The Study Of Determinants Of Telicity Of VPs In Mandarin Chinese

Ever since Vendler (1967) first proposed the four basic classifications of English verbs,great attention has been given to telicity research by linguists. In contrast, research on telicityin Chinese is relatively lagging behind. The systematic research on telicity in Chinese almoststarts with Shen (1995). Gradually, many linguists at home and abroad make furtherinvestigations of telicity in Chinese. Being guided by ‘the endpoint approach’ and‘compositional aspectuality’, the study aims to solve the following three questions:1. How istelicity derived in Chinese?2. Can those frequently-used tests be used as valid and reliablediagnosis tests in differentiating telic predicates from atelic predicates in Chinese?3. What arethe possible determinants of telicity in Chinese?It is found in this study that the ‘endpoint’ approach will better define the telicity of VPsor IPs in Chinese, which in the meantime, gives proof to the view that telicity applies at thelevel of VP or IP, instead of the verb itself. Afterwards, with regard to the diagnosis testsfrequently used in differentiating telic and atelic predicates in Chinese, they each has its ownfocus on the range of its testing. Lastly, this thesis conducts a detailed description of thepossible determinants of telicity of VPs in Mandarin Chinese, from two perspectivesrespectively. Lexical devices includes the NP arguments of verbs, verb reduplication andverbal quantification; and grammatical devices covers issues like the verb-direction andverb-resultative constructions, the interaction of verbs and aspect markers or auxiliary verbs,the ba and bei constructions and the existential constructions. Moreover, this study finds thatgrammatical devices are more influential in (a)telicity expressing, and lexical devicesexcludes each other. Explanations to this overriding effect are given from two aspects: from asyntactic point of view, a grammatical device will occupy a higher position in the treediagram which is considered to c-command the lexical device in a relatively lower position;Of all those lexical and grammatical devices, there exist a hierarchical ranking in telicityexpressing from a semantic point of view. In this hierarchy, grammatical devices stand in twoends, indicating that they are more influential in (a)telicity expressing than lexical deviceswhich stand in between.This thesis mainly investigates the formation of telicity of VPs in Mandarin Chinese, andits possible determinants. It is hoped that this research could be used for reference and be ofhelp, to the future studies concerning telicity in Chinese like the definition of telicity,distinction between telic and atelic predicates, and determinants of telicity.