| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 外國語言學系研究所 === 96 === This thesis discusses the semantic differences among the progressives, zheng, zai and zhengzai, and the durative, -zhe, in Mandarin. English uses the verb inflection –ing to present the ongoing nature of an event, whereas Mandarin uses the progressive markers. Li and Thompson (1981) observe that the word zai has the same function as denoting an ongoing event in Mandarin. However, unlike the perfective le, little attention, if any, has been paid to the zhengzai and zheng. Three of them seem to have ongoing meaning on the surface. Actually, there are differences in their semantic meanings. This paper addresses when they are interchangeable and when they are not, and also how this difference influences their function in discourse.
I reviewed six works on the Chinese imperfectives－ Chen (2004), Guo (1998), Hsu (1996), Xiao (2002), Yang (2000), and Zhang (2002). Hsu (1996) presents the meanings of progressives with external reference time and internal structure of the situation. Guo’s (1998) presents the semantic characteristics of adverbs zai and zheng. Yang (2000) argues that zai does not have progressive meaning. Xiao (2002) argues about the semantic functions of two progressive markers － zheng(zai) and zai, Zhang (2002) presents the distributional differences of zhengzai by analyzing the distribution of zheng and zai, and Chen (2004) indicates the semantics and grammaticalization of imperfective markers in Mandarin.
Their generalization shares some similarities. Firstly, zai presents events ongoing at an interval based on Guo (1998), Yang (2000) and Xiao (2002). Secondly, zheng presents events ongoing at an instant, according to Yang (2000) and Xiao (2002). Finally, adverbs, such as ‘as if’, can influence the distribution of Chinese progressives discussed in Xiao (2002), Zhang (2002). However, there are five problems of their generalization. First, zheng does not have to go with zhe and ne but still have the progressive meaning. Secondly, activities can go with zhe alone without zheng, according to Wu and Kuo (2003). Thirdly, zheng is compatible with states whereas zai and zhengzai are compatible with events. Fourthly, the adverb is not influence the distribution of the progressives. Finally, distributive operator is needed. Besides, all of their generalizations are lack for explaining what kinds of verb can go after zheng, zai and zhengzai, and other individual inadequacies, which are discussed in detail in my thesis.
I argue that we can use three semantic features to distinguish the meaning of zheng, zai and zhengzai. First, zai is distributable and zheng, zhengzai are not, and this is the reason why the distributive operator dou needs to appear in the sentences of zai. Secondly, zheng is compatible with homogenous situations. Besides, the semantics of zheng is to emphasize and it pinpoints a specific point. Their semantic can be extended to the discourse. In the discourse, zheng is used to emphasize on the overlapping of two events at the same instant. All these three progressive markers we discussed above share one similarity: all of them have instant readings. On the contrary, the durative –zhe has an interval reading, and acquires the homogenous eventuality. By recognizing the semantics of these three progressive markers and the durative marker, we can know their distributional difference.
|
|---|
