Abstract
This paper examines the aspectual use of deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese. I will argue that, like many other languages, Mandarin Chinese also allows deictic verbs to express viewpoint aspect. In particular, the aspectual deictic verb in the pre-VP position shows prospective aspect, linking the present state to a future event, and the aspectual deictic verb in the post-VP position refers to the internal structure of the event. When the two deictic verbs are interchangeable, the choice between lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’ reflects the speaker's perspective toward the event. However, when lai ‘come’ is preferred in the pre-VP position, the event lacks planning or control; and when qu ‘go’ is not allowed in the post-VP position, the post-VP lai ‘come’ signifies the gradual change in or the result state of the event. Syntactically, I propose a Nonspatial Deictic Phrase (NDeicP) for the aspectual deictic verb, the position of which is between ModP and AspP. The pre-VP deictic verb encodes the [-realize] feature and agrees with the event in situ, whereas the post-VP deictic verb encodes the [+realize] feature, triggering the event to move to Spec,NDeicP.
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Notes
Lu (1985) claims that in the ‘qu + VP + qu’ construction, the pre-VP qu ‘go’ is interchangeable with lai ‘come’ in some situations. I assume that the use of the pre-VP deictic verb in this case is on a par with lai ‘come’ in (1). Since the construction with double deictic verbs is beyond the scope of this paper, it will not be discussed.
A reviewer points out that one also cannot say (i):
(i)
a. *
You will go here tonight.
b. *
ni
mingtian
qu
zheli.
you
tomorrow
go
here
‘You will go here tomorrow.’
Indeed, according to Fillmore (1966), the deictic center for go is the speaker's location at the speech time. Since go means being away from the deictic center and here refers to the speaker's location, one cannot move away from his current location to a place where he already is.
A reviewer states that, based on (7’), one might claim that the ‘start-to-come’ reading comes from the aspectual marker -le instead of lai ‘come’:
(7')
ta
yijing
qu-le
(Riben),
xianzai
zheng
zai
feiji-shang
ne.
he
already
go-pfv
Japan
now
right
at
flight-on
prt
‘He has left (for Japan), and he is on his way in a flight right now.’
In (7'), the subject is on his way to Japan. Since qu-le ‘go-pfv’ indicates that the subject has moved away from the speaker, it does not matter whether he has arrived at the destination (i.e. he is in Japan) or not (i.e. he is on his way). It is the second clause that tells us the subject is still on his way. On the other hand, lai-le ‘come-pfv’ indicates that the subject has moved toward the speaker, regardless of still being on his way (i.e. the ‘start-to-come’ reading) or having arrived at the speaker's location (i.e. the prototype reading). However, with an overt destination such as xuexiao ‘school’ in (i), the ‘start-to-come’ reading disappears:
(i)
*ta
yijing
lai-le
xuexiao,
xianzai
zheng
zai
lu-shang
ne.
he
already
come-pfv
school
now
right
at
way-on
prt
‘He has come to school already, and he is on the way right now.’
In (i), the meanings of the two clauses are regarded as contradictory. According to Shen (1996), an overt destination makes the final stage of the movement salient. Therefore, the sentence is interpreted as the subject having arrived at the destination. Since (i) does not have the ‘start-to-come’ reading, this reading does not come from the aspectual marker -le.
Fleischman (1982) does not give an example, but we can consider allons-y ‘let's go’ in French, where allons is ‘go’ in the first person plural and y means ‘there’. One cannot only say allons to mean ‘let's go’.
A reviewer points out that ‘come’ and ‘go’ in (13) seem to be the opposite of lai nian ‘next year’ and qu nian ‘last year’. In these two phrases, lai ‘come’ refers to the future and qu ‘go’ refers to the past. Clark (1973), Fillmore (1997), Fleischman (1982), among others, have mentioned two ways of metaphorical movement of time, which Clark (1973) calls moving time and moving ego. In the moving ego metaphor, humans move along with time, which is seen as a highway. Since future time is ahead of us and past time is behind us, ‘go’ indicates future time and ‘come’ designates past time. This is the case in (13). On the other hand, in the moving time metaphor, humans are still and the highway (i.e. time) moves past us from front to back. In this case, what is coming to us is a future event and what has passed us is a past event. Therefore, ‘come’ refers to the future and ‘go’ refers to the past, which is the case in lai nian ‘next year’ and qu nian ‘last year’.
While both the spatial and the nonspatial deictic verb can appear in the pre-VP position, Shen (1996) proposes that they are conceptualized in a different way, despite both of them being associated with movement. The deictic verb with the spatial reading is in the spatial domain, where the goal is the location for the event denoted by the verb phrase to take place. On the other hand, the deictic verb with the nonspatial reading is in the mental domain. In the spatial domain, swapping lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’ changes the meaning of the sentence, showing that the deictic center involves the speaker's physical location. By contrast, in the mental domain, the deictic center is not concerned with the speaker's physical location but the speaker's vantage point. Therefore, lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’ seem to be interchangeable without changing the meaning of the sentence.
A reviewer states that neither (26) nor (27) is acceptable to him. The grammaticality judgments of my informants also vary. While a minority of them accepts neither (26) nor (27), most of them agree that the sentences have improved by adding an adjunct phrase.
A reviewer thinks that neither lai ‘come’ nor qu ‘go’ allows a stative verb phrase to follow it and cases that are judged to be acceptable may involve a coerced interpretation of the verb phrase, which explains why the presence of the adjunct phrase facilitates the coerced eventive interpretations. I cannot deny the possibility. However, even if coercion is the reason behind the grammatical sentences, the question regarding the distinction between lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’ still remains. That is, why do sentences with lai ‘come’ and with qu ‘go’ not sound equally good in (27)? Why can lai zhidao mean ‘get to know’ but not qu zhidao? I assume the reason still lies in the differences of the meaning in these two deictic verbs.
As with (26) and (27), a minority of my informants does not accept either of the sentences in (29).
Shen (1996) examines the semantics of lai ‘come’ in the framework of Cognitive Grammar. In order to describe movement, landmarks (i.e. source and goal), the trajector (i.e. the moving object), and the trajectory (i.e. the path) need to be considered. In his proposal, different meanings of lai ‘come’ are associated with the salience of these elements and the base (i.e. the expression’s domain). He states that in the aspectual go in English, the domain shifts from spatial to temporal whereas in the aspectual lai ‘come’ in Mandarin Chinese, the domain shifts from spatial to mental.
Despite three possible word orders, according to Tang (1979), sometimes judgments of these word orders are very different among native speakers.
Deadjectival verbs such as dark, cool, dry, and so on, are ‘degree achievements’ (e.g. Hay et al. 1999; Kenny and Levin 2008). This kind of verb can be ambiguous in terms of telicity, which challenges Vendler's (1967) verbal classes with respect to lexical aspect. For example, cool can co-occur with for-adverbials and in-adverbials, as in (i):
(i)
a.
The soup cooled in 10 minutes.
(telic)
b.
The soup cooled for 10 minutes.
(atelic)
(Kenny and Levin 2008: 57)
Since telicity regards inner aspect, we are not interested in it in this paper. However, regardless of telicity, degree achievements behave similarly to accomplishments, where the change of state is observed in the event.
A reviewer thinks that the gradual change reading seems related to the situation type of the predicate, such as degree achievements. Despite the fact that degree change of get dark in (36) seems to be observed without imperfective aspect, the progressive zooms in the internal structure of the event, making the change in degree emphasized. The gradual change reading thus does not refer to the situation type of the predicate but focuses on how the state changes gradually in the event.
A reviewer thinks that the possible collocation between the directional verbs and the deictic verbs may play a role in the acceptability of the sentences in (39). In (39b), chang qi ge qu is not acceptable as qi qu ‘rise go’ is not possible. In (39a), although jing xia xin qu is not possible, both jing xia lai and jing xia qu are possible. It seems to me that jing xia lai and jing xia qu do not have the same meaning. While jing xia lai is similar to jing xia xin lai in (39a), jing xia qu means ‘continue to calm down’. What is more, lai ‘come’ in jing xia xin lai and jing xia lai occupy different syntactic positions, where xia lai in the latter is a compound. Investigation of directional verb compounds is beyond the scope of this paper and requires a different paper for examination.
While in (41), the word order V1 O V2 is preferable, the preferred word order can be the other way around in other cases. Since our focus is the function of the post-VP deictic verb, the difference between the two word orders will not be discussed in this paper.
Note that not all native speakers allow the co-occurrence of both types of pre-VP deictic verbs. For example, Shen (1996) states that only one of his informants accepts it. However, it is widely accepted in Taiwan Mandarin.
For those who think that movement of the vP in (48) is not allowed due to antilocality (Abels 2003), according to which movement cannot be too close (e.g. from the complement to the specifier of the same phrase), one way to solve this problem is to assume that there are other projections which are not shown between NDeicP and vP. Since it is beyond the scope of this paper, I leave this for future research.
Despite the fact that the temporal use and the aspectual use of lai ‘come’ behave well in parallel, this is not the case with the aspectual use of qu ‘go’. While qu nian ‘last year’, which literally means ‘go year’, also sees the time ‘year’ as a whole and the goal of the movement, this movement is in the opposite direction to how we perceive the way time moves. That is, rather than moving from now to the future, the time moves from now to the past. Furthermore, zhe yi nian qu, which literally means ‘this one year go’, is not a grammatical expression in Mandarin Chinese. However, it is possible to say zhe yi nian guo qu, which literally means ‘this one year pass go’, to refer to a period of time in the past. The reason why guo ‘pass’ is necessary may be due to qu ‘go’ alone being unable to show movement along the path, as we have seen in the asymmetry between the post-VP lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’. See also footnote 5 for an account of lai nian ‘next year’ and qu nian ‘last year’ from a different perspective.
While my analysis of lai/qu is similar to Hu's (2022), both of which treat a use of lai/qu as aspect, Hu only examines this functional head in what he calls ‘directional constructions’, including directional verb compounds. As for the pre-VP deictic verb, he argues that it is a lexical predicate. Despite the fact that both of us investigate deictic verbs in the pre-VP and the post-VP position, he examines the spatial reading whereas I examine the nonspatial reading. Therefore, the two analyses should not be compared. However, since he stipulates that Asp is syntactically higher than the deictic verb and that both aspectual heads are head-final, additional assumptions will be needed in order for the aspectual marker to suffix to the main verb. This is not a problem in my analysis. In my analysis, the aspectual marker will suffix to the main verb following the general derivation.
A reviewer points out that the analysis is similar to Zhang (2020) but in a very different perspective. While both analyses are concerned with moving a phrase higher than a deictic verb, the two constructions are different. In Zhang, the verb phrase denotes the purpose of movement. To her, there is no semantic effect between the two word orders. However, in (54b), da dianhua ‘call’ is not the purpose of coming. In order to obtain the purpose reading, a sentence-final particle le is needed, as in (i):
(i)
Laowang
da
dianhua
lai
le.
Laowang
call
telephone
come
prt
‘Laowang called.’
‘Laowang came to call.’
Since the meanings are different, the verb phrase cannot move to the same position, in spite of both constructions involving phrasal movement.
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Acknowledgments
I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. I also thank Prof. George Tsoulas and Dr. Norman Yeo for their feedback on the earlier draft of this paper. This paper is partly based on my PhD dissertation (Wu 2019).
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Wu, WM. Aspectual deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese. J East Asian Linguist 32, 29–61 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09251-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09251-z