Abstract
This paper investigates the functions of the auxiliary 有 yǒu in the ‘yǒu + verb phrase’ construction using spoken Singapore Mandarin data. It finds that yǒu is not a substitute of existing markers such as 了 le and 过 guò, as suggested by previous research. Instead, based on corpora data, yǒu codes for the existential perfect, as it serves to highlight the prior existence of an event or action in relation to a reference time.
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- 1.
This study notes that there are many regional varieties spoken in Mainland China; hence, by Mainland China Mandarin, this paper refers to Putonghua (普通话).
- 2.
The gloss for Chinese characters uses the Hanyu Pinyin for both Mandarin and dialects; the tones are given for Mandarin, while glosses for dialects are given in full capitalization.
- 3.
The morpheme yǒu is glossed as ‘have’, its verbal meaning, in this instance in order to keep the gloss consistent with its source in Lock (1988); the same treatment for the morpheme will be taken in the following instances, that is, if the example is taken from another study, the gloss will reflect the views of that study with regards to yǒu.
- 4.
It should be noted that the morpheme 有 is pronounced differently across the various dialects; for simplicity, this study will annotate all the reference to the morpheme with the Mandarin pronunciation, yǒu.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the funding support for this project from the Ministry of Education Academic Research Funding Tier 1 (RG145/15) from Singapore and the National Social Sciences Foundation for National Key Project “History of Overseas Chinese Grammar Studies and Database Construction” (16ZDA209) from China.
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Khoo, Y.K., Lin, J. (2020). A Corpus-Based Investigation of yǒu in Singapore Mandarin: The Case for an Existential Perfect Marker. In: Su, Q., Zhan, W. (eds) From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct. Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics, vol 9. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_8
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