The Expressions Of Durative In Chinese

"Aspect" is the mode of an action. Durative in Chinese is the continual mode of an action or a statement and belongs to the tense and aspect system of Chinese. This article focuses on the expression of durative in Chinese from the view of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. As we know, Chinese is a language lacking of form-changing, which couldn't express the grammatical meanings as those which are rich in forms. However, Chinese can make it up by the other means. This article will discuss the expressions of durative in Chinese.First, there are some obvious grammatical marks to reveal the durative in Chinese, such as "zhe","zai","zheng","zhengzai". Also there are some unobviousones,for example "zai......guochengzhong","zai.....-zhong","zhong"," qilai","xiaqu" and so on. They are not the special ones to mark durative, but some usages of them do have evident durative character. So we call them" semi-aspect markers " . On one hand, they are semi-grammaticalized. On the other hand, they are commonlyused in some other cases. For example, "zai......zhong" often expresses theorientation, such as "zaijia zhong","zai hezi zhong" . "qilai" and "xiaqu" are often used after verbs which denote location changes, expressing the location changes. In the section of lexicon, the language facts of the verbs, adverbs and prepositions which express the durative meanings are analysed. In the section of pragmatics, we mostly discuss context and the reduplication of verbs. This article puts weight on the description and analysis of quantity of language facts in terms of synchronic dimension, and sometiomes invites dialects as illustration in order to reflect the thorough character of the durative in Chinese.