BACKGROUNDING AND FOREGROUNDING THROUGH ASPECT IN CHINESE NARRATIVE LITERATURE

The use of linguistic methodology to analyze works of narrative literature can provide new insights into narrative structure. The linguistic technique of backgrounding and foregrounding has a direct relevance to what have been traditionally referred to by literary critics as narrative and descriptive phrases. In many languages with elaborate systems of tense, backgrounded and foregrounded material is readily identifiable. In Chinese, which lacks grammaticalized tense markers, however, narrative backgrounding and foregrounding is done mainly through "aspect", a grammatical category which shows how situations are being viewed with respect to their own internal make-up. To better understand Chinese narrative structure, therefore, it is necessary to discover the linguistic means by which narrative language is formally distinguished from non-narrative language; the formal signals that allow a reader of Chinese narrative to process certain information as directly relevant to the story line, and other information as amplifying or commenting on the events of the main narrative.;This comparison revealed three distinct diachronic trends in the development and use of formal markers of aspect to foreground Chinese narrative: (1) an increase in the use of Perfective -le, (2) a decrease in the use of resultative verbal complements, and (3) an increase in the use of multiple markers of narrativity within single sentences. The first of these trends is interrelated with the second. In the early vernacular period the majority of narrative sentences are marked for the perfective aspect syntactically by the addition of perfectivizing verbal complements after the main verbs. In the late vernacular and modern periods, however, the Perfective aspect is realized both syntactically as before, and grammatically by the use of the post-verbal marker -le.;With the knowledge of the development and use of formal markers of narrativity from the above results, students of Chinese narrative may better understand the structure of those narratives in general, and, more specifically, the reasons behind why they experience particular narrative texts in the way they do.;For a framework of inquiry I have used recent linguistic works on backgrounding and foregrounding through aspect, as well as the most current treatments of aspect in Chinese. By examining the formal manifestations of different aspects in modern Chinese, I arrived at a standard pattern of distribution for formal markers of narrativity in literary samples written during the modern period. To this standard I compared several samples of Chinese narratives from the late vernacular period and the early vernacular period in an attempt to see how formal manifestations of narrative language varied over time.