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- Title
Aspectual deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese.
- Authors
Wu, Wei-Min
- Abstract
This paper examines the aspectual use of deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese. I will argue that, like many other languages, Mandarin Chinese also allows deictic verbs to express viewpoint aspect. In particular, the aspectual deictic verb in the pre-VP position shows prospective aspect, linking the present state to a future event, and the aspectual deictic verb in the post-VP position refers to the internal structure of the event. When the two deictic verbs are interchangeable, the choice between lai 'come' and qu 'go' reflects the speaker's perspective toward the event. However, when lai 'come' is preferred in the pre-VP position, the event lacks planning or control; and when qu 'go' is not allowed in the post-VP position, the post-VP lai 'come' signifies the gradual change in or the result state of the event. Syntactically, I propose a Nonspatial Deictic Phrase (NDeicP) for the aspectual deictic verb, the position of which is between ModP and AspP. The pre-VP deictic verb encodes the [-realize] feature and agrees with the event in situ, whereas the post-VP deictic verb encodes the [+realize] feature, triggering the event to move to Spec,NDeicP.
- Subjects
MANDARIN dialects; VERBS; SYNTAX (Grammar)
- Publication
Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 2023, Vol 32, Issue 1, p29
- ISSN
0925-8558
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10831-023-09251-z