Temporal Interpretation Of Directional Words In Mandarin Chinese

Directional words in Mandarin Chinese not only have the directional meaning, but also have the temporal information. The thesis studies the temporal information of directional words such as SHANG, XIA, LAI, QU, SHANGLAI, SHANGQU, XIALAI and XIAQU in Mandarin Chinese. We analyze the language materials collected from CCL, Modern Chinese Dictionary and Directional Complement Explanation with Smith’s aspectual viewpoint and situation type. LAIZHE and XIAQU are grammaticalized aspectual markers. LAIZHE indicates the recent past while XIAQU is the continuous aspectual marker. The other directional words have a variety of temporal information. We classify the temporal information into three major categories:temporal adverbials, situation aspect and viewpoint aspect. Each category is further divided into more specific subcategories. Through theoretical analysis, we find out the temporal information of directional words in Mandarin Chinese have something to do with Resultative Verb Complements (RVCs), space-time relations, pragmatic factors and lexicalization. RVCs are relevant to the situation aspect. Some directional words are evolved into the disyllables by combining with the verbs and become part of the mental lexicon. From a synchronic perspective, most of the directional words in Mandarin Chinese maintain the directional meaning and their temporal information are not fully grammaticalized. The study about the temporal information of directional words will contribute to the study of aspect system in Mandarin Chinese.