Tense/ Aspect markers in Mandarin and Xiang dialects, and their contact
by Minglang Zhou
Introduction
The differences among Chinese dialects may be so little that speakers of two dialects have no difficulties in understanding each other or may be so large that mutual intelligibility does not exist at all between speakers of two dialects. However, educated Chinese dialect speakers have used the "same" written language for about two thousand years, no matter what dialects they speak. For this obvious reason, studies in traditional Chinese philology as well as in modem Chinese linguistics generally focus on the phonological differences among Chinese dialects, whereas little attention is paid to the syntactic differences among those dialects (cf. Zhan 1993).
To explore syntactic differences among Chinese dialects and their influence on each other, this paper examines the similarities and differences in tense/aspect markers between Mandarin (普通話) and Xiang dialects (湘語), to show that the syntactic differences regarding tense/aspect markers may be as large as those between two different languages, and to evaluate the use of tense/aspect markers in Mandarin by Xiang speakers, with the consideration that all educated Xiang speakers speak Mandarin sometimes and write in Mandarin at all times.
This paper is organized in five sections. First, the diachronic relationship between Mandarin and Xiang dialects is briefly reviewed. Secondly, previous studies of tense/aspect system in Mandarin Chinese are also reviewed as the foundation for comparison. Thirdly, Xiang tense/aspect markers are presented in detail in comparison to those in Mandarin. Fourthly, Xiang speakers' use of tense/aspect markers is discussed in the context of dialect contact. The paper will conclude with some observations and implications.