The Syntactic And Semantic Comparison Between Chinese Progressive Aspect Marker Zai And Zhe

Chinese progressive aspect marker has always been the main topic of formal linguists.In spite of a large number of the researches on Chinese progressive aspect marker zai(?)and zhe(?),controversies still remain.On basis of the binary opposition between dynamicity and state,many linguists around the world have analyzed and compared zai(?)and zhe(?).Although this point of view owns its theoretical basis and language data,it has many flaws and could not explain some existed linguistic phenomenon.The controversies remain unsolved as yet.The thesis adopts Chinese progressive aspect marker zai(?)and zhe(?)as research subject,and clarifies the differences between zai(?)and zhe(?)in meanings,linear order position and syntax as well as the co-occurrence of zai(?)and zhe(?)in one progressive sentence from the perspective of semantics,syntax and pragmatics on the basis of formal semantics and syntax.The definition of homogeneous event put forward by Wang Yuan(2012)was used as reference in this thesis.She exerted the Lattice Theory on the event analysis of predicate structure and described the features of homogeneity by formal linguistics.To account for the real distinctions between Chinese progressive aspect marker zai(?)and zhe(?),we put forward to the following research questions:a)How to define the homogeneous event and what are the characteristics of it?how does homogeneity influence the use of Chinese progressive aspect markers zai and zhe?b)What are the real differences between the aspect markers zai(?)and zhe(?)in semantics,linear order positions and syntax?c)When zai(?)co-occur with zhe(?)in a sentence,how do they interact?In response to these questions,we draw the following explanations in the thesis:a)Following the previous studies of Wang Yuan(2012),we propose that If predicate P is homogeneous,then for all the individuals events,which owns P features,their sub-events are also homogeneous.b)The meaning differences between zai(?)and zhe(?)is mainly influenced by homogeneity;And the main position difference is that zai(?)could only occur pre-verbally,while zhe(?)is post-verbally;The syntactic differences is that zai(?)is a free morpheme,it locates at aspect node above VP,i.e.predicate head position.While zhe(?)is a bound morpheme which located below v node;c)when zai(?)co-occurs with zhe(?)in one progressive sentence,zai(?)indicates the progressive state from the past to present while zhe(?)focus on the progressive start from now on and will continue to the future.The thesis sheds light on the comparison of Chinese progressive aspect marker zai(?)and zhe(?),which helps the Chinese learners with a profound understanding of the differences between zai(?)and zhe(?)in meanings and positions and makes them use them in oral and written Chinese more appropriately.