Abstract
This paper looks at the similarities and differences between two frequency adverbs, cháng and chángcháng, which have been often confused with each other in the Sinologist literature. Since both denote a multiplicity of ‘occasions’, they can be treated as markers of verbal plurality operating at the occasion-level in the sense of Cusic (1981). They present differences in two aspects: (i) the sentence types that they can occur in (respectively, characterizing vs. particular sentences) and (ii) their semantic functions (respectively, the expression of habituality vs. iterativity).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bertinetto, P.M., Lenci, A.: Habituality, pluractionality, and imperfectivity. In: Binnick, R.I. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect. Oxford University Press, New York (2012)
Chan, K.G.D.: La Négation et la Polarité en Chinois Contemporain. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Paris-Diderot, France (2011)
Cusic, D.: Verbal Plurality and Aspect, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford (1981)
Diao, Y.J.: A Comparative Study of the Historical Evolution of the Adverbs cháng and chángcháng. Master’s thesis, Qingdao University, China (2011). (刁玉娟:副词常和常常历史演变比较研究) (in Chinese)
Kratzer, A.: Stage-level/individual-level predicates. In: Carlson, G., Pelletier, F.J. (eds.) The Generic Book, pp. 125–175. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1995)
Krifka, M., Pelletier, F.J., Carlson, G.N., ter Meulen, A., Link, G., Chierchia, G.: Genericity: an introduction. In: Carlson, G., Pelletier, F.J. (eds.) The Generic Book, pp. 2–124. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1995)
Li, D.: Learner’s Chinese-English Dictionary. Tuttle Publishing, Vermont (2005)
Li, S.: Analysis of the acquisition of synonyms chángcháng and chángcháng. Adult education 242(3), 83–84 (2007). (李姝:试析同义词常常和常的习得, 成人教育) (in Chinese)
Paris, M.-C.: Focus operators and types of predication in Mandarin. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie-Orientale 27(2), 138–159 (1998)
Paris, M.-C.: Verbal reduplication and verbal classifiers in Chinese. In: Cao, G., Chappell, H., Djamouri, R., Wiebusch, T. (eds.) Breaking Down the Barriers, pp. 257–278. Academia Sinica, Taipei (2013)
Tovena, L.M., Kihm, A.: Event internal pluractional verbs in some Romance languages. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 37, 9–30 (2008)
Yang, J.Z., Jia, Y.F.: 1700 Groups of Frequently Used Chinese Synonyms (Chinese Reference Series for Foreigners). Beijing Language and Culture University Press, Beijing (2005)
Yuan, H.-H.: Quelques aspects de la quantification en chinois mandarin: pluralité et distributivité, PhD dissertation, Université Paris-Diderot (2011)
Zou, H.Q.: The scope and types of frequency adverbs. Chinese Teaching in the World 77, 36–45 (2006). (邹海清:频率副词的范围和类别, 世界汉语教学) (in Chinese)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Yuan, HH., Chan, D.K.G. (2016). Verbal Plurality of Frequency Adverbs in Mandarin Chinese: The case of cháng and chángcháng . In: Dong, M., Lin, J., Tang, X. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10085. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_46
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_46
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49507-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49508-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)