A Study On Chinese Tense Marker And Syntactic Representation

Tense has always been an important topic of formal semantics and syntax, andtense in Chinese especially has always been studied. Yet, the final conclusion has notbeen reached. Whether there is tense in Chinese remains the most contentious issue.Some argue that there is no tense in Chinese, such as Hock&Krifka (2002), Xu (1985)and Shangxin (2004) among many others, while others take the opposite viewpoint,holding that there is tense in Chinese, like Sybesma (1999), Li (1985,1990), Chiu(1993), Huang (1998,1999) and Lin (2003). Based on the analysis of both viewpoints,we find the claim that there is no tense in Chinese fails to defend itself withcompelling evidence and there has not been a unified view on Chinese tense markers asfor the claim that there is tense in Chinese.Under the framework of syntax, this thesis is resolved to investigate tense inMandarin Chinese mainly including the tense marker and its syntactic representation,drawing insights from previous studies, such as Sybesma (2007), Tang&Lee (2000)and Chomsky (1995).To interpret tense in Chinese, we raise the following research questions:a) Is there tense in Chinese?b) Why cannot we take le1or laizhe as the tense markers in Chinese?c) If there is tense in Chinese, what are Chinese tense markers and syntacticrepresentation?In response to these questions, three proposals shall be provided in the presentstudy. The first proposal concerns the existence of tense in Chinese; the second oneassumes le1is a perfective marker and laizhe is a mood; the third one expoundsChinese tense exists in an unmarked form. According to the Tense AgreementHypothesis we put forward, we associate tense with the temporal adverbs, aspect andthe verb, postulating the syntactic structure of tense in Chinese.If our analysis is on the right track, then it is the existing form of tense that leadsto the differences between Chinese and other tensed languages like English. In fact, theinnate quality of tense is the same. For example, in English the verbs are inflectionallymarked to convey temporal connotations, of which tense features on T check therelative features. Yet, Chinese displays the process of Tense Agreement where T agreeswith temporal adverbs in C and then the property of the aspect is determined if there is.Meanwhile, the agreement features do not need to be spelled out in PF, so Chinese tense exists in the covert form. Moreover, this study may shed light on the study oftense in other languages.