Chinese Perfective "study

This paper is concerned with the development of the Perfect marker 'guo' from later recent Chinese to modern Chinese, after its basic grammaticalized uses were formed. Methodologically, the paper will investigate the synchronic variation and the diachronic evolution of 'guo' from the point of linguistic typology. The whole research is based on the database. The paper presupposes the theories of Bybee,Perkins & Pagliuca(1994) and Dahl(1985).In chapter two, the paper studies the situation types of verbs collocating 'guo', according to the types of lexical aspect based on privative opposition in Olsen(1997). The gradual growth of the sorts of the situation types and the quantity of the verbs within every type, indicates that the restriction of 'guo' on the intrinsic time construction of the situation was getting weaker gradually.Chapter three is concerned with the types of the current relevance of 'guo'. During this period there were six main types of its current relevance. A. concerning the consequence, B. concerning the disjunctive relation, C. showing the contrast, D. providing or complementing the topic, E. showing the precondition or deduction, F. using the rhetorical questions to explain. A new type of postulation emerged while these six remained comparatively stable, which indicates the subjectivisation of its current relevance.In chapter four, the paper discusses about the phenomenon of the collocation of 'guo' with 'yijing' and with sentence final 'le'. The author shows that it is the nature and degree of the current relevance of 'guo' that determines the phenomenon, 'yijing' and sentence final 'le' could strengthen the weak current relevance of 'guo' and reflect the speaker's subjective attitude.Chapter five is a conclusion of the paper. From the inner perspective, the restriction of 'guo' on the intrinsic time construction of the situation was getting weaker gradually. From the outer perspective, both the new type of its current relevance and the pragmatic effect while used with other forms, indicate some degree of subjectivisation trend of 'guo'. From the point of linguistic typology, it is clear that there are some common characters in the development of 'guo' as a Perfect marker.