ABSTRACT

Chinese possesses formal means to express both perfectivity and imperfectivity. In Chapter 3, we have studied in detail the imperfective aspect in Mandarin Chinese, which consists of four subcategories: the progressive ‘(zhèng) zài’, the continuous ‘-zhe’, the inceptive ‘qǐlai’, and the continuative ‘xiàqu’. Though all of the viewpoints refer to the internal interval of a situation, each of them focuses on a different section of the interval, thus expressing different aspectual meanings.

The progressive ‘(zhèng) zài’ focuses on a part of the situation without inclusion of the initial or final endpoints. It is characterized by dynamicity, presenting a situation as progressing, continuing, ongoing, or developing.

The continuous ‘-zhe’ refers explicitly to the internal temporal structure of a situation without regard to its endpoints. However, differing from ‘(zhèng) zài’, it presents a situation as static and continuous, rather than portraying the situation as ongoing and progressing. Therefore, it is generally considered as the static ‘-zhe’. Please note the internal interval focused by ‘(zhèng) zài’ or by ‘zhe’ is not fixed, it is mobile with the perspective of the speaker, and the viewpoint span of ‘(zhèng) zài’ and that of ‘-zhe’ can be overlapped; both aspects signal the ‘continuation’ of an active event and the event is presented as ‘incomplete’. Due to these common features, the two aspects may co-occur in a sentence (e.g. ‘wàitou zhèng zài xià zhe dàyǔ, guā zhe dà fēng’ (It is raining and blowing hard outside)).

The inceptive aspect marker ‘qǐlai’ focuses on the initial point of a situation, the point at which the situation begins to obtain, it also refers to the subsequent stage after initiation of the situation. Hence its aspectual meaning is ‘to start and continue’. The peculiar aspectual feature of ‘qǐlai’ is that, though essentially an imperfective aspect, it is connected to the perfective, as it explicitly refers to the initial point and signals the start of the situation. ‘Beginning’ an action is perfective, just as ‘completing’ one is. Because of the composite aspectual properties of ‘qǐlai’, it can combine with the perfective ‘-le’ and the sentence-final ‘le; it can also co-occur with the progressive aspect ‘(zhèng) zài’ under some conditions.

The continuative aspect marker ‘xiàqu’ refers to the internal interval of a situation, signalling the continuation of the situation into the future from a certain point or from a resumptive point. Therefore, it is characterized by dynamicity and continuativeness. As its viewpoint span starts from a certain point, ‘xiàqu’, like ‘qǐlai’, has a perfective component, too. This explains why it can also co-occur with the perfective ‘-le’, and its aspectual properties of continuation and dynamicity allow it to appear with the progressive ‘zài’.

We have made a thorough study of the interactions between the aspect particles and situation types. Some grammatical constraints on the combination of an aspect particle with some situation types are examined and analysed in the theory of compositional aspect. Most of the grammatical restrictions have been noticed in the literature and we owe the observations to Chinese grammarians. Based on the current theory of aspect, the issues concerned are examined and theoretical explanations are provided, which, we believe, will facilitate a better understanding of the imperfective aspect in Mandarin Chinese. Through this analytic semantic study, it has been shown that many seemingly arbitrary grammatical restrictions are due to the incompatibility between the semantics of an aspect particle and the inherent aspectual properties of a certain situation type. Concentrating on the interaction between an aspect particle and the semantics of the verb, we are able to isolate the basic grammatical meaning of an aspect particle and to reject the wrong opinion that an aspect form may admit different meanings, for example, the erroneous opinion that there are two ‘-zhe’, one is the dynamic ‘-zhe’, the other is the resultative stative ‘-zhe’.

Finally, we should bear in mind that Mandarin Chinese, though recognized as an aspect language, allows optional occurrence of viewpoint morphemes or aspect particles syntactically, namely, sentences often appear without them in discourse. Omission or optional use of a viewpoint morpheme is an important pragmatic fact in the Chinese aspectual system. Because of this undeniable pragmatic fact, Smith (1997: 279–280) posits that Chinese has a neutral aspect. She proposes that ‘sentences that lack viewpoint morphemes (LVM sentences) have the neutral viewpoint’, they allow either a perfective or imperfective explanation.

We agree with Smith’s point of view because pragmatic conventions play an important role in the aspectual system, sentences without overt aspect markers occur frequently and commonly in a context and discourse. Such sentences are ambiguous, as they may present a situation that may be ongoing, terminated, or completed. In this book, we use the term ‘neutral aspect’ more loosely than Smith, we maintain that it applies to stative verbs as well. Stative verbs that do not occur with any aspect particle are in the neutral aspect, since stative verbs are more flexible in that ‘they may be taken as open or closed informationally’ (Smith, 1997). The interpretations for an LVM sentence (which lacks a viewpoint morpheme) are flexible in that such a sentence has both open and closed readings, depending on context. The determining factors are situation type, context, and world knowledge (Smith, 1997).