A new approach to -zhe in Mandarin Chinese

Redouane Djamouri (1) , Waltraud Paul (1)

1 CRLAO - Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale

Among the aspectual suffixes in Mandarin Chinese, the so-called durative/progressive aspect -zhe has proven especially elusive, notwithstanding the large amount of literature devoted to it. The present article adopts a new approach and claims that -zhe is not on a par with the aspect markers zài, -le and -guo. Unlike the latter, which realize a “high” aspect pertaining to the entire event, -zhe is shown to instantiate a “low” aspect (aktionsart) (cf. Travis 2010 for the dichotomy high vs low aspect). Importantly, -zhe also signals the dependent status of the verbal projection concerned. As a consequence, in contrast to the aspect suffixes zài, -le and -guo, for which we observe constraints when in non-matrix contexts, the opposite holds for -zhe: it is severely constrained in matrix contexts, but rather freely occurs in non-matrix contexts

Mots clés: Mandarin Chinese; aspect; imperfective aspect -zhe; root vs non-root

Domaines: Linguistique

Redouane Djamouri, Waltraud Paul. A new approach to -zhe in Mandarin Chinese. William McClure & Alexander Vovin (eds.). Studies in Japanese and Korean historical and theoretical linguistics and beyond., Brill, pp.110-123., 2018, 9789004350854. ⟨hal-01967283⟩