也谈完成性

Also on Telicity

诸多体貌理论常用完成性及其相关的增量题元来表述事件结构及其语法体现。但完成性是否能够决定成句与否,决定语法体现的变异,长期以来一直是一个有争议的课题。虽然完成性为小句类型、成句性以及语法体现的确定作出了贡献,但它的表述能力远不如许多语言学家所期望的。本文试图通过例子来具体表述完成性及其相关体貌理论模式的优劣。

Telicity and its related incremental theme are the features many aspectual theories use to attempt at the account of event structure and its grammatical realization. Whether telicity can figure in determining grammaticality and grammatical real- ization remains for a long time a controversial issue. Although telicity makes some contribution to accounting for clause types, grammatical tense, grammaticality, and grammatical relation, its determining power is more limited than many linguists expec- ted. The present paper attempts to provide some examples to specify both advantages and disadvantages of the aspectual model and its telicity.