Learn to Use Chinese Aspect Particles

Description

Aspect in Mandarin Chinese plays an important role in interpreting the temporal information of a sentence. It is an important verbal category, which is concerned with the speaker’s viewpoint or perspective on a situation: whether the situation is presented as complete (perfective aspect) or as ongoing (imperfective aspect), etc. Learning to understand the aspect particles or markers, and use them correctly, has always been one of the most difficult tasks for learners of Chinese. Learn to Use Chinese Aspect Particles is a pedagogical guide designed to equip teachers with necessary aspectual theoretical knowledge, and is aimed at in-service or trainee teachers, and intermediate or advanced students to reinforce teaching and learning. Challenging exercises are designed and explanations for the correct use of an aspect particle are given, thus making the book more useable and convenient to teachers and enhancing the practical reference value of the book. Title page Copyright Contents Preface 1 Basic background knowledge 1.1 The definition of aspect 1.2 Aspectual meaning is compositional Notes 2 The perfective aspects in Chinese Perfective aspects 2.1 The perfective aspect ‘-le’ 2.2 The sentence-final ‘le’ 2.3 The experiential aspect particle ‘-guo’ 2.4 ‘Guò’ functions as the telic Aktionsart marker 2.5 The delimitative aspect Exercises of the perfective ‘-le’ Exercises of the sentence-final ‘le’ Exercises of the experiential aspect particle ‘-guo’ Notes 3 The imperfective aspects in Chinese 3.1 The definition of the imperfective aspect 3.2 The progressive aspect ‘(zhèng) zài . . . ne’ 3.3 The continuous aspect ‘-zhe’ 3.4 The inceptive aspect particle ‘qǐlai’ 3.5 The continuative aspect ‘xiàqu’ 3.6 The neutral aspect Exercises for the imperfective aspect particle ‘-zhe’ Exercises for the progressive aspect ‘(zheng) zai . . . (ne)’ Exercises for the inceptive aspect ‘起来’ Exercises for the continuative aspect ‘下去’ Exercises for the perfective & imperfective aspect particles Notes Bibliography Index