The experiential aspect of Mandarin Chinese (-guo): Semantics and pragmatics

Abstract

The study of the Chinese experiential aspect expressed by -guo is an important research topic in both Chinese theoretical linguistics and the semantics-pragmatics interface more broadly. Previous studies propose that the semantics of -guo has the property of what is called repeatability, and/or discontinuity. In this article, I show that previous theories do not adequately explain the distributional pattern of -guo. The semantics of -guo therefore remains unclear. Based on a comprehensive observation of the experiential aspect marker -guo, I propose that (1) -guo semantically is an existential quantifier indicating a non-empty set of a type of eventuality in a certain time frame which is presupposed to be before a reference time, and with this new proposal, the so-called perfective -guo described by previous studies can be explained in the same framework, and thus the two -guos can be unified; (2) the discontinuity property can be accounted for from a pragmatic perspective under the notion of Question Under Discussion (Roberts, 1996).