The Study Of The Grammaticalization Of The Perfect In English And Chinese Under The Framework Of Formalism

Grammaticalization is a universal phenomenon of language change. Meanwhile, the study of the perfect is also a hot issue. Since most previous researches were done from functionalism, in order to fill in the theoretical gap, the thesis aims to study the grammaticalization of the perfect in English and Chinese from formalism, obtaining the similarities and differences.The thesis has made the theoretical integration of the theories of Roberts & Roussou (2003) and Simpson (1997). A conclusion can be drawn that the nature of language change is the change of parametric value; the motivation is the obscure triggering experience; the mechanism is the change of the way of PF realization of functional categories; the process can be divided into three stages, i.e. base-generated in the original position, move to targeted position, merge. Based on the integrated theory, the thesis has made use of synchronic and diachronic corpora, the basic theories in Generative Grammar, such as X-bar theory, argument theory, case theory and some notions put forward in Minimalist Program as well, so as to analyze the grammaticalization path of the perfect in English and Chinese.In view of the division of the aspect into situational aspect and viewpoint aspect, the thesis considers that completive belongs to situational aspect; perfective belongs to the viewpoint aspect. Compositionally, seen from the tree diagram, perfective dominates completive. In English, have has undergone the grammaticalization from the light verb v to perfective, while in Chinese, le (了) has undergone the grammaticalization from V to completive to perfective. As for guo (过) in Chinese, which was usually recognized as the perfect, actually, it is not a perfect, grammaticalized from V to completive. It is a completive marker rather a perfective. The final conclusion is that the grammaticalization of the perfect in English and Chinese corresponds to the Unidirectionality and involves the categorical reanalysis and structural simplification while the main differences exist in the grammaticalization path, type and morphological form. As for the perfective have in English, the path is from v to perfective; the type is grammatical to grammatical category; the form is the free morpheme. As for the perfective le in Chinese, the path is from V to completive to perfective; the two types are lexical to grammatical, grammatical to grammatical category; the form is the verbal affix.