A Study On The Compound Perfective Aspect Markers In Shaoyang Dialect

The thesis is mainly dedicated to exploring the compound perfective markers in Shaoyang dialect,Hunan Province.Compared with Mandarin Chinese,the system of perfective aspect in Shaoyang dialect has its own distinct flavor.The perfective marker le in Mandarin is corresponding to two different forms:ga and li in Shaoyang dialect,which can be used in the single and compound patterns.Under the theoretical framework of aspect,we attempt to solve the following three questions:i)What are the syntactic distribution and semantic characteristics of the singleforms ga&li and the compound forms ga…li&ga li in Shaoyang dialect?ii)What are the similarities and differences among ga,li and le&what are thesimilarities and differences between ga…li and le₁…le₂?iii)Is the compound perfective aspect marker universal in Chinese dialects andminority languages?For the first question,this thesis gives a sufficient description on the syntactic distribution of ga,li,ga li and ga…li,and provides semantic readings to each of them under the framework of ERS model?Reichenbach,1947?.Through the analysis of perfective markers in Shaoyang dialect,the thesis concludes that ga immediately follows verbs indicating the actions have been completely finished,while li has two variants in syntactic position:one appears after predicates;the other occurs at the very end of sentences,and semantically,li is characterized with the meaning of completion,termination and inchoativity.Furthermore,the compound forms ga li and ga…li have their own distinguishing grammatical structures.The compound form ga li,lying behind monosyllabic verbs or adjectives,is incompatible with the complement of quantity,while ga…li is always separated by objects or complements of quantity.These two compound forms both semantically indicate completion.Whereas stative verbs attached by ga…li can also continue into the future,ga li cannot.Concerning the second one,based on the comparative analysis,it is found that ga is more dynamic and compulsive in expressing the meaning of overall completion than li and le,i.e.ga indicates the actions has been totally completed,which cannot be terminated in an arbitrary temporal point.In term of li and le,they are nearly syntactically and semantically equivalent,but li is more independent in the condition on completing sentences.In addition,ga…li and le₁…le₂ are very similar,but they are different in patient-as-the-subject sentences.For the third one,according to the method of typology,this thesis makes an objective description on the compound perfective aspect markers in forty-two languages,mainly from Chinese seven dialect areas and some minority languages.Based on the collected data,this thesis concludes that it is universal to use the compound perfective aspect marker to indicate the meaning of completion in Chinese dialects and some minority languages lacking of verbal morphological changes.