The Comparative Study And Typological Investigation On The Aspect Marker"Zai" And "Zhe" In Modern Chinese

"Zai" and "zhe" are two common aspect markers in modern Chinese. Most previous studies take "zai" as the progressive aspect marker and "zhe" as the continuous aspect marker, emphasizing the differences between them. If only emphasized the differences between "zai" and "zhe", progressive aspect and continuous aspect, it is difficult to explain some problems. In fact, it is precisely because of the existence of great similarity between them, some dialects use one word to express these two aspects. Therefore, this paper focuses on the generality between "zai" and "zhe".The first chapter is an introduction, mainly introduces the previous achievements and shortcomings of modern Chinese aspect markers, especially "zai" and "zhe". In addition to the synchronic analysis, this chapter also focuses on the research of diachronic development, evolution mechanism, and the related aspect markers in the dialect. Introduction also established the research object and method of this article.The second chapter is the synchronic investigation on "zai" and "zhe". First, verbs are divided into seven categories according to their meanings. Then, the grammatical meanings of "zai" and "zhe" are concluded by the combination of "zai","zhe" and these verbs. Thus, we predict "zai" and "zhe" share the same superior concept and elaborate their usage by cognitive scanning.The third chapter is the diachronic investigation on "zai" and "zhe". Through the investigation of their original meanings and interaction, we find the reason of their synchronic differences.The fourth chapter analyzes "lahai", an aspect marker in Shanghai dialect."Lahai" express both "zai" and "zhe", which provides further evidence of their generality, tThe fifth chapter makes a typological investigation. We investigate ten different areas, which all use the same word to express "zai" and "zhe". This confirms the existence of generalized continuous aspect.The sixth chapter is the conclusion part. We sum up the main conclusions try to point out the deficiencies of this article.