3.1. The historical origin issue...... …..39 2.3.2. The dialect issue...... 43 2.3.2.1. Cantonese ...... 44
1 Include definitions of all relevant terms used throughout this work.
i
2.3.2.2. Other dialects ...... 45 2.3.3. The syntactic/semantic issue...... 48 2.3.3.1. Unified treatments of le in the literature ...... 49 2.4. Concluding remarks...... 57
3. Relevance Theory ...... 60 3.1. Ambiguity is semantic incompleteness...... 61 3.2. Tense and aspect in a relevance-theoretic framework...... 62 3.2.1 Non-linguistic information...... 63 3.2.2 Procedure ...... 64 3.3. Concluding remarks...... 66
4. Boundary as an invariant semantic core-feature of le...... 67 4.1. Time...... 68 4.2. Attitude...... 68 4.3. Concluding remarks...... 75
5. Verbal le ...... 77 5.1. Non-perfective interpretations of verbal le ...... 79 5.1.1. Simple sentences...... 79 5.1.1.1. Perfect sentences with le...... 79 5.1.1.2. Perfect types ...... 93 5.1.2. Subclauses of complex sentences ...... 103 5.1.2.1. Sequential sentences ...... 105 5.1.2.2. Conditional sentences ...... 108 5.2. Verbal le and the perfective aspect ...... 113 5.3. Modality...... 115 5.4. Concluding remarks...... 119
6. Sentence-final le ...... 122 6.1. Non-perfect interpretations of sentence-final le...... 123 6.1.1. The discourse use of le and the perfective aspect: opening a discussion ...... 125 6.1.2. The discourse use of le and the perfective aspect: culmination of a progress...... 128 6.2. Sentence-final le and the perfect tense...... 135 6.3. Modality...... 137 6.4. Concluding remarks...... 143
7. One or two le—further indications of functional overlapping ...... 144 7.1. Concluding remarks...... 149
ii
8. Conclusion...... 150 8.1. Conclusion...... 150 8.2. Suggestions for further research ...... 151 8.2.1. Negation and le ...... 151 8.2.2. “Double le” sentences...... 152 References ...... 154
iii
List of Figures
Figure
1. Perfective aspect: The relation between the temporal boundaries of a situation and the Reference Time interval R...... 10 2. The interpretive procedure of the Passé Composé...... 66
iv
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for support from the foundations of Carl-Fredrik Lyngby and C-J Tornberg that has enabled me to make trips to China to collect material and to spend one semester as a visiting research student at the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong.
I further wish to express my gratitude to the following people, who all in different ways have contributed to the completion of this thesis:
To my supervisor Lars Ragvald, who originally came up with the idea that I should write this thesis. To Inga-Lill Hansson, Susanna Björverud, Marina Svensson, Elna Andersson, Richard Roeser and other colleagues at the department of East Asian Languages who have given me constructive comments and support. To Roger Greatrex, for always encouraging me and for proofreading my manuscript.
To my colleagues at the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong, in particular Xu Liejiong, Pan Haihua and Peppina Lee Po- Lun, who have patiently read through parts of my work and given me helpful advice as well as engaged me in interesting discussions during my time at the department.
Jan-Olof Svantesson at the Department of Linguistics at Lund University has been kind enough to read through my manuscript and his advice and comments have been of great importance for my work.
I have attended a number of conferences while working on this thesis, such as NACCL- 12, EACS-13, EACL-2 and ICSTLL-31 and 35 and would like to thank the participants of those conferences for interesting comments on my presentations.
I would also like to thank the persons all over the world who have generously helped me with the translations of some of the Chinese sentences found in this thesis: Sue Jollow, Wang Rujie, William E. Duncan and Beverly Hong-Fincher.
Finally, my thanks go to my friends and family. To my parents, Lennart and Birgitta Ljungqvist and my sister Lena, who have supported me wholeheartedly ever since I decided to start studying Chinese 12 years ago. To Kajsa, the best friend one could ever wish for, for her unflinching belief in me. To Nisse, for always succeeding in his efforts to make me forget about my thesis for a while. To my children, Elin and Dion, for reminding me what life is about. Last but definitely not least, I want to thank my wonderful husband, Tobias, for telling me that I can do everything.
v
Abbreviations
BA 1) Sentence-final “solicit agreement” marker 6 ba2 2) “Disposal” marker c ba
CL Classifier
DE 1) Nominalizing/genitive/associative marker de 2) Adverbializing marker 1 de 3) Complex stative construction marker > de, referring either to manner or extent 4) > de, infix in a resultative verb compound, expressing potentiality
GUO Boundary3 / Experiential marker K guo
JIANG “Disposal” marker # jiang
LA Combination of "le and sentence-final marker E a
LE Boundary marker " le
MA Sentence-final question marker ? ma
NEG Negative markers $ bu and ] $ ' %mei(you)
NEG IMP Negative imperative marker , bie
QUE Classical Chinese resultative complement / grammatical marker K que
TA Grammatical marker z ta in the Xiang dialect
ZAI / ZHENGZAI Durative marker &