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The Temporal Meanings and Its Syntactic Requirements of Verbal Suffix -le and Sentential Final le

박민아 1

1北京大學 中國語言文學系

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose that even though verbal suffix -le and sentential final le in Mandarin Chinese convey very similar temporal meanings, but they are two different morphemes. Firstly, as a semi-anterior marker, verbal suffix -le describes “anteriority”. It means it is considered to indicate that Event time denoted by a verb phrase is anterior to Reference time. Interestingly, all of verb phrase which often co-occur with -le need to have a final end point. Secondly, sentential final le not only denotes a change from a previous situation into a new one(i.e., inchoativeness), but also indicates a future change of state which is not yet happened. Sentential final le cannot co-occur with an object which denotes “quantitative change”, because le only focuses on its change, not on how much they changed. Lastly, in many cases, “le-le” structure indicates that an actualized situation or its resultant state is relevant to the Speech time. It is interesting to note that when “split word” and “copula” co-occur with “le-le” structure, setential final le only denotes “inchoativeness”.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.