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On preverbal zai in Mandarin Chinese: its progressive and prepositional functions

  • I-hao Woo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 9, 2021

Abstract

This study revisits the linguistic properties of preverbal zai in Mandarin Chinese. Specifically, it examines the syntax of a prepositional phrase headed by zai functioning as an adjunct, as the main predicate of a sentence with a continuous reading, as well as a sentence containing zai with a progressive reading. It is argued that there is only one zai and that it always functions as a preposition selecting either a Locative Phrase (LP) or a Zeit Phrase (ZP) as its complement. The study also claims that the different aspectual readings of sentences containing zai are a result of the different types of complements zai selects. It is argued that a sentence has a continuous reading when zai selects an LP and a progressive one when it selects a ZP as its complement. The proposed analyses not only provide a unified account of the linguistic functions of zai but also give a syntactic account of the close relation between the imperfective aspect (in particular, the progressive aspect) and locative elements that has been observed by many previous studies.


Corresponding author: I-hao Woo, Department of Modern Languages, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 178, PO Box 173364, Denver, CO80217-3364, USA, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Special thanks go to Victor Manfredi, Cathy O’Connor, and Paul Hagstrom for their helpful comments at various stages of this research. All errors are my own.

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Received: 2015-06-03
Accepted: 2020-03-09
Published Online: 2021-04-09
Published in Print: 2021-05-26

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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