Mandarin Chinese Essay, Research Paper

INTRODUCTION

In 1995, I decided to volunteer as a missionary for my church. On the application form, there was no space for suggestions as to where in the world I would like to serve as a missionary. Church leaders assign missionaries to the place they feel we should go. I was surprised with the assignment to serve in Taiwan, speaking Mandarin Chinese. I had no previous experience with Chinese people or their language, so I felt fortunate that the church provides 2 months of intensive language training before the missionary even gets on the plane. During my 2 months in the language-training center, I found out just how different Mandarin Chinese is from my native language. The time went by quickly, and after obtaining a very tenuous grasp on the basics of Mandarin, I got on the plane and flew to Taiwan. Upon arriving there, I was assigned a companion who had been in Taiwan for just over a year and a half. From my first day in Taiwan, I was expected to dive headfirst into the task of teaching people about the church. I found that although at the Missionary Training Center I had learned to put together basic sentences, there was a whole other level of the language that I still needed to consider—the discourse level. The pursuit of clear and fluent discourse has been a focus of mine ever since. I always hoped that I would eventually “pick up” the finer points of Mandarin Chinese purely through contact with the people. The church did provide us with some study aids. However, these study aids amounted only to vocabulary lists and a few grammar hints which were either very basic or not altogether accurate. I discovered a trend, which has been accurately pointed out by Bourgerie (1997:107); those who made our study aids seemed to assume that ‘there are classes of items that are beyond the realm of normal pedagogy.’ It seems they assumed that mastery of these items would be obtained through everyday contact with the people. I found, upon returning home a year ago, that I still hadn’t “picked up” many of these items. While my speaking ability had reached a point that native Chinese people clearly understood my pronunciation and tones, my mastery of those items that had not been clearly taught to me sometimes caused major communication breakdowns. Frustrated, I decided to isolate these parts of speech that were giving me so much trouble, look them up in reference grammars, and figure out once and for all how to use them like a native Chinese person. It was this search that raised the questions that I will attempt to answer in this paper.

The part of Chinese I chose to examine for this paper is the perfective aspect (PRV) -le particle. I will analyze and compare how various grammars, textbooks, and studies describe and explain this particle. Because most of the descriptions and explanations of this particle seem to be based mainly on the theories and ideas of the authors of these analyses, it seemed that a survey of native Chinese speakers would provide a good standard by which to judge these theories. Li and Thompson’s book, MANDARIN CHINESE A Functional Reference Grammar (1981) is widely used to teach learners of Chinese how to use the PRV -le particle. That is why, for this paper, I chose to put Li and Thompson up against the standard a survey would provide. By looking at data from 27 Chinese Mandarin speakers’ use of PRV -le in discourse against Li and Thompson’s prescription of how the particle should be used, I will attempt to find out how accurate that prescription is when compared to how native speakers actually use the particle. Next, I present the results of the study. Finally, I discuss the implications of the results for learners of Chinese.

THE PRV -LE IN CHINESE GRAMMARS, TEXTBOOKS, AND LINGUISTICS JOURNALS.

As far as my experience goes, in the classroom setting, PRV -le was never taught in-depth. In doing the research for this paper, I’ve found that this lack of treatment in the classroom was not because of a lack of theoretical literature on the subject. In fact, the theories as to how this particle should be used are so numerous that the reason for not exhaustively covering this particle in the classroom could be that there’s not enough time to do so. The reason for there being so many theories seems to be that there is little agreement on why, exactly, the particle is used in some places and not in others.

I would like to examine briefly how the use of this particle is explained in some textbooks, grammars, and linguistics journals.

A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Chao, 1968, p.246)

 -le has the class meaning of completed action

Mandarin Chinese—A Functional Reference Grammar (Li and Thompson, 1981, p. 185-216)

 -le is a marker or perfectivity: viewing an event as “bounded” (in its entirety or as a whole). “Boundedness” can be obtained in 4 ways:

A) by being a quantified event.

B) by being a definite or specific event.

C) by being inherently bounded because

of the meaning of the verb.

D) by being the first event in a sequence.

 -le does not mean “past tense.”

 -le does not mean “completion.”

Contemporary Chinese Usage of le: A Survey and Pragmatic Proposal (Spanos, 1979 Journal of Chinese Linguistics)

 Principle of Non-Redundancy: -le tends to be omitted in contexts where the time, aspect, phase, or modality of an action, process, or state of affairs is already specified.

 Rule of Consistency: For some speakers, if –le is used in a specific structure, it will always be used in that structure regardless of redundancy.

 Rule of Caution: Where context is insufficient to determine the time, aspect, phase, or modality, -le is more likely to appear.

 Special rhetorical purposes.

Backgrounding and Foregrounding through Aspect in Chinese Narrative Literature (Andreasen, 1981 Stanford PhD Dissertation, p.98)

 The perfective –le, in general, occurs after the first event in a sequence, but it is not necessarily true that subsequent events in a multi-event sequence are left unmarked for perfective aspect. Perfective –le may be deleted but verbal compliments are still used.

 It is too strong a statement to say that in spite of clear past time contexts, there is a tendency to use –le before a quantified object. It is more accurate to say that there is a strong tendency to use –le or some perfectiving complement with a quantified object.

Essential Grammar for Modern Chinese (Lin, 1981, p. 132-150)

 -le is among the most difficult concepts to master.

 -le is not the element that represents the past tense; it is a particle that has no significant or concrete meaning.

 -le is a verb suffix in simple and complex sentences.

 -le is a stative verb suffix.

 -le is used in anticipational sentences.

 -le is used in imperative sentences.

 -le acts, at times, as a modal particle.

A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese (Tian, 1989, p. 72-76)

 -le is used to indicate “completed action.”

 -le indicates a “new situation.”

 Double –le indicates “progress so far.”

 -le is used for “modal emphasis.”

A Reference Grammar of Chinese Sentences (Tiee, 1986, p. 96-98)

 -le indicates “completion”, not “past tense.”

A Reference Grammar of Mandarin Chinese for English Speakers (Chu, 1983, p. 85-89)

 Perfective –le is by far the hardest particle to learn.

 Perfective –le is not used with stative verbs; only with action verbs.

 Perfective –le not used with “verbs of saying” (i.e. shuo, gaosu, etc) if a quote immediately follows.

 Perfective –le indicates “first in a sequence.”

 Perfective –le’s counterpart can be meiyou, but not bu.

 In a relative clause, an action verb in the past has no –le suffix.

 Perfective –le has 2 distinct uses: 1) to mark past time.

2) to mark the order of 2 actions/events.

 Sometimes perfective –le and modal –le are not clearly discernable.

A New Look at the Verbal Suffix –le (Chu and Chang, 1987, p.309-334 Journal of Chinese Linguistics)

 The verbal suffix –le is basically for marking non-continuing factual actions/events. Factual meaning what happened, has happened, or is happening.

 In terms of sequencing events, the verbal suffix –le serves to explicitly mark anteriority.

 In terms of discourse, the verbal suffix -le occurs toward the end of a major break/peak in the event line. By virtue of its function to indicate factuality, the verbal –le is a natural candidate for the task.

 Verbal suffix -le occurs with a verb denoting that the action/event forms a cause-effect relationship with a following action/state/event.

 Verbal -le occurs with monosyllabic (action/event) verbs.

 Verbal suffix –le is often deleted.

 Verbal suffix –le is incompatible with verbs having a resultative compliment introduced by de (i.e. biande).

 Verbal –le is incompatible with verbs of “saying/asking” followed by a direct or indirect quote.

 Verbal suffix –le is incompatible with expressions having some “classical” flavor.

Clearly seen in the above summary, the descriptions of the PRV–le and its appropriate uses are not few. One thing that becomes obvious after comparing the above treatments of PRV-le is the frustrating fact that rarely does anybody seem to agree on even the basic definition of the particle. Some choose not to separate the –le particle into modal and perfective functions, while some seem to separate the two functions into completely different (though homonymous) words. Some are very specific in describing when PRV-le can and can’t be used, others try to summarize it all in one statement. A few linguists seem intent on disproving the theories of the others, putting forth their own suggestions and ideas, which are in turn refuted by other linguists. My search for some final, clear description of this particle’s use in Chinese turned up nothing clear or final: Tian says, “–le indicates ‘completed action’” (p. 75), but Li and Thompson say, “-le does not mean ‘completion’” (p. 215). Tiee says, “-le indicates ‘completion’, not ‘past tense’” (p. 97), but Chu says, “-le marks past time” (p. 89). This particle is too prominent a feature in Mandarin to be ignored in textbooks and grammars, but it seems that the preferred method of explanation is theorizing and postulating about its use in the language, instead of going out and getting answers by doing surveys and studies.

METHODOLOGY

Subjects

Those surveyed came from a wide variety of places, including Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing, Tianjin, Anshan, Shanghai, Hefei, Haerbin, and Wuhan, as well as other places in Mainland China. The subjects answered questions about their background, including age, educational background, language spoken at home, where they are from, and their occupation. This information was collected in order to analyze the survey results in various ways. A total of 26 people were surveyed.

Procedures

The survey was administered to the above subjects in written form (see Appendix 2 for survey questions). The survey consisted of a sample text taken from Intermediate Chinese Course, Volume 2 (1993), p. 153. The sample, which was completely in Chinese (simplified or traditional, depending on the subject’s preference), contained 11 occurrences of -le, two of which were modal –le and therefore not included in the results of the survey. Each occurrence of –le had a cloze blank offering a choice to include –le or not. They were told to circle the choice they deemed most appropriate. Of the nine occurrences of PRV-le on the survey, the purpose for each occurrence is explained by Li and Thompson’s prescription of the particle, in fact, each of the 4 possible reasons listed in Li and Thompson’s book for PRV-le to occur is represented in the survey:

A) A quantified event……….……4 occurrences

B) A definite or specific event……2 occurrences

C) Inherently bounded because

of the meaning of the verb……2 occurrences

D) The first event in a sequence.…1 occurrence

RESULTS

The purpose of the survey is to determine how accurately Li and Thompson are able to predict when, in a given text of conversational Chinese, a native speaker would use PRV-le. Through this study, I found Li and Thompson’s prescription to be accurate about 80% of the time. On average, 7-9 out of 10 of those surveyed felt that –le should be there. Five graphs of the results were produced (See Appendix 1 for the graphs). The graphs made for age, first language, location, and educational background, while interesting, revealed no obvious trends. There was never any one group (no matter how they were divided) that came especially close to Li and Thompson’s prescription. There was only one instance in which a given group unanimously agreed on the placement of even one of the four kinds of PRV-les. There were six individuals in the survey who chose in exact agreement with Li and Thompson’s prescription.

CONCLUSION

Contrary to my expectations, it seems that Li and Thompson’s prescription of the use of PRV-le is quite accurate. Given the fact that only one occurrence of –le solicited a unanimous response from the subjects, the possibility that the use of PRV-le could rely in some degree on the style and personal preference of the speaker becomes clear. Because of this general lack of consensus amongst the subjects, it seems that finding an absolute rule or set of rules to govern the use of this particle may be impossible. It may be beneficial to keep in mind that of the treatments of this particle analyzed in this paper, all of them covered PRV-le on mostly a sentence by sentence level. I believe that if there is a possibility of completely breaking down this principle into parts easily digested by a learner of Chinese, it lies in considering this particle on a discourse level of speech. Until the time that this avenue is adequately explored, it seems the best way for a learner of Chinese to “pick up” the correct use of this particle is to understand the rules given (at least those given by Li and Thompson). These rules don’t necessarily have to be an absolute dictator of how PRV-le must be used, but following those rules will most likely bring a Chinese learner 80% accuracy in using this particle correctly.