City University of Hong Kong CLASS CLASS
Making Sense of Grammar
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What are the full citations of Chu (2016) and Liu (2017) who stated that there was only one LE in Chinese? It was given as an answer to another question on this website, "How many LE(s) are there? Are there LE1 and LE2? What is the difference between them?". The original answer reads: 

Traditionally, Linguists stated that there are two different LEs in Chinese in terms of the positions in sentences. Le1 is used after the verbs and Le2 is used as the sentence particle. For examples,

         e.g.       她生了1病了2.  

                      tā shēng-le1 bìng le2

                      3p.sg catch-LE  sickness LE

                      ‘She is sick.’

However, Chu (2016) and Liu (2017) stated that there was only one LE in Chinese. Chu (2016: 169) observed that in the presence of le2, le1 can be freely omitted.

          e.g.     那本書看完了好幾天了。

                     nà-běn shū kàn-wán-le1 hǎo-jǐ-tiān le2

                  = 那本書看完好幾天了。

                     nà-běn shū kàn-wán-( ) hǎo-jǐ-tiān le2

                    “That book had been read through many days.”

asked Sep 13, 2022 in Questions about Chinese Grammar by Case (120 points) | 209 views

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1,613 questions
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15,645 users