A CHARACTER-BASED CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE IMPERFECTIVE

在 zai and 着 zhe are commonly recognized imperfective aspect markers in Mandarin Chinese, though there are noticeable differences between their distributions and functions. By resorting to origins, historical evolutions, and corpus data for the meanings and functions of these two characters, it is observed that they are both polysemies displaying semantic networks organized around a central sense respectively, and thus the characters 在 and 着 are distinct in form and meaning pairings. 在 is a construction indicating presence within a certain range while 着 generally denotes 'reach to'. Related to their basic meanings, 在 and 着 exhibit some constraints respectively when marking imperfective aspect. From this character-based constructional account, 在's and 着's qualifications as Chinese imperfective aspect markers are theoretically arguable.


Introduction
Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation (Comrie, 1976, p. 3;Bybee, 2003, p. 157). The contrast of perfective and imperfective is the most basic distinction of aspect. The perfective indicates that the situation is to be viewed as a bounded whole, looking at the situation from outside, without necessarily distinguishing any of its internal structure. The imperfective looks at the situation from inside, or looks inside its temporal boundaries, and it is crucially concerned with its internal temporal structure (Kibort, 2008).
According to Li & Thompson (1981, p. 185), Chinese has the following system of verbal aspect: (1) i. Perfectivity: 了 le and perfectivizing expressions ii. Imperfectivity (durative): 在 zai, 着 zhe iii. Experiential aspect: 过 guo iv. Delimitative: reduplication of verb This perspective is generally agreed on. 在 zai and 着 zhe are therefore commonly recognized as two imperfective aspect markers in Chinese (Huang, Li, & Li, 2009, p. 101). This does not mean they are treated the same by linguists. The most prominent difference is their distributions. 在 zai is preverbal while 着 zhe occurs post-verbally, as shown in (2).
Beside their distributions, meanings have not escaped from the attention of researchers either. 在 zai is argued to feature a dynamic meaning while 着 zhe is claimed to be relatively static (Kwan-Terry, 1978;Smith, 1991, p. 271).
Confronted with distinct distributions and meanings of the two imperfective aspect markers, a problem arises naturally that where do these differences come from. The present study suggests a character-based constructional approach to solve this problem. Section 2 describes and summarizes the forms and meanings (functions) when 在 zai and 着 zhe co-occur with various event types, thus provides an overall picture for the constructions in question. The character-based constructional approach is introduced in section 3, and the applications for 在 zai and 着 zhe are laid out in section 4, combined with historical data to illustrate their processes of grammaticalization and to explain the forms and meanings of them as distinct constructions. Closely related with their meanings, some constraints of the imperfective aspect marking 在 zai and 着 zhe are discussed in section 5, and Chinese imperfective aspect marking system is revisited. Section 6 is a summary and provides some implications for the character-based constructional approach in Chinese linguistics study.

Event types of Chinese verbs based on time notions
Since 在 zai and 着 zhe behave differently when co-occurring with various types of events, we find it necessary to begin our description with a summary of event types denoted by Chinese verbs based on time notions.
According to Vendler's (1967, p. 106) distinction of four categories of verbs, with the refinements by Dowty (1979) and Foley & Van Valin (1984, p. 33), states hold for an unbounded period of time. Achievements occur at a single moment, with an immediate end point. Activities go for a period of time, with no defined end point. Accomplishments go on for a period of time, but with a defined end point. Travis (2010, p. 120) introduced the following matrix to represent Vendler's four categories.
(3) -process + process -definite state activity + definite achievement accomplishment Tai (1984) argued that Chinese verb doesn't really have the subcategory of accomplishments. Most of the results in Chinese are expressed by word compounds. This view is accepted by most Chinese linguists (Chen, 1998;Jiang, & Pan, 1998, p. 333;Xuan, 2013;among others).
It can also be observed in Chinese, some verbs present a combination of an achievement and the resultant state, like 坐 zuo "sit down, sit", and 站 zhan "stand up, stand". We will refer to them as achievement-state for the convenience of description. Similarly, some verbs denote a combination of an activity and the resultant state, like 穿 chuan "put on, wear", and 堆 dui "pile up, lie in pile". We will refer to them as activity-state 1 .
Therefore we can draw an outline of the event types denoted by Chinese verbs according to time notions.

Forms and functions of 在 zai
Corpus data shows 在 zai actually never co-occur with state verbs or achievementstate verbs. The verbs following it have to be activities. As for activity-state verbs like 穿 chuan "put on, wear", when co-occurring with these verbs, 在 zai only indicates the progression of the activity. Activity-states Progression of Activity 穿 chuan "put on, wear"; 包 bao "pack, hold inside"; 堆 dui "pile up; lie in pile" As is shown in Table 2, basically the form "在 zai + activity" conveys the meaning that the activity is in progress.
This disagreement is understandable if we take into consideration all the possibilities when 着 zhe co-occurs with verbs, as presented in the following discussion.
1. "V zhe (+ object)" denotes an action in progression or a state in continuation, but not all state verbs are allowed in this form. Permanent states like 是 shi "is/am/are", 姓 xing "be surnamed" are among the few exceptions.
(4) 人们 跳着， 唱着。 Ren-men tiao-zhe, chang-zhe people-PL dance-ZHE, sing-ZHE People are dancing and singing. (Lü, 1999, p. 666) Chen (1980 noticed when 着 zhe co-occurs with activity verbs that are volitional, the clause sounds unfinished. He suggested 着 zhe has a subordinating function and usually serves as background information for the main event in discourse. The self-sufficiency of "V zhe (+ object)" increases as the verb becomes less volitional, and the whole structure is more state-like rather than activity-like at the same time. So when the verb is an achievement-state or an activity-state, and the subject is not the agent of the verb, the clause purely displays a state, without any activity meaning. Existential sentence (locative inversion) is among this situation.
top hang-ZHE one-CL painting There is a painting hanging on the wall.
2. "V1 zhe (+object1) +V2 (+ object2)" denotes two events happening at the same time. V1 can be the means of V2 and V2 can be the purpose of V1. The V1 in this form needs to be an activity and "V1 zhe (+object1)" serves as background information.
(8) 说着 说着 不觉 到了 门口 shuo-zhe shuo-zhe bujue dao-le menkou talk-ZHE talk-ZHE unconsciously arrive-PERF doorway arrive at the doorway unconsciously while talking (Lü, 1999, p. 666) 4. "S + V zhe + AP" denotes the subject displays some kind of property through the experience of the verb. The verb here needs to be a perception/cognition/emotion verb, corresponding to different event types based on the time notions.

A character-based constructional approach
Ever since Langacker (1987) argued syntactic patterns, are form and meaning pairings, but at a more abstract (schematic) level than words, lexicon-syntax continuum has become a fundamental notion among constructionalists and cognitive linguists. Croft (2003) and Baredal (2011) question the dichotomy between lexical rules and syntactic constructions. This idea was further demonstrated by Bybee (2006) by positing there is no unitary "grammar" of language but rather a continuum of categories and constructions ranging from low frequency, highly specific, and lexical to high frequency, highly abstract, and general. Boas (2008) also points out the importance of the lexiconsyntax continuum. Langacker (2008) stated clearly that there is no clear border between lexicon and grammar.
Based on the concept of lexicon-syntax continuum, the imperfective aspect markers in Chinese, 在 zai and 着 zhe, are also likely to be derived from some specific lexical items, exhibiting complicated polysemous networks ranging from lexical meanings to grammatical functions.
As for Chinese, characters can provide crucial hints for us to plot polysemous networks of words, considering the special properties of Chinese characters as a writing system. Saussure referred to Chinese writing system as an "ideographic system" (1983, p. 26). More specifically, Chinese characters are also declared to be "logographic writing system" (Diringer, 1962;Fabar, 1992), "morpho-syllabic" (DeFrancis, 1989) "morphemic writing system" (Hill, 1967;Su, 2001). Although these classifications are based on different perspectives, they all acknowledge the semantic functions of Chinese characters. In this sense, each character is a construction, as constructions are pairings of form and meaning/function 2 . In order to capture the semantic network of words, we can turn to corpora of classical Chinese and see how the meanings and functions of a certain character changed over time. This is what we call Character-based Constructional Approach.
Actually it has been noted there are usually some kinds of systematically related and therefore explainable connections between different meanings and functions of the same lexical items (Tyler, 2012, p. 6) and that linguistic units, i.e. lexical items, morphemes and syntactic constructions, can subsume a range of distinct but related meanings organized with respect to a central meaning (Tyler, 2012, p. 22), which means by taking the character-based constructional approach, it will be able to reveal the central meaning/function of the construction represented by the character.
In our study of Chinese imperfective aspect markers, we search characters 在 and 着 in the classical Chinese corpus, Yuliaoku Zaixian (http://www.cncorpus.org/) to extract their meanings and functions, including imperfective aspect marking, at different times. Data is analyzed for the central meanings of these two characters, as constructions.
It is not really a novel idea to approach Chinese function words from characters. As early as 1825, the Germany linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt spoke of a threefold isolation in Chinese, "The Chinese writing expresses, by a single sign, each simple word and each integral part of composed words; it suits the grammatical system of the language perfectly. The latter offers . . . a threefold isolation, of ideas (concepts), words, and characters". Wenzel (2010) further shed light on the relationship of Chinese grammar, phonological system and writing system, "The Chinese language is basically monosyllabic, has a non-alphabetic script, and offers almost no morphology (no inflections)". In the same vein, Xu (2004) and Pan (2006) proposed a "character-based method" in Chinese linguistic study and Chinese teaching. However, what is innovative about the character-based constructional approach is systematically incorporating constructional grammar with character-based method, including the fundamental tenet of lexicon-syntax continuum as well as the emphasis on the bottom-up corpusbased research method. Boas (2008) discusses how construction grammar is supposed to deal with the interactions between lexical entries and grammatical constructions, and points out that further research should be done with a bottom-up corpus-based approach. The present study is carried out along this line.

The construction 在 zai
In oracle bone inscriptions at least 3000 years ago, 在 zai first appeared as a verb meaning "be living; exist; be in/at … (some place)". According to the etymological dictionary, 说文解字 Shuowenjiezi "The Explanation of Simple Graphs and Analysis of Compound Graphs" compiled by 许慎 Xu Shen (30 BC -124 BC), the seal style and the explanation of 在 zai is as follows.
No later than the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), 在 zai developed the function of a preposition which indicates "in/on/at certain time, location or range". The progression marking function of 在 was not developed until Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The earliest appearance of " 在 +VP" structure detected in corpus is from Pingyaozhuan (1620). The polysemy network (mainly functions, in this case) of 在 and the timeline of its development can therefore be represented in Figure 1. It can be seen that the meaning/function of 在 originates from the temporal domain and gradually extended to the temporal domain, which reflects the cognitive feature that spatial sense is "more central" than the temporal sense (Lakoff, 1987, pp. 416-417), and the general conceptual metaphor which maps spatial notions onto nonspatial domains (Taylor, 2008;Langacker, 1987Langacker, , 1990Talmy, 2000;and Boroditsky 2000). At the same time, even though the domains are changed, the sense "presence within a certain range" is well preserved. The verbal meaning of "to exist" can be interpreted as to occupy some space, a range in the spatial domain, and when this range happens to be in the temporal domain, according to the event types we presented in section 2, it denotes an activity. Therefore, the form "A 在 B" can easily be understood as a presence construction, which means the presence of A in the range B. The biggest constraint is B has to cover a range in certain domain.

The construction 着 zhe
According to Wang (2004, pp. 357-361), 着 was originally a pure verb which means "adhere to; come into contact with; reach to". This use can at least be traced back to Warring States Period (475 BC to 221 BC). It is normally read as zhuo for this meaning in contemporary Chinese.  (Liu, After the Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589), the verb function of 着 disappeared in Chinese, but it is preserved in Japanese. 着く tsuku still means "reach; arrive at" in Japanese now. Ever since the Tang Dynasty (618-907), there could be an object after 着. Seeming to be rather similar to an aspect morpheme, 着 is normally pronounced as "zhao" or "zhuo" for this function in modern Mandarin and apparently bears some kind of lexical meaning of "come into contact with; adhere to; reach to". The typical progressive or durative aspect marker usage of 着 was first seen in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and did not become common until the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). According to the search result from corpus, the state-continuation meaning, as shown in (21), was developed slightly earlier than the subordinating activity-progression sense, as shown in (22) So the development of functions of 着 along the timeline can be summarized in Figure  2. Similar to 在, the meaning of 着 also extends from the spatial domain to the temporal domain, reconfirming the "central" role of spatial perspective (Lakoff, 1987, pp. 416-417) in human cognition. The motivation underlying this extension seems to lie in its original meaning "adhere to; reach to". The earliest form "A 着 B" means "A reaches to/ comes into contact with B", from which the form "A V 着 B" was derived and 着 specifies the result, "reach to/ in contact with B". The progression of activity meaning occurs when "A V 着 B" is mapped onto the temporal domain, thus B is realized by another activity. So the "agent+ activity + 着" form we listed in section 2 can better be represented as "agent+ activity A + 着 + activity B" denoting activity A reaches to activity B in the temporal domain, just like in example (6) and (8), repeated here as (23) and (24). verb: adhere to; reach to; come into contact with resultative verb complement: reach to; come into contct with 500 AD 1000 AD 着 particle: state in continuation particle: activity in progress (subordinate) (23) 说着 看了 我 一眼 shuo-zhe kan-le wo yi yan speak-ZHE look-PERF I a glance gave me a glance while speaking (Lü, 1999, p. 666) (24) 说着 说着 不觉 到了 门口 shuo-zhe shuo-zhe bujue dao-le menkou talk-ZHE talk-ZHE unconsciously arrive-PERF doorway arrive at the doorway unconsciously while talking (Lü, 1999, p. 666) Moreover, if the verb in "A V 着 B" represents a static state but not an activity, the "reach to" meaning can be realized without the presence of B. Here the form "A V 着 To summarize, the central meaning of the character 着 is "reach to; in contact with". This meaning is retained in different constructions involving 着, including "A 着 B" and "A V 着 (B)".

Revisit Chinese imperfective aspect marking system
Assuming 在 zai and 着 zhe are the two imperfective aspect makers in Chinese, just like Li & Thompson stated in 1981, we should be able to claim under any circumstances, Chinese imperfective aspect is marked by either 在 or 着. However, there are actually some constraints involved with 在 and 着 respectively. Besides, there are some other plausible imperfective aspect markers in Chinese.

Constraints of aspect marking 在 zai
We have already shown 在 can co-occur with activity verb to denote activity in progress, but exception arises when the verb assigns locative as an argument. Generally all locatives need to be put between 在 and the verbs, appearing as adjunct phrases, probably because 在 is also the commonly used pronoun to introduce locative in Chinese. They are staying at New York today.

Constraints of aspect marking 着 zhe
In the first place, it has already been mentioned "agent+ activity + 着 zhe" is not selfsufficient. The function of 着 here is actually linking one activity to another, essentially having nothing to do with the aspect.
Another important constraint concerning 着 zhe's aspect marking function is it cannot be negated. More precisely, it basically does not appear in negative form. As we talked about in section 4, the basic meaning of 着 is "reach to" and this meaning is mapped from the spatial domain to the temporal domain. So if entities, activities or states do not come into contact (either in the spatial domain or in the temporal domain), we simply do not need 着 zhe. The negative forms of (25) is displayed in (28)

Other plausible imperfective aspect markers in Chinese
Some other morphemes (characters, according to the character-based constructional approach) beside 在 zai and 着 zhe can also express imperfective aspect independently under certain circumstances, like 正 and 呢. If we look at the 正 from the character-based constructional perspective, its central meaning is "no deviation, right", consistent with its definition in 说文解字 Shuowenjiezi "The Explanation of Simple Graphs and Analysis of Compound Graphs".
In example (29), the "no deviation" meaning is mapped onto the temporal domain, thus indicates two or more events happen exactly at the same time. Imperfective meaning is conveyed without the presence of 在 zai or 着 zhe.
As for the particle 呢 ne, there are various opinions regarding its functions. Considering the fact that 呢 ne normally occurs in the middle of discourse, this study follows Alleton (1981) and Shao's (1989) opinion that the basic function of 呢 ne is "to remind, appealing to the communicators' active participation." So in spoken Chinese, as long as there is proper context, it can denote imperfective aspect independently.

Section summary
From the above analysis, the relationship between 在 zai, 着 zhe and imperfective aspect marking can generally be shown as in Figure 3. Both 在 zai and 着 zhe have their distinct central senses, which underwent extension from spatial domain to temporal domain. In modern Chinese, they both can express imperfective aspect conditionally, but many constraints are observed at the same time. Additionally, imperfective aspect can also be expressed by other morphemes/characters in Chinese. Therefore, under the character-based constructional account, the roles of 在 zai and 着 zhe as Chinese imperfective aspect markers are questionable. We can only say, they can indicate imperfective aspect under certain circumstances, just like some other characters such as 正 zheng or 呢 ne.

Conclusion and implication
The character-based constructional approach believes that in Chinese, each character is a form-meaning pairing. By studying characters through historical development and with the assumption of the lexicon-syntax continuum, there can be a new perspective to look at Chinese lexicon and syntax.
Through this approach, it is discovered that the basic meaning of the character 在 is to indicate presence in a certain range and 着 is "to reach to". Their meanings and functions were originally developed in the spatial domain and were mapped onto the temporal domain later on, which reflects general human cognition principle. The process of grammaticalization is clearly exhibited here, consistent with Humboldt's hypothesis (1925) about evolutionary stage of language.
(32) Content word > grammar word > clitic > inflectional affix (Hopper and Traugott's, 2003, p. 7) Hopper and Traugott noted it is no coincidence that Humboldt's four stages correspond quite closely to a typology of languages that was in the air during the first decades of the nineteenth century (2003, p. 20). Chinese is basically known as an isolating language, corresponding to the stage of "grammar word" stage in the cline according to them. It is therefore self-explanatory that Chinese grammar words are polysemous. The semantic network of a single Chinese grammar word is organized around a central sense, which, according to the character-based constructional approach, can be accessed through the corresponding character(s). For this reason, the imperfective aspect marking use of 在 zai and 着 zhe are also constrained by their basic meanings respectively, and so do some other plausible imperfective aspect markers in Chinese. In other words, as an isolating language, the imperfective aspect marking system is not maturely developed.
Hopefully, the character-based constructional approach will be able to provide some novel insights for Chinese linguistics study, and to help explain some mysterious constructions under other frameworks, like the famous 把 ba structure. On the other hand, blurring the traditional boundary between spoken and written language, this account may also be able to facilitate classical Chinese study and Chinese dialect study.