Query Details

Query Subject:	Ability Modality in Mandarin and English
Author:	Zhiguo Xie
Submitter Email:	click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):	Semantics

Query:	Dear linguists, I am trying to convince myself that ability modality in Mandarin has a temporality presupposition while English does not. Towards this end, I am looking for help from native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of English. In English, is it good if, out of blue, someone utters “John was able to finish the assignment yesterday’ or “John could finish the assignment yesterday’ (focusing on the ability reading). Does the sentence convey any contrastive meaning, like in such contexts as ‘John was able to finish the assignment, but he cannot do so today.’? In Mandarin Chinese, are sentences (1) and (2), which both contain past-denoting zuotian ‘yesterday’, acceptable in their ability reading? (1) Zhangsan zuotian neng zuo wan zuoye Z yesterday can do finish homework (2) Zhangsan zuotian zuo de wan zuoye Z yesterday do DE finish homework Some people that I consulted reported to me that (1) and (2) would be improved if we add elements like hai ‘still’ before neng (for (1)) and zuo (for (2)), respectively. That seems to suggest that (1) and (2) are marginal as they stand alone as above. But I really don’t want to jump to such a conclusion before consulting more native speakers. Thank you very much. Best, Zhiguo
LL Issue:	18.2549
Date posted:	30-Aug-2007
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