An Aspectual System in Mandarin Chinese

汉语的表态系统

黄美金(Lillian Meei-jin Hunag) ； 戴非力(Philip W. Davis)

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics》 17卷1期 (1989/01) Pp. 128-166

摘要

We first examine the particle le in Mandarin Chinese and conclude that its semantics forces us to allow the category of aspect to extend beyond the domain of Verbs. Secondly, we find that the semantics of le does not conform to the semantics of Perfective and Imperfective familiar to us from Indo-European languages. Rather, le signals the presence of an interruption, which may be, for example, the boundary of an event, the disruption which occurs upon suddenly recognizing a previously unnoticed entity, or any other circumstance appropriate to this semantics. Extending our investigation, we examine three additional particles in Mandarin Chinese: guo, zai, and zhe. Here, we find that the idea of a semantic interruption recurs, but that there is now a second semantic contrast of immediate: remote. Together, the semantics of presence and absence of interruption and the semantics of immediate: remote allow us to order the four particles into a coherent semantic system of aspect.

並列摘要

传统有关‘态’（或称‘情貌’、‘体’）的研究，常把‘态’与时间观念相混淆，且误以为‘态’是动词形式中的一种。本文首先指出‘态’的范畴，实不应局限于时间观念与动词本身而已；应可扩及动词组、句子、段落，甚至更大的言谈单位。依此，我们以为一般汉语语言学家所谓的‘动词了’和‘句尾了’实为同一词位。进一步地，我们尝试性地提出几项原则，借以探讨汉语中四个助词‘了、过、在、着’如何构成一个表‘态’的语意系统。