The Comparative Study Of Aspect Maker "Zai" And "Zhe"

For the grammatical meaning of " zai" and "zhe", there are different views. Someone thinks "zai" is the progressive aspect marker, and "zhe" is the continuous aspect marker. Someone thinks both of " zai" and "zhe" are the durative aspect maker. We think they are very similar, but not the same. In order to clarify their grammatical meanings, in this dissertation, we analysis and compare the differences of the position and function between "zai" and "zhe". Our research is based on Comrie's theory, we think "zai" is progressive aspect marker, and "zhe" is nonprogressive aspect marker.Then we will discuss whether our judgment is right or not. This dissertation is mainly consisted of three contents:Firstly,from the perspective of syntactic functions,we discuss their differences,when "zai" and "zhe" cooperate with verbs,adjectives, privatives and time-adverbials. Only these words which meaning can match the semantic features of "zai" and "zhe".Secondly, from the perspective of pragmatic functions,we analyse the special usage of "zai"and"zhe". Specifically, we analyse the differences of "zai" and "zhe", when they are used in different syntactic structures. At last,we try to make sure which make "zai" and "zhe" are so similar as to be easily confused.in chapter 5,we explain this ponit from diachronic linguistic angle.