A Study On "Zai V Zhe(NP)"

There are many ways of expressing process and continuousness in modern Chinese, "Zai V" and "V Zhe" are the most common expressions. There are abundant research results of "Zai V" and "V Zhe" in Chinese academia. "Zai V Zhe (NP)" is also used to express process and continuousness, this expression, however, have recieved little attention, and related researches are very limited. At the same time, this structure is a weak link to foreign students in Chinese language study. Most of students employ avoidance strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to make a deep analysis. This paper tries to analyze the syntax and semantic of "Zai V Zhe (NP)", and also study the motivation of collocation of "Zai" and "Zhe". According to the study, conclusions are as follows:1. In syntax, "Zai V Zhe (NP)" mainly acts as predicate and acts as attribute in a few cases. "Zai V Zhe (NP)" is able to combine with some adverbials, temporal adverbial is important to the use of "Zai V Zhe (NP)" in sentence. The internal sentence structure of "Zai V Zhe (NP)" is [Zai[V Zhe[NP]]].2. There are no consistent semantic features of the verb in "Zai V Zhe (NP)". "V Zhe (NP) " has consistent semantic feature:continuousness and homogeneousness. The structural meanings of "Zai V Zhe (NP)" are:(1) state is continuous; (2) event is in a homogeneous continuous state.3. "Zai" and "Zhe" have common in expressing time, so there is possibility for the collocation of them. "Zai" mainly highlights the meaning of tense, while "Zhe" mainly highlights the meaning of aspect. The combination of these two words expresses specific meaning of tense. The sentence-completing function of "Zai" and "Zhe" is different. The use of "Zai" and "Zhe" determines whether a sentence is foreground or background.The study of "Zai V Zhe (NP)" helps us to understand Chinese tense system better, and also provides reference for relevant language phenomenon in Teaching Chinsees as A Second Language.