A Contrastive Study Of Perfective Aspect Between Chinese And English

This thesis presents a contrastive study of perfective aspect between Chinese and English. The main approach applied in this analysis is cognitive approach. Unlike previous researches that are more concerned about specific usages in detail on a lexical and syntactic level, this thesis concentrates on tracing usages back to their cognitive sources and establishing cognitive models accordingly. This comparison proves that both Chinese and English perfective aspects share a similar process of grammaticalization and semantic extension of an action verb: in English, the action verb have developed into its usage as an auxiliary verb in the perfect, functioning as an RT anchor; in Chinese, both the actual -le and the experiential -guo evolve from their original usages as action verbs. Furthermore, the integration of Reichenbach's"three times"is involved in the conceptualization of perfective aspect, both in Chinese and English. A potential aspect marker, you, in Chinese is also studied, whose usage coincides with its English equivalent, have, and is believed to have undergone the same process of semantic extension. Due to their different ways of association with tense, however, Chinese perfective aspect takes on more forms and has its own characteristics. In the realization of perfective meanings, Chinese relies more on its lexicon than on aspect markers -guo and -le. The uncertainty of RT in Chinese perfective aspect leads to its possibility of combination with adverbials of time and the transferability of RT.