Tense and mood marking in Xining Mandarin

Abstract

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the sentential particle lia 俩 in Xining Mandarin (Qinghai province, northwest China), which functions both as a future tense marker and as an atemporal marker of affirmative mood. Applying the notion of “aspectually sensitive tenses” (de Swart, 1998), the distribution of lia is explained in terms of the selectional restrictions that lia places upon the aspectual class of its complement. In particular, it is argued that lia functions as a future tense marker with dynamic situations, but as a marker of affirmative mood with stative situations.