A preliminary study of aspect markers in Meiba Bai: the case of perfective and resultative

Abstract

In the case of xɯ55 and tɯ44, this paper conducts a preliminary investigation on the aspect markers of Meiba Bai. xɯ55 is regarded as perfective, for it indicates that the situation is viewed as a whole; tɯ44 is considered as resultative, since it emphasizes the occurrence of the result of action. The most significant distributional feature of xɯ55 is to be used with bounded predicates. In Meiba Bai, a bounded event can be expressed in four ways: (i) by being a quantified event; (ii) by being inherently bounded because of the verb; (iii) by being the first event in a sequence; (iv) by being a definite or specific event that definite noun phrases or bare nouns precede the main verbs. xɯ55 is frequently used with dynamic verbs to indicate the completion of action, and also used with stative verbs to denote present state. It is exclusively used with bounded predicates, but not all the bounded predicates can take xɯ55 because some bounded predicates are uniquely used with tɯ44. tɯ44 is regarded as resultative in this paper, which indicates the achievement of result of an action. Its distributional features are as follows: (i) being followed by an object; (ii) being exclusively used with verbs which lead to the results of 'possession of something'. Similar to xɯ55, tɯ44 is used with dynamic verbs to imply the completion of action, and used with stative verb to denote present state. xɯ55 expresses present state because when the stative verbs take perfective and adopt locations as objects, the interpretation of present state is more obvious than that of completion of action. tɯ44 denotes present state because it superficially emphasizes the occurrence of the result, but essentially indicates some possessive relationship led by previous actions, and the concept of 'existence' indicated by stative verbs is also understood as possessive relationship in Meiba Bai.