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Comparative and Historical Linguistics

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Between Verb And Preposition: Diachronic Stages Of Coverbs In Mandarin Chinese, Glynis Jones Apr 2023

Between Verb And Preposition: Diachronic Stages Of Coverbs In Mandarin Chinese, Glynis Jones

Masters Theses

Mandarin Chinese has long been known to possess a category of words known as ‘coverbs’ in the literature, which sit in the gray area between verb and preposition. Li and Thompson (1974) describe the historical origins of Mandarin coverbs to be full transitive verbs, despite their modern state being decidedly less verbal. They also note that coverbs are a non-homogenous class. This thesis works to establish categories of coverbs in Mandarin Chinese and their distance from true verbhood in order to understand the diachronic shift that coverbs are currently undergoing before our very eyes. I will draw on the work …


The Collaborative Function Of Verbal Aspect And Aktionsart: A Distributional Analysis Of English Verb-Types, Marc A. Agee Apr 2018

The Collaborative Function Of Verbal Aspect And Aktionsart: A Distributional Analysis Of English Verb-Types, Marc A. Agee

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

This paper reviews literature in aspect studies from modern linguistics and Biblical language studies and proposes syntheses of multiple definitions given for these often-confusing verbal categories as the discussion has progressed from the Nineteenth Century to the present day. To inform these definitions, key studies such as Bache (1982), Comrie (1981), Lyons (1977), and Porter (1989) are consulted. In addition to suggesting definitions for these, this paper also discusses the best way to understand aktionsart as it functions in several related languages, and as it relates to aspect in usage. An analysis of evidence for this description as it functions …