The Semantics of Chinese Aspects

This book presents theoretical descriptions and a computational implementation of the semantics of Chinese (Mandarin) aspects. Fourteen Chinese simple aspects and twenty-six complex aspects are organized into a single hierarchical system network drawing on the theory of systemic functional grammar. In the theoretical part, the semantics of the aspects included in the Chinese aspect system is interpreted with a focus on the aspects' aspectual functions, temporal structures, and semantic applicability conditions. In the computational part, the semantic applicability conditions of individual aspects provided by corresponding aspect selection functions in the theoretical descriptions are implemented for automatic generation. As one of the contributions to linguistic research, the processing of complex aspects in Chinese is taken as a particular focus of this study.