So I came across a sentence the other day that I found crazy cool. For all of you interested in Chinese, this might be an intriguing but long post (read: book). However, for the rest of y'all, your chances of being intrigued are slim, so just stop reading now. Anyways, this is the sentence I came across:
这本书， 我看了， 可是还没看完了。
Zhei ben shu, wo kan le, keshi hai mei kanwan le.
*I have read that book, but I still haven't finished it.
And I swear to God it's interesting, but to discuss why it's so interesting, I'm first going to have to cover several other concepts rather in-depth-ly. So, without further ado, I present to you:
Concept 1 – Activity Verbs
Activity verbs are action verbs with duration that do not run to completion. The following are all activity verbs.
Chinese Activity Verbs
看 kan to read
写 xie to write
说 shuo to talk
听 ting to listen
买 mai to shop
睡 shui to sleep
念 nian to study
Activity verbs can be identified with series of tests. These tests differ between languages, but below I have outlined 3 tests for Chinese activity verbs. If a particular verb satisfies all three, it is likely an activity verb.
Tests for Activity Verbs in Chinese
I. Activity verbs can be modified by the perfective affix, 了.
我看了那本书。
Wo kan le nei ben shu.
I read that book.
II. Activity verbs can be modified by the imperfective prefix, 在.
我在买书。
Wo zai mai shu.
I am shopping for books.
III. Activity verbs can take durative complements.
我看书看了一个钟头。
Wo kan shu kan le yi ge zhongtou.
I read for an hour.
These three tests highlight three traits that define activity verbs. These traits are as follows:
Traits of Activity Verbs
I. Activity verbs are dynamic. That is, they express actions instead of states.
II. Activity verbs are durative. That is, they occur over a period of time instead of occurring instantaneously.
III. Activity verbs are atelic. That is, they convey an action that does not have a defined result.
Concept 2 – Telicity
What makes activity verbs interesting in relation to resultative complements is that they “refer to open-ended actions without a specified result or conclusion.” To understand this better, let’s imagine that verbs give a snapshot at an event, where an event consists of two parts – a process and a result.
Let’s consider the event, “finding a book”. As an event, there are two parts to “finding a book”. The first part, the process, is “searching for the book”. The second part, the result, is “locating the book successfully”.
An action may consist of only a part of an event or an event in its entirety. The verb “to look for” only expresses the process. That is to say, “to look for” consists of only the process “searching”. However, the verb “to find” expresses both the process and the result. That is to say, “to find” consists of both the process, “searching”, and the result, “locating”.
We can better understand this with examples:
1.) John looked for the book.
2.) John found the book.
In (1), John only searches for the book. However, in (2), John both searches for the book and locates it. In this manner, the action in (1) never comes to a conclusion, but the action in (2) does have a conclusion.
The concept of the presence or absence of a conclusion or result in an action is called telicity. Telic verbs have results, but atelic verbs do not have results.
In English, there are a number of telic/atelic verb pairs, in which both verbs convey the same event, but one includes the result, and the other does not. Some examples:
Telic/Atelic verb pairs in English
to see – to look at
to hear – to listen to
to find – to look for
to shoot – to shoot at
However, in Chinese, these telic/atelic verb pairs do not exist. Instead of using verb pairs, we use a grammatical construction, the resultative complement, to modify telicity.
Concept 3 – Resultative Complements
According to Trait III above, all activity verbs are atelic and therefore have no result. In order to indicate the result of an activity verb, a resultative complement is suffixed to the activity verb. The new suffixed verb is no longer an activity verb since it is now telic. Instead, it is now known as an achievement verb. Achievement verbs have the following traits:
Traits of Achievement Verbs
I. Activity verbs are dynamic. That is, they express actions instead of states.
II. Activity verbs are durative. That is, they occur over a period of time instead of occurring instantaneously.
III. Activity verbs are telic. That is, they convey an action which has a defined result.
As you can see, achievement verbs and activity verbs are identical except in telicity. Although this doesn’t seem to be too great of a change, it has a profound effect on the grammatical structures verbs can take. I’m not going to get into that now though. Instead, here are examples of achievement verbs formed from activity verbs plus resultative complements:
Chinese Achievement Verbs
看完 kanwan to finish reading (read to completion)
写错 xiecuo to write incorrectly
听懂 tingdong to understand (listen to until comprehension)
买到 maidao to buy (to shop until possession)
找到 zhaodao to find (to look for until possession)
The important thing to note about resultative complements in Chinese is that they convey two things:
Concepts conveyed by Resultative Complements
1.) completion of an event
2.) result of that event
Without a resultative complement, activity verbs convey neither completion nor result and are strictly open-ended actions. Please keep that in mind as we take a look at a few example sentences comparing activity verbs with and without resultative complements:
1.) 那些书，我都看了。
Nei xie shu, wo dou kan le.
I read all of those books.
2.) 那些书，我都看完了。
Nei xie shu, wo dou kanwan le.
I finished reading all of those books.
3.) 那些书，我都看懂了。
Nei xie shu, wo dou kandong le.
I understood all of those books.
First, let's look at (1). In (1), we have an activity verb, 看, but no resultative complement. As such, the event “reading a book” is began, but never completed. Therefore, this sentence translates into something like “I read all of those books (but never finished them)”. Keep in mind that the lack of resultative complement means that the books were never finished being read.
Now, let's look at (2). In (2), we have an activity verb, 看, as well as a resultative complement, 完. By having a resultative complement, it is conveyed that the event of the verb is completed. In addition, the resultative complement, 完, specifically conveys that the event’s result is completion. That is to say, the books were read until the very last page.
Finally, let's look at (3). In (3), we yet again have the activity verb, 看, as well as a resultative complement. This time, the resultative complement is 懂. Again, by having a resultative complement, it is conveyed that the event of the verb is completed. However, the resultative complement this time conveys that the result of the event is comprehension. That is to say, the books were read, completed, and understood.
I hope this explains well the function of the resultative complement in Chinese. I'll probably write a few more sentences later, but for now, I'm happy with what I've already put. Anyways, I think this brings us to a good stopping point. Tomorrow, I'm going to continue on about Verbal-了, so that I can maybe finally discuss that sentence way up there at the top of this post. So... until then.
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