Tense and aspect in Loufan Jin Chinese dialect

Abstract

This dissertation investigates tense and aspect in the Loufan Jin Chinese dialect, a variety of Jin Chinese spoken in northern China. The analysis is based on firsthand data, primarily focusing on tense markers and key aspectual markers. Contrary to the traditional view of Chinese as a tenseless language, this study argues that the Loufan Jin Chinese dialect, as a representative of the Jin Chinese language, functions as a ‘mixed-temporal language’ with grammaticalized tense markers that denote both absolute past and future tenses. The past tense marker [lai44] is almost obligatory, while the future tense marker [iəʔ4] is comparatively optional. These tense markers consistently appear at the end of sentences to indicate temporal relationships. Though these markers function primarily as tense indicators, they can also serve modal functions. In terms of aspectual marking, the Loufan Jin Chinese dialect relies heavily on postverbal aspectual markers to convey perfective and imperfective viewpoints. Perfective aspect may also be marked through nonconcatenative means, such as vowel lengthening, rhyme change, and tone modification. Additionally, delimitative aspect is indicated by verb repetition and unique prefixes specific to the Jin dialect. For the imperfective aspect, the durative marker [tsəʔ4] appears post-verbally, while the progressive markers [təʔ4] and [ləʔ4] can co-occur, forming double marking. In this structure, [təʔ4] serves as a post-verbal marker, and [ləʔ4] is positioned sentencefinally.