A Study of Double le and Tense Interpretations in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the syntax of the le constructions in Mandarin Chinese, by discussing its special use in the sentences. As has been known, there are many variations of le not only in the syntactic but in the semantic aspects. Generally, the particle le has three uses in Mandarin Chinese sentence structure: verbal le (which occurs after a verb)，sentential le (which occurs after a complete sentence) and double le (which come not only with a verb, but also a complete sentence.) This thesis is to show that the Chinese double le construction has its own special function as a transition maker, which makes Chinese not easy to teach and learn as a foreign language. There is no doubt that Chinese syntax has been greatly affected by Huang's (1982, 1999, 2007) authoritative works which have got a lot of recognition. Moreover, the aspect of morpheme le have received a great attention of linguists, including Comrie (2005), Liu (1988, 1990, 1999, 2000, 2002), Chappell (1986) and Soh and Gao(2006). This thesis, introduces the general characteristics of the le constructions in Mandarin Chinese and examines the theories and proposals of the previous analyses. By ding this, this thesis points out some problems of the given approaches to the use of double le, based on the observations of the different roles and meanings of le in different locations. This thesis further claims that the pragmatic functions of these sentence structures include delivering new information, reminding somebody of something, and concluding the process of state. On the basis of previous studies in the framework of functional master and grammatical theory, this paper makes a more comprehensive analysis of the double le construction, and carries out a comprehensive and in-depth description of its characteristics, and analyzes the functions of the le of the three different locations in detail, which eventually deepens the understanding of the structure of modern Chinese double le.