A Comparative Study On The Grammaticalization Of The Perfect In English And Chinese

The perfect aspect and its functional equivalents have proven to be an interesting topic and the center of attention in linguistic theory. In English and Chinese, many linguists have carried out the topic from difference perspectives. Among which synchronic researches on specific cross-linguistic data with detailed descriptions and philosophical analysis (Comrie, 1976; Dahl, 1985;Smith, 1991;Bhat, 1999) help confirm the perfect aspect as a universal language category. That is of great importance to the characterization of the perfect. Whereas a more satisfactory analysis cannot be approached only from synchronic perspective without tracing back the development of the perfect aspect diachronically. For this reason, linguistic researchers attempt to expound on the perfect aspect from the grammaticalizational perspective. However, most existing researches in English and Chinese focus on simple identification of perfect forms with synchronic or diachronic data, only a small number of studies are made in their working mechanisms and paths. In addition, methodologies applied in those studies are single. At the same time, we still lack a more systematical comparative study of the perfect aspects in English and Chinese to verify whether they have some common and different features, mechanisms in the grammaticalization paths.Based on predominant corpus approach and grammticalization theory, the thesis has made a comparative study on the evolution processes, the features of the perfect aspects with synchronic and diachronic analyses drawn on detailed data in order to discover the similarities and dissimilarites in the course of grammaticalization and further explore the grammaticalizaion mechanisms and motivations.The structure of the thesis is organized as follows:Chapter one presents the introduction of the academic value of this research, the status quo of relevant researches and the organization of this thesis as well. Chapter two covers the literature review of the historical and current researches on grammaticalization and the perfect abroad and at home with comments on relevant topic. These help determine the scope of the study. Chapter three constitutes the empirical body of the thesis, devoted to the data collection from English corpora, Chinese corpora and literature. Based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from both historical and contemporary periods of English and Chinese, the grammticalization paths of the perfect in English and Chinese are investigated from semantic bleaching, morphological and syntactic change and other aspects. Chapter four is the discussion section and leads up to the detailed linguistic analysis of the perfect, highlighting the common features and the differences of the grammaticalization of the perfect between English and Chinese. Conclusions can be found in Chapter five, which summarizes the chief points of the thesis and delineates some ideas about the potential research for further study.