Readers 读者
Perfective particles in the Bian-wen language
变文中的完成式助词
Samuel Hung-nin Cheung 张洪年
Abstract 摘要
The perfective marker in modern Mandarin, le, has been generally associated with its homograph liao, a verb meaning ‘to complete’. Syntactically, it has been described as a matrix verb in an embedding sentence, which is subsequently lowered by transformation to become the aspect marker of the embedded verb. In classical writings, however, the graph liao appears only as a full verb, and a perfective aspect is either indicated by an adverb or inferable from context. In studying some late Tang colloquial writings excavated from a cave library in northwestern China, I have found a large number of examples of liao which seem to represent an early stage of development when liao first appeared as an aspect marker. Structurally, it differs from the modern le in the order in which it appears with an object NP or an adverb; semantically, it indicates not only the completion of an action but also, in some cases, the consequential state of an action. In Mandarin, the former may be expressed with the verb wan, but the latter can only be marked by le.
Journal of Chinese Linguistics volume 5 (ISSN 0091-3723)
Copyright © 1977 Journal of Chinese Linguistices. All rights reserved.