Timeline for How exactly do time and "tense" work in Mandarin REALLY?
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| Jul 21, 2017 at 14:46 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @user-487 That’s a different 了; it has a different meaning and is syntactically different as well. The ‘verbal 了’ indicates that a directly preceding verb represents a completed action; this ‘sentential 了’ indicates that a statement (that is, the whole phrase/sentence) represents some kind of change in the situation it describes. The two can co-occur, as in 我看了你的书了 “I’ve read your book now” (completion of action + new situation), but the verbal one does not occur with 有, including its negator 没. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 8:34 | comment | added | coobit | You can render the sentence to absolute actual either by "一本书"(measure words signifing the observable end for the action 看) or by "sentence finale 了". | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 8:29 | comment | added | coobit | Well, according to the "theory": "了" is a marker of relative actuality (something like "Once I read..." you see it's not finished) and "一本书" is a marker of "absolute actuality" (something like "a book"). So in total we have: "Once I read + a book" Since you read "A (one) book" i.e. definite amount (which means there was an end to your reading sometime after) the situation is rendered to be absolute actual. Better read the 3rd link, it's much more clearer in the article. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 6:21 | comment | added | The_Sympathizer | So then I guess the reply "我看了一本书" would indeed be used -- with the "了" meaning the reading of the single book is actualized in reality, and the fact that this occurred in the past, if indeed relevant at all, is inferred from context (since there is no other time it could have occurred if it is true now you have the knowledge and the reason you have the knowledge is factually because of the reading of a book -- causality says the reading of book must then come before the present situation.). Is this right? | |
| Jan 10, 2017 at 9:23 | comment | added | coobit | Well, I'm not a pro scholar. I just know some part of their theory. But my pop-up dictionary translates "沒了" as "not to be or cease to exist", which is logical in some sense: if you treat 了 as an indicator of "existance" i.e. marker of reality. And by the way, there are verbal and sentential 了. Verbal 了 is a relative realis marker and sentential 了 is an absolute realis marker (according to Linda H. Liu [3 link]). So 沒 might negate relative realis and 了 belong to absolute realis... Well, this is a guess. | |
| Jan 10, 2017 at 8:59 | comment | added | user-487 | The following titles use "沒了": 心好嘴不好，榮華富貴全沒了！// 習慣對了，壓力就沒了！// 沒了泰勒絲！洛基神清氣爽帥炸金球獎// 想法變了，壓力就沒了// 沒了名片，你還剩下什麼？ | |
| Jan 10, 2017 at 8:37 | history | edited | coobit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 253 characters in body
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| Jan 10, 2017 at 8:30 | history | answered | coobit | CC BY-SA 3.0 |