Verbal morphological category of aspect in the Cantonese language

Abstract

Presented paper deals with the morphological category of aspect in Cantonese. Given the lack of a morphological category of tense in Cantonese, aspect holds a particular position in this system, as it is the sole morphological means expressing temporal relations. The aim of the paper is to present the functioning of the various aspects of Cantonese, both perfective and imperfective, based on the theoretical framework presented beforehand, which draws on the previous achievements of linguists in this field. The second section presents what specific morphological means are used to express the category of aspect in Cantonese, which is then followed by a brief discussion of the relation between resultative verb compounds and the perfective aspect. The last, and by far the largest section, presents corpus material which exemplifies the use of different aspect markers. The paper is an attempt to respond to the hitherto lack of consensus among Sinologists about the number as well as the types of aspects that occur in Cantonese.