Modality and aspect and the thematic role of the subject in Late Archaic and Han period Chinese: obligation and necessity

Abstract

In this paper, the interplay of modal markers with the lexical aspect of the verb in Han period Chinese is at issue. Abraham and Leiss (Modality-aspect interfaces: Implications and typological solutions, 2008) propose a strong and possibly universal relation between the verbal aspect and either the root/deontic or the epistemic reading of a modal verb based on data from the Germanic languages. In this article, this hypothesis will be checked against the data of Late Archaic and Early Middle (Han period) Chinese. It will be proposed that a relation similar to that in the Germanic languages can also be established for Chinese at least for the root modal values, despite the obvious differences between the aspectual and modal system of Chinese and that of the Germanic languages. As in the Germanic languages, root modal verbs in general select verbs/predicates which are compatible with the perfective aspect, i.e. [+TELIC] verbs. Due to the fact that epistemic readings have not developed yet for modal auxiliary verbs, the constraints proposed in Abraham and Leiss for the epistemic reading of modal verbs in combination with imperfective or [−TELIC] verbs cannot be confirmed for LAC and EMC. Epistemic modality is expressed by sentential adverbs which take an entire proposition as their complement. These are less confined in their selectional restrictions than modal auxiliary verbs.