Studies in Chinese Linguistics (May 2015)

Once upon an invisible TIME: On Frequentative Phrases in Chinese

  • Liao Wei-Wen Roger

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1515/scl-2015-0002
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 36, no. 1
pp. 21 – 33

Abstract

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In view of Kayne’s (2014) analysis, the English expressions of once, twice, and #-times are compared with the corresponding Chinese expression, #-ci. This paper shows that data from Chinese not only support Kayne’s analysis that treats the silent TIME as classifier, but they also suggest that the frequentative phrase may involve a silent NP and/or PP. The latter provides some possible modifications to Kayne’s original analysis of the suffix -ce.

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