A corpus - based study of interaction between Chinese perfective - le and situation types

Mandarin Chinese as an aspect language (Norman, 1988:163) has a rich inventory of aspect markers, including perfective -le, -guo and imperfective -zhe, zai. Of these -le is the most studied marker because of its mysterious behaviors. For example, is it necessary to differentiate between the perfective -le and the COS le? Does -le indicate completion or termination? Are there any constraints on the interaction of -le with various situation types? All of these issues have aroused much controversy because different authors have invented different “acceptable” examples to support their arguments. Many of these examples, however, are rarely found in real language, though they are good for the purpose of argumentation.