Author: Richard Zhonghua Xiao, Lancaster University
Author: Tony McEnery, Lancaster University
Hardback: ISBN: 1588116018 Pages: x, 305 pp. Price: U.S. $ 138.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9027230838 Pages: x, 305 pp. Price: Europe EURO 115.00
Abstract:
Chinese, as an aspect language, has played an important role in the development
of aspect theory. This book is a systematic and structured exploration of the
linguistic devices that Mandarin Chinese employs to express aspectual meanings.
The work presented here is the first corpus-based account of aspect in Chinese,
encompassing both situation aspect and viewpoint aspect. In using corpus data,
the book seeks to achieve a marriage between theory-driven and corpus-based
approaches to linguistics. The corpus-based model presented explores aspect at
both the semantic and grammatical levels. At the semantic level a two-level model
of situation aspect is proposed, which covers both the lexical and sentential
levels, thus giving a better account of the compositional nature of situation
aspect. At the grammatical level four perfective and four imperfective aspects
in Chinese are explored in detail. This exploration corrects many
intuition-based misconceptions, and associated misleading conclusions, about
aspect in Chinese common in the literature.
Table of contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations and symbols ix
Introduction 1-12
Two-component aspect theory 13-32
Situation aspect 33-88
The perfective aspects in Chinese 89-180
The imperfective aspects in Chinese 181-244
Aspect marking in English and Chinese 245-280
From the study of aspect to constractive grammar 281-286
Bibliography 287-296
Index 297-303
Linguistic Field(s): Semantics
Syntax
Text/Corpus Linguistics
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