論“界變”是動詞的一種動相

Abstract

It is possible for both a verb or a sentence to convey a meaning of instantaneous change between an activity and a resultant state. But the meaning conveyed by verb or sentence is different in nature. The former is one part of the meaning of verb itself, which has the following semantic features: dynamics, instantaneity and transition of aktionsart, so it can be called the aktionsart meaning of 【transition】 owned by verb. Whereas the latter is not the meaning owned by verb, but a part of the meaning of sentence. Not all the verbs own the aktionsart of 【transition】. Besides, some verbs own the aktionsart of 【transition】 maybe own the other types of aktionsart also, such as 【activity】 or 【resultant state】, or both of the two aktionsart types. If one verb which owns the aktionsart of 【transition】 and does not own the aktionsart of 【resultant state】 serves as the main syntactic component in the predicate of a sentence, and co-occurs with the tense and aspect particle “le1” (了1) or mood particle “le2” (了2), the sentence will convey a meaning of resultant state. But this type of meaning is not the aktionsart owned by verb, it is the meaning of the “V+le” construction, which has the nature of conventional implicature. Checking with the following criteria, a verb can be confirmed to own the aktionsart of 【transition】: (1) It conveys a meaning of instantaneous change. (2) The types of aktionsart before and after the change are different. (3) If there is a syntactic temporal complement to be combined after a verb, the complement indicates a time length from an instantaneous change point to a reference time point (which is often a speech time point). If all the above three criteria are met, the verb can be judged to have the aktionsart of 【transition】, otherwise, it doesn’t have the aktionsart.