The Semantics And Syntax Of Viewpoint Aspect And Situation Aspect In Chinese

This dissertation aims to explore the aspectual system of Chinese from the perspective of LE.LE is analyzed as the marker of both viewpoint aspect and situation aspect by a comparative study on Mandarin and Pingxiang Chinese.I provide a structure with two aspect projections contributing to the aspectual interpretation of the sentence.LE is the same form of Telicity LE0,Perfective LEi and Perfect LE2,which are represented as KA,LIi and LI2 in Pingxiang Chinese.LE0 is different from LEi in the syntactic distribution of sentential negation,imperative and modal sentences,responsible for the telic reading of the situation.LEi makes visible a situation as a single whole and presents the realized meaning of the situation.LE2,located at the end of the sentence,expresses currently relevant state with the meaning of realization as LEi.Chinese is realized as three situation types,namely State,Activity and Telicity and has only states and activities monomorphemic verbs.To get a telic situation,Chinese has to resort to either a resultative verb compound,a resultative construction or a verb with Telicity LE0.LE0 is able to turn an atelic situation into a telic one,and can also express overtly the telicity in a telic situation.It is proved that situation aspect is a category not only of lexical level,but also of syntactic level.There exist overt viewpoint and situation aspectual markers in Chinese,which are based-generated respectively as the head of two aspect projections in syntax.The structure is given by[Asp1P spec[Asp1,Asp1[vP spec[v' V[Asp2P spec[Aap2,Asp2[VP spec[v' V...]]]]]]]].Perfective LEi is the head of AspiP above vP,and Telicity LE0 the head of Asp2P between vP and VP.v introduces the external argument and V the inner one which moves to spec,Asp2P to get its specific reading and emphasis on quantity.The structure with AspiP and Asp2P is available for the interpretation of some linguistic problems.As for BA construction with disposal or causative result,it has to be realized as Telic,which requires a complex predicate with resultative compound,resultative construction,resultative clause or Telicity LE0.And the BA-NP is supposed to move to spec,Asp2P to follow BA in the head of vP and to get a specific interpretation.Furthermore,durative phrases are base-generated as complement of V,same as other resultative elements.Durative phrases contribute to Telic situation,providing a temporal boundary.It can selectively move to spec,Asp2P in the structure,which makes it precede or follow the object in surface representation,expressing the duration time of the action or state in the situation.While a telic situtation is composed by the elements before a durative,ambiguity is produced and the durative may present the time after the completion of the action or state.