Re: time distinctions

On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 08:17:16PM -0700, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
[snip]
> English's experiential perfect "have you (ever)...?" translates as V-guo:
> Ni3 qu4guo (le) Fa4guo2 mei2you3?  "Have you (ever) been to France?
FYI, some subdialects of Mandarin (yes, there *are* such things, gasp!)
actually prefer guo2 to le2 to mark the past tense as well as perfect. One
of my housemates habitually ask, "Ni3 che1 guo2 fan4 mei2?" for "Did you
eat yet?"; but personally I would use guo2 for what you call the
"experiential perfect". This shift in usage probably serves as a good
example of what I said before: native Chinese speakers don't think in
terms of tense like English speakers do. (Which, unfortunately, causes a
lot of grief when they try to figure out how tenses work in English and
just don't "get it".)

[snip]
> Present: Usually unmarked. There is a suffix, -zhe, which marks a
> progressive aspect. "Someone is Verb-ing". It's used in expressions, where
> in my mind, the French would say "en V-ant": She left crying. Elle est
> partie en pleurant. Ta1 ku1zhe zou3le (ta1=she, ku1 = cry, zhe zou3=go le).
> For my money, though, and for all the time we spent on it in Chinese
> 101, -zhe barely gets a work-out; I almost never heard it used or read it.
You're right in the progressive aspect to -zhe. I think it might be
closest to think of it as a participle. Using the same example you used:
Ta1 ku1zhe zou3le       He/she left, crying.
Ta1 ku1zhe zou3         He/she leaves, crying.

Using another example:
Ta1men2 zou3zhe   tan2
[they]  [walking] [chat]
"They chat [while] walking", or "They, walking, are chatting."

If you know classical Greek, the following might be a good translation
this sentence:
        ekei^noi peripate:me'noi lalou^sin.
ekei^noi        - they, nominative plural
peripate:me'noi - walking, nominative plural participle of "walk about"
lalou^sin       - speak, chat, third person plural.

Yes, I know the "ekei^noi" is redundant and can be dropped because the
verb already encodes the third person plural, but I'm leaving it in 'cos
then the sentence has a word-for-word correspondence with the Chinese. :-)

As to why you haven't heard -zhe being used: probably because it isn't
used very much. In my experience, it occurs mainly in dramatic or poetic
settings. In spoken Chinese, one normally doesn't use -zhe (esp. in the
participial construction we're talking about here) except when trying to
portray something graphically or dramatically. Your example sentence "she
left crying" may very well be used in a mocking way, e.g., a parent
describing to somebody how an unwanted girlfriend of the son left crying
after she was chased out.

For me, I wouldn't use -zhe to indicate progressive aspect; I'd explicitly
say something like "wo3 jen4jai4 tan2 jing2" - I am playing the piano.
Literally, "I[wo3] am-currently[jen4jai4] play[tan2] piano[jing2]".


T