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A Review of Semantic Studies on the English and Chinese Progressive Operators

Received: 18 August 2023     Accepted: 28 August 2023     Published: 6 September 2023
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Abstract

Recent years have seen a change in formal semantic studies of the English progressive operator from centering on deriving its truth from its non-progressive counterpart to a weaker assumption that the truth of the English progressive operator depends on the conditions available to make it true. It is found that Varasdi (2014), utilizing conditions, not only avoids yielding the truth of invalid propositions and the falsity of valid propositions, but also explains away the “imperfective paradox” and the indeterminacy of the English progressive operator, which makes it a desirable proposal to explain the semantics of the English progressive operator. In contrast, studies on the Chinese progressive operator mainly concentrate on its temporal meaning and have not considered its modal meaning, resulting in the lack of investigations of whether the Chinese progressive operator shows the “imperfective paradox” as well. Therefore, this paper focuses on reviewing previous studies on the semantics of the English and Chinese progressive operators in the field of formal semantics, based on which reflections on the problems of semantic analyses on the Chinese progressive operator are made and insights for future semantic studies on the Chinese progressive operator are pointed out. The suggestion is that future studies on the Chinese progressive operator are expected to check whether Varasdi’s (2014) proposal is applicable to elaborate the semantics of the Chinese progressive operator to solve the problems of explaining the imperfective paradox and indeterminacy manifested in the Chinese progressive operator, on the on hand, and accommodating the semantic and distributional idiosyncrasies of the Chinese progressive operator, on the other.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 11, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11
Page(s) 148-155
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

English Progressive Operator, Chinese Progressive Operator, Semantics, Reflections, Insights

References
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[5] Vlach, F. (1981). The semantics of the progressive. In P. Tedeschi & A. Zaenen (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics (Vol. 14, pp. 271-292). New York: Academic Press.
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[7] Asher, N. (1992). A default, truth conditional semantics for the progressive. Linguistics and Philosophy, 15 (5), 463-508.
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[22] Deo, A. (2020). Imperfective. In L. Matthewson, C. Meier, H. Rullman, & E. Zimmermann (Eds.), Blackwell Companion to Semantics. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
[23] Bach, E. (1986). The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (9), 5-16.
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[25] Champollion, L. (2020) Distributivity, Collectivity, and Cumulativity. In L. Matthewson, C. Meier, H. Rullman, & E. Zimmermann (Eds.), Blackwell Companion to Semantics. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
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  • APA Style

    Mengjie Zhang. (2023). A Review of Semantic Studies on the English and Chinese Progressive Operators. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 11(5), 148-155. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11

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    ACS Style

    Mengjie Zhang. A Review of Semantic Studies on the English and Chinese Progressive Operators. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2023, 11(5), 148-155. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11

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    AMA Style

    Mengjie Zhang. A Review of Semantic Studies on the English and Chinese Progressive Operators. Int J Lang Linguist. 2023;11(5):148-155. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11,
      author = {Mengjie Zhang},
      title = {A Review of Semantic Studies on the English and Chinese Progressive Operators},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {11},
      number = {5},
      pages = {148-155},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20231105.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20231105.11},
      abstract = {Recent years have seen a change in formal semantic studies of the English progressive operator from centering on deriving its truth from its non-progressive counterpart to a weaker assumption that the truth of the English progressive operator depends on the conditions available to make it true. It is found that Varasdi (2014), utilizing conditions, not only avoids yielding the truth of invalid propositions and the falsity of valid propositions, but also explains away the “imperfective paradox” and the indeterminacy of the English progressive operator, which makes it a desirable proposal to explain the semantics of the English progressive operator. In contrast, studies on the Chinese progressive operator mainly concentrate on its temporal meaning and have not considered its modal meaning, resulting in the lack of investigations of whether the Chinese progressive operator shows the “imperfective paradox” as well. Therefore, this paper focuses on reviewing previous studies on the semantics of the English and Chinese progressive operators in the field of formal semantics, based on which reflections on the problems of semantic analyses on the Chinese progressive operator are made and insights for future semantic studies on the Chinese progressive operator are pointed out. The suggestion is that future studies on the Chinese progressive operator are expected to check whether Varasdi’s (2014) proposal is applicable to elaborate the semantics of the Chinese progressive operator to solve the problems of explaining the imperfective paradox and indeterminacy manifested in the Chinese progressive operator, on the on hand, and accommodating the semantic and distributional idiosyncrasies of the Chinese progressive operator, on the other.},
     year = {2023}
    }
    

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    AB  - Recent years have seen a change in formal semantic studies of the English progressive operator from centering on deriving its truth from its non-progressive counterpart to a weaker assumption that the truth of the English progressive operator depends on the conditions available to make it true. It is found that Varasdi (2014), utilizing conditions, not only avoids yielding the truth of invalid propositions and the falsity of valid propositions, but also explains away the “imperfective paradox” and the indeterminacy of the English progressive operator, which makes it a desirable proposal to explain the semantics of the English progressive operator. In contrast, studies on the Chinese progressive operator mainly concentrate on its temporal meaning and have not considered its modal meaning, resulting in the lack of investigations of whether the Chinese progressive operator shows the “imperfective paradox” as well. Therefore, this paper focuses on reviewing previous studies on the semantics of the English and Chinese progressive operators in the field of formal semantics, based on which reflections on the problems of semantic analyses on the Chinese progressive operator are made and insights for future semantic studies on the Chinese progressive operator are pointed out. The suggestion is that future studies on the Chinese progressive operator are expected to check whether Varasdi’s (2014) proposal is applicable to elaborate the semantics of the Chinese progressive operator to solve the problems of explaining the imperfective paradox and indeterminacy manifested in the Chinese progressive operator, on the on hand, and accommodating the semantic and distributional idiosyncrasies of the Chinese progressive operator, on the other.
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Author Information
  • College of Foreign Languages, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

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