TWO ASPECT MARKERS IN MANDARIN.

Introduction.l In this study I present the solution to a well-known problem of aspect markers in Mandarin. The problem involves several seeming irregularities in the formation of negative sentences and of the so-called A-not-A questions. Essentially, my solution of the problem consists of the identification of the morph -you (as in meiyou) and the aspect marker -le as suppletive alternants of the same morpheme. In the light of this identification, it will be seen that the relations among declarative, negative, and A-not-A sentences are both simple and regular. According to the theory of grammar2 which underlies the present study, the structural description (hereafter abbreviated SD) of a sentence is represented by a series of diagrams each of which is called a P-marker. Briefly, a P-marker consists of a tree graph3 whose nodes are labeled by a hierarchy of grammatical constituents; the top node is labeled S, i.e. sentence. A P-marker, then, is one of a series of statements about the relations among the postulated constituents of a sentence.