Several Major Means Of Modern Chinese Time Expression

All things in the universe move and change in a certain time and a certain space. The language is a kind of reflection of the objective world, so there are reflects about the time in each language. Different systems of languages express one same thing in different ways, so that different languages have different means of expression for time. This paper mainly discusses several main methods of expression for time in Chinese. We sums up several main methods of expression for time in modern Chinese by dividing first the system of the time in modern Chinese and then analyzing the methods.The modern Chinese express the concept of time throughout the system of tense and system of aspect. The two systems coordinate and constitute together the system of time in modern Chinese. This paper argues that the system of tense in modern Chinese is what we call Relative Tense, who expresses the sense of relative time. On this basis, the author divide the system of tense in modern Chinese in three:anterior tense, simple tense and posterior tense. The significance of anterior tense refers to the time of occurrence of the event which is before the referent time, the significance of simple tense refers to the time of occurrence of the event which is in the meanwhile of the referent time, and the significance of posterior tense refers to the time of occurrence of the event which is after the referent time. The principle methods for expression of the tenses are:temporal nom, temporal adverb, modal verbs, etc. Among them, temporal nom and temporal adverb can respectively express anterior tense, simple tense and posterior tense, but modal verbs can only express posterior tense.Modern Chinese has basically formed a complete category of aspect and has the aspect marks with a high degree of grammaticalization. According to different ways and angles of observation of events, people divide the aspect system of modern Chinese into complete aspect and incomplete aspect. Complete aspect is the external observation of event and incomplete aspect is the internal observation of event. Among them, complete aspect can be divided into accomplish aspect, experience aspect and short time aspect, and incomplete aspect can be divided into continuous aspect, continued aspect and starting aspect. This paper mainly summarizes the most commonly used aspect marks in modern Chinese----mark of accomplish aspect "le", mark of experience aspect "guo" and mark of continuous aspect "zhe", and respectively summarizes the common location in sentences, syntactic sense and semantic differences of the three marks, etc. The semantic feature of the accomplish aspect mark "le" is to express the complexion and the achievement of event or action, mainly used to describe a starting changing state; the semantic feature of the experience aspect "guo" is to express the end in the history of event or action, mainly used to describe an ending changing state; the semantic feature of the mark of continuous aspect "zhe" is that the event or action is ongoing or some state is during. The three aspect marks are commonly placed after the predicate verb, and we can’t insert any other ingredients in the middle of the mark and the verb.In specific language practice, the use and coordination of tense and aspect have some limitation and regularity. The methods expressing the sense of anterior are often used and coordinated together with accomplish aspect and experience aspect, and generally does not match with continuous aspect; the methods expressing the sense of simple are often used and coordinated together with continuous aspect, and generally does not match with accomplish aspect nor experience aspect. Finally in the conclusion part, this paper use the method of graphic to summarize the regulation of collocation of methods of tenses and aspects, and points out the relationship between the modern Chinese time system and the absolute time.