Situation types and aspectual classes of verbs in Mandarin Chinese.

摘要

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the classification of situation types and their grammaticization in Mandarin Chinese. Both syntactic and semantic tests that can be used in the study of Chinese aspectual classes of verbs and situation types have been established on the basis of a careful study of the Chinese data and with the consideration of the special characteristics of Chinese grammar. In constructing these tests, some misconceptions of Chinese grammar have been clarified, and a better understanding of the Chinese grammar including linguistic entities has been reached. Then, the characteristics of each and every situation type in Mandarin Chinese have been identified, utilizing the tests established. Also, the interface between situation types and aspectual classes of verbs is discussed in this study.;Two very important issues in the study of situation types in Mandarin Chinese: the notion of goal orientation and the syntactic and semantic properties of resultative verb compounds, have been explored extensively. Simple perfective sentences with definite objects, or quantified objects either definite or indefinite are goal oriented, and they constitute accomplishment situations in Chinese. Resultative verb compounds have only the result aspect, and no duration aspect. The center of the predication is on the result, not the action. They present situations of change-of-state.;The result of this study has shown that there are four basic situation types in Mandarin Chinese, which is similar to that in English. These four situation types are states, activities, accomplishments and change-of-states. Within the situations of states and change-of-states, further classifications have been made to account for the differences.;The contribution this study wishes to make is not only in the classification of the situation types, but more importantly the grammaticization of different situation types in Mandarin Chinese.