Sequence of Tense in English and Chinese

Abstract

This paper delves into the so-called sequence of tense (SOT) phenomena in English and Chinese, in which the reading of the past tense of the embedded clause matches with that of the matrix clause to be simultaneous or past-shifted with the time referred to by the tense in the matrix clause. Our research leads us to conclude this paper as follows. First, Chinese is also an SOT language in that the embedded clause has either a simultaneous or a past-shifted reading if the matrix predicate is an intensional verb in the past tense and the embedded predicate is a stative verb in the past tense as well. Second, both simultaneous and past-shifted readings in Chinese, unlike in English, can be conveyed even when the matrix and the embedded clause are morphologically in the present tense due to the existence of a sentential aspectual marker le. Finally, some ‘episodic verbs’ such as huaiyun ‘pregnant’ and shengbing ‘sick’ in the embedded clause in Chinese, construed as ‘stative predicates’ in English, should be classified as ‘eventive verbs’ in Chinese to yield a past-shifted interpretation.