In Mandarin Chinese, VP with the perfect marker Le₁ normally are not accepted as full sentences, and have to use Le₂, followed other VPs or numeral phrases to end sentences. This phenomenon can be explained from the perspective of time reference. However in some situation Le₁ can end sentences, this is because Le₁ is evolving into a past tense marker. The evolution of Le₁ is related to the changing of the Chinese narrative method. Traditional Chinese novels originally uses interactive narrative method termed simulated dialogue narrative method, which changed to the unilateral narrative method under the influence of narrative method of western novels because of introducing enormous western literature works to China in the end of Qing dynasty and the early of the Chinese Republic, and promoting the western culture and literature reform in the New Culture Movement since 1915. This change affects the usage of Le. Le₂ which indicates current reference is used in the interactive method like dialogue, and Le₁ which indicates internal time reference cannot be used to end sentences. The unilateral narrative method takes the story told as something happened in the past and had no connection with the current situation. So the past tense is needed. Then Le₁ gradually gained the function of a past tense marker in the process of using as a substitute for its similar function. However Le₁ is greatly restricted by situation types of verbs, objects with wh-word and so on when it is used to end sentences.

This paper aims to analyze the co-occurrence of such syntactic constituents as agentive, time, locative, and instrumental (manner) with event sentences, and the reasons why some of the constituents have to come up in the form of focus “shi …de” construction. It has been demonstrated that there are specific orders of priority when those arguments and constituents appear in the focus construction “shi … de” either in affirmative or interrogative forms. Furthermore, this paper also explores the motivation of focalization as affected by semantic roles and maxim of quantity. It has also been discussed as whether reason phrases could be focalized in the form of “(shi) … de”.

In an 1865 book, Yingyu Guanhua hejiang, Chinese characters are found accompanied by Romanized transcription; this transcription is presented as the standard pronunciation. However, some of its phonological features are inconsistent with the pronunciation of the mid-19th century Mandarin Chinese. The book is closely related to Zhengyin juhua, a standard pronunciation textbook; nevertheless, we argue that the phonological features of Chinese characters in the book are closest to that in the marginal notes in Zhengyin juhua. We hypothesize that the marginal notes on the standard pronunciation in Zhengyin juhua were made by the author of Yingyu Guanhua hejiang.

In Classical Chinese, “yǐ 矣” is frequently used in sentence-final position. Some recent studies have claimed that “yǐ 矣” expresses perfect aspect as one of its functions. This paper supports these claims by noting that in Classical Chinese “yǐ 矣” is widely used for a “counter-sequence” in arranging events temporally in texts. The paper argues further that the temporal adverb “yǐ 已” gradually increased in counter-sequence use in the Classical and Middle periods, signifying that “yǐ 已” took over the perfect use from “yǐ 矣”.

This paper compares one-word nominal sentences and existential sentences in Chinese and Japanese in terms of discovery contexts and examines their establishment conditions from the aspect of preferred perspectives. One-word nominal sentences focus on the objects found, and existential sentences comprise circumstances of the object. Previous studies point out Chinese’s inclination to the objective perspective, while Japanese prefers to take the ego-centric perspective. Chinese has few one-word nominal sentences, while existential sentences are plenty. On the contrary, Japanese has many one-word nominal sentences, while existential sentences are scarce.

A non-three-place verb can be used in Chinese double-object constructions, where a body-part noun is often borrowed as a measure word (S-type temporal measure word). Although this sort of construction has been interpreted as an “attacking” expression, it is interpreted as “damage” to its indirect object in some cases. We re-interpret these expressions as “assault” and “damage” and then clarify that, in both cases, the constructional meaning of double-object constructions and the descriptive function of S-type temporary measure words allow a non-three-place verb to take two objects.

On the basis of a synchronic corpus analysis this paper claims that the degree-expressing function of “zhe/na” is a result of constructive analogization from “zhe/na + NP” to “zhe/na + VP”, i.e., similarity in the form and meaning of these two constructions triggers a metaphorical mechanism, which, referring to the abstract syntactic structure “modifier + head”, promotes the analogic process from basic construction “zhe/na + NP” to the target construction “zhe/na + VP”. “zhe/na” starts to be used to express degree after getting a syntactical position as an adverb through constructive analogization, and this function is strengthened in linguistic context.