A Study On The Aspectuality Of Verb Reduplication In Modern Chinese

Verb reduplication is widely used in modern Chinese.Many scholars have been studying on it since the 1960 s.Verb reduplication is a grammatical phenomenon that takes verb as the basic form and uses reduplication as the means.After the reduplication,only grammatical meaning is added.Verb reduplication has seven different language forms: "VV","V1V1V2","V le V","V yi V","V le yi V","V1 le V1V2","V1 yi V1V2"."Le" and "yi" exist as morphological constituents.Based on the aspectual theory of Comrie(1976),Smith(1991),Olsen(1997),this paper argues that verb reduplication can not only show the morphological changes of Chinese,but is also a semi-grammaticalized aspectuality in Chinese,showing the temporal structure of events.This paper mainly describes and interprets the aspectuality of verb reduplication by means of illustration.The research is divided into two sections.In the first section,the aspectual features of the basic verbs are analyzed.Through the retrieval and induction of the corpus,it can be concluded that only verbs with the aspectual features of [+dynamism,+durativity,?] can be included in the verb reduplication.Otherwise,they need to adjust their aspectual features in a certain context.In the second section,the aspectual features of verb reduplication are analyzed.Their influence on semantic and syntactic distribution is also concluded.Compared with the basic verbs,the aspectual features of verb reduplication are [+dynamism,+durativity,+perfective].The dynamic feature is enhanced,which is reflected in the speaker's control over thesentence.The durative feature appears to be short-lived.After reduplication,the durative feature is weakened when the basic verbs refer to state,activity or achievement.And the durative feature is enhanced when the basic verbs refer to accomplishment or semelfactive.The former reflects "the decrease of durative quantity" in semantic,while the latter shows "the increase of durative quantity".The perfective feature is generated by reduplication,which is also the reason why the verb reduplication cannot be matched with "zheng zai","yi jing","zhe" and "guo" in syntactic distribution.Through the research,it can be clear that verb reduplication is the aspect between the viewpoint aspect and the situation aspect,which can show a specific phase of the event completely.The study of verb reduplication will not only deepen the cognition of reduplication phenomena,but also contribute to the establishment and enrichment of modern Chinese aspectual system.There are five chapters in this paper.The first chapter introduces the reason and value why the author takes the verb reduplication as the research object,and then explains the research method.The second chapter summarizes the previous studies on verb reduplication and introduces the aspectual theory.The third chapter starts from the aspectual features of the basic verbs,explains the rules behind the reduplication,and lays the foundation for the next research.The fourth chapter analyzes the dynamic feature,durative feature and perfective feature of the verb reduplication,and clarifies its position in modern Chinese aspectual system.The fifth chapter summarizes the conclusions and deficiencies of all research.