Lixin Jin, Wei Wang, Kun Xie, Xiaohua Wang, Xiaodong Tang
{"title":"Perfective aspect and perfect aspect","authors":"Lixin Jin, Wei Wang, Kun Xie, Xiaohua Wang, Xiaodong Tang","doi":"10.1075/ijchl.20003.jin","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n The “perfective” (Chinese term: wánzhěngtǐ) and the “perfect”(Chinese term: wánchéngtǐ) seem to\n be two different terms that are distinguished by definition. But in the description of actual languages, the boundary between them\n is not clear. The use of these two terms in many literatures is very arbitrary. This arbitrariness frequently causes confusion in\n typological studies in tense and aspect. This arbitrary use has a lot to do with the classification and definition of Comrie (1976). Based on a description of the perfective/imperfective distinction in\n Russian, this paper finds that perfective is sensitive to the inner boundaries of events, and perfect is sensitive to the relation\n between event time and reference time. Based on a description of the four aspectual markers (zhe, le, guo, and\n zai) in Mandarin Chinese, this paper finds that they respectively express three different event phases\n (inchoative, durative and terminative) in realization aspect. The present study shows that Mandarin is not a language sensitive to\n boundaries of events, but to phasal aspect. Phasal aspect also exists in Japanese.","PeriodicalId":41020,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Chinese Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Chinese Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.20003.jin","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The “perfective” (Chinese term: wánzhěngtǐ) and the “perfect”(Chinese term: wánchéngtǐ) seem to
be two different terms that are distinguished by definition. But in the description of actual languages, the boundary between them
is not clear. The use of these two terms in many literatures is very arbitrary. This arbitrariness frequently causes confusion in
typological studies in tense and aspect. This arbitrary use has a lot to do with the classification and definition of Comrie (1976). Based on a description of the perfective/imperfective distinction in
Russian, this paper finds that perfective is sensitive to the inner boundaries of events, and perfect is sensitive to the relation
between event time and reference time. Based on a description of the four aspectual markers (zhe, le, guo, and
zai) in Mandarin Chinese, this paper finds that they respectively express three different event phases
(inchoative, durative and terminative) in realization aspect. The present study shows that Mandarin is not a language sensitive to
boundaries of events, but to phasal aspect. Phasal aspect also exists in Japanese.