Title

Aspectual Selection and Temporal Reference of the Chinese Aspectual Marker-Zhe

Author

Jo-wang Lin

Genre

Article  

Pages

257-295

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Language

English

Key words

Aspect, Durative, Aspectual Selection, Imperfective Aspect

Abstract

    The Chinese imperfective aspectual Marker-zhe has traditionally been taken to be ambiguous between a dynamic progressive reading and a stative durative reading. This paper shows that this ambiguity hypothesis can not account for the full distribution of -zhe and that arguments for it are not convincing. Inste ad, a single unifying licensing condition and temporal meaning for –zhe are provided. This paper proposes that the use of -zhe is legitimate if and only if the complement it selects is an atelic situation and that a proposition of the form -zhe(Φ) is true at a reference time t if and only if t overlaps with the distinguished phase correspondin g to Φ.