Event types in Mandarin

Does Mandarin Chinese distinguish among atelic, telic, and change-of-state events? These terms distinguish the basic types of nonstative events in a classification that is often used in current discussions; originally due to Aristotle, it was revived by Kyle (1947), Kenny (1967), and Vendler (1967). Events and states differ in this classification according to factors of internal temporal structure. These factors are perceived very generally as crucial properties of events, human beings having common perceptual and cognitive abilities. In posing the question above lam not asking whether speakers of the Mandarin language are aware of the distinction between types of events — that is, how they think. Rather, I ask whether there is a linguistic basis for the distinction in Mandarin. The question is about the grammaticization of event types. There is some reason to think that Mandarin distinguishes atelic and change-of-state events but has no grammatical realization of telic events. In this article I consider how telic events are realized in Mandarin and then pursue the discussion in the context of a general theory about aspectual systems. In that context certain difficulties turn out to be only apparent; the difficulties involve the analysis of resultative verb complements, a type of complement unique to the Mandarin language.